How employers are bringing more benefits to working parents

Juggling parenthood and work responsibilities is no easy task, leading some employees to feel like they are not finding success in either role at times. To address this, some companies are providing more benefits for parents and other caretakers.

At EY, benefits for parents go further than parental leave. Benefits including childcare support, free tutoring and college application coaching, career and family transition coaching and its EAP, which provides 25 free mental health coaching sessions a year for all family members, are all designed to strengthen the entire family.

"My phase of life changed, and I still was supported," Alice Potts, experience manager at EY and mother to twins told EBN. "And had I not found that support, I probably would have had to leave [EY] and find something else."

Over 3 million children have a learning or physical disability, according to the U.S. Census, and that number is likely to grow in the next decade. Juno is now offering first-of-its-kind child disability insurance through employers.

Unsurprisingly, it's women who stand to lose the most from having a child with a disability. In a study of 500,000 parents whose children were diagnosed with cancer, Juno found that women could not financially recover enough to meet their original income potential, even 10 years after their child's cancer diagnosis. Men, on the other hand, recovered almost completely by year six.

"This is an equity issue that keeps women from progressing in the workforce and maintaining financial wellness," Hall Kesmodel, managing director at Juno, told EBN.

The addition of paternity leave can also help solve equity issues both at home and in the workplace. Paternity leave benefits both moms and dads, notes Sadie Funk, national director of The Best Place for Working Parents.

"Paid parental leave is just good for business," Funk told EBN recently. "It's one of those key opportunities to show your employees that we see you as a full person and we want to support you."

From a business perspective, Funk notes that employers are far more likely to see higher productivity rates and engagement from their workforce. SHRM found that parental leave policies that included dads led to an 89% increase in productivity and a 99% boost in employee morale. On top of that, 69% of fathers would leave or change their job if it meant spending more time with their kids, according to a study by Equimundo and Dove Men+Care.

Read more about how companies are adding policies to help working parents.

EY’s parental support program helps parents balance their two roles

EY's program, Pathways to Parenthood, provides up to $50,000 for expenses related to infertility, surrogacy, egg and sperm preservation, as well as adoption, 16 weeks of paid maternity leave and the option of a flexible work arrangement post-leave to help employees successfully transition back to their roles, while juggling parenthood.

"For the first year, I came back to work four days a week," Alice Potts, experience manager at EY and mother to twins, told Employee Benefit News. "I really had time to connect with my [kids] early on and build a wonderful relationship. Even now I can pick up my kids from school, play with them, and then come back online and work."

As Potts demonstrates, leave shouldn't be the only opportunity parents get to bond closely with their children. Notably, EY's other benefits — like child-care support, free tutoring and college application coaching, career and family transition coaching and its EAP, which provides 25 free mental health sessions a year for all family members — are designed to strengthen the entire family. Even when Potts joined the company at 28 and wasn't thinking about starting a family, these benefits stood out.

Read more:

How EY supports parents beyond maternity leave

Why dads should not get left behind in parental leave policies

According to the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), 32% of employers offer paid paternity leave, while around 40% offer paid maternity leave. Despite the gap being just 8%, the disparity highlights a bigger problem for dads: Corporate America often does not perceive them as caregivers. Notably, Pew Research Center found that over half of dads are dissatisfied with how much time they spend with their family — two times more than moms who reported feeling the same.

"When you have both parents fully able to participate in the at-home duties, that can lessen stress for both parents overall," Sadie Funk, national director of The Best Place for Working Parents, told Employee Benefit News' Deanna Cuadra. "Which means you have parents who are better able to show up, be present at work, be super productive and really give you their best."

Funk stresses that paternity leave does more than give the dad time to bond with the baby (which multiple studies emphasize is essential to the child's health), but it strengthens the entire family. According to McKinsey, 100% of men were glad they took leave and would do it again, while 90% noticed an improvement in their relationship with their partner.

Read more:

Why paternity leave is a must-have benefit for dads

The benefits of employers adding child disability insurance

Benefits provider Juno offers first-of-its-kind child disability insurance through employers, bringing another option to the supplemental insurance world. If a parent's child develops a severe illness, disability or injury, parents are entitled to up to $1 million, which would be paid out in monthly installments over the course of 10 years. Parents can use these funds to cover medical costs, pay for specialized at-home care or even supplement lost income. Juno's insurance covers any developments that occur from birth until children are 26 years old.

"When a child has a severe health event, there's months, years, or permanent caregiving costs that parents are often faced with," Hall Kesmodel, managing director at Juno, told EBN. "There's no insurance for that, and it leaves a lot of parents in a very bad situation."

Read more:

Why employers should add child disability insurance to their benefits suite

Working to improve lactation rooms

According to the Fair Labor Standards Act, employers subjected to these requirements are legally required to provide lactation rooms for nursing employees. The quality of those rooms, however, isn't so closely regulated. Under the FLSA, the provided spaces must be private, free from intrusion, shielded from view and close to the employee's work area — which still leaves employers with a lot of room to cut corners.

After hearing the horror stories about breastfeeding at work, Abbey Donnell was inspired to leave her marketing career and launch Work & Mother, which partners with both employers and landlords to create a network of functional and fully-equipped pumping suites.

"People were being told to use conference rooms, others were roaming the office trying to look for vacant rooms to pop into or using bathrooms and parked cars," Donnell told EBN. "It just sounded so awful and I remember wondering what I was going to do, because I didn't have kids yet, but I knew I wanted them and my office then was an open floor plan with glass walls and a single unisex bathroom."

Read more:

This CEO supports working moms by creating state-of-the-art nursing suites

Helping employees navigate parenthood

Becoming a parent can be a big change in an employee's life, and employers are coming up with some innovative ways to help employees thrive during this time.

EBN's award-winning podcast, Perk Up! is back for a brand new season about what it's like to be a working parent in 2024. This eight-episode series takes a look at the experience of having kids and balancing work in 2024.

Every two weeks, EBN's staff connect with employees from top companies like AT&T and Lyft to learn more about the employee benefits that made parenthood possible for them.

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Working moms can do it all — with their employer's help