These small policy changes can help your working parents juggle their careers and kids

Working parents in the thick of even more COVID lockdowns and restrictions are dangerously close to reaching their breaking point. While making work more family friendly won’t completely eliminate those stressors, a supportive culture has made it easier for the working parents at CallRail, a business and marketing analytics platform.

“During the pandemic I really saw this culture of employees leaning on each other for support,” says Whitney Hoffman-Bennett, vice president of talent and culture at CallRail. “We’re very supportive of people coming in late or leaving early. Kids pop up in the Zoom meetings all the time and everyone says ‘Hi, what are you doing today?’ Then back to the meeting.”

The company has always been “pro-parent,” Hoffman-Bennett says: offering 12-weeks of fully paid time off for new parents, a part-time return-to-work policy for new moms, and an open dialogue around how parenthood impacts their work. Now, that culture is deeply ingrained and practiced from the top down.

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“We have a member of our executive staff who also has young children, and we just know that whether we’re in the office or working remotely, he won’t be available until 9:30 because he’s spending time with his children and taking them to daycare,” she says. “We’re modeling that from the top so other people feel they can do that as well.”

Those policies have held firm throughout COVID, and have helped CallRail add over 100 new employees to their staff last year. While not all of these new hires are parents, the culture they’re stepping into remains open to supporting both their personal life and their career goals.

“We don't just exclusively treat parents that way. We had always had a really big emphasis on making sure people are taking the time to turn it off and start when you want to start,” she says. “As long as you’re communicating with your team, we want them to do something that fills their cup, whether that’s taking time in the middle of the day to meet a friend for lunch, or just to get a coffee. That helps them come back and be a better employee.”

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This openness is crucial for all employees, but especially for working parents, who have struggled with high rates of stress and anxiety and have left the workforce in droves to manage childcare responsibilities. Nearly a quarter of parents say they are dealing with depression, anxiety and other symptoms of burnout, according to a survey by Maven. Over half of working parents say it’s difficult to manage their kids and career as COVID continues, according to Pew Research.

Hoffman-Bennett is a mother herself, and it was her husband who stepped back from his career to manage homeschooling and other responsibilities. While it is important to have a job that supports all of these transitions, Hoffman-Bennett says society needs to shift expectations around parenthood and “doing it all.”

“We oftentimes expect the mother to do it all, to take care of the kids so the husband can work. For me personally, it was quite the opposite,” she says. “My husband taught our children everyday, and that’s not the norm in society, but it was a normal occurrence for me. We have a ways to go in seeing men and women as equal partners.”

Hoffman-Bennett’s life at home helps her support both her own needs and those of CallRail’s employees at work. She will often put up a Slack message saying she’s “parenting,” and employees have access to parent-focused Slack channels where they can ask for advice or simply vent. Hoffman-Bennett says this has made CallRail both an attractive place to work, and an attractive place to grow.

“I do think from a retention side, speaking personally, there is a measure of flexibility and autonomy and a company treating me as a whole person,” she says. “[This culture] would be non-negotiable if I was ever to go anywhere else. So I definitely think we are a more attractive place to work and grow because of the emphasis we put on the whole employee.”