Employers are at a crossroads: do they change their company’s culture to support employees of all needs and backgrounds, or risk losing talent to the great resignation?
Today, no other community is more likely to give up on an employer than working parents. According to family benefits platform Cleo, 40% of working parents are thinking about leaving their job. Debi Yadegari, founder & CEO of Villyge — an employer-paid benefits platform focused on supporting employees from initial family planning to college and throughout eldercare — walked away from her investment banking career only six months after the birth of her daughter.
“I realized I didn't have the support I needed in the workplace to keep my career on an upward trajectory,” says Yadegari. “My well-intentioned managers didn't know how to manage their working parents.”
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Yadegari founded Villyge with this problem in mind, creating a platform that not only supports working parents but also their managers. This means offering timely guidance to managers as employees embark on various life journeys. For instance, if an employee is engaged in fertility treatment, Villyge communicates with the manager on what to expect. An employee may only get 24 hours notice before the clinic calls them back for next steps, so managers need to understand that a week-in-advance notice for time off or business travel may be challenging, Yadegari explains.
“We assist companies in creating family-friendly workplaces by providing managers with the background that's necessary to bring empathy to the situation,” she says. “When employees are experiencing real-life events, it’s an opportunity for managers to step up and really strengthen the employer-employee relationship.”
Yadegari believes this empathy should even go beyond working parents and extend to employees caring for older parents, employees who adopted pets and employees with partners. Managers must empower parents who want to leave work to help their kids with their Halloween costume as well as the marathon runner who wants to get some training in with their partner before the sun sets, Yadegari explains.
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“There are very few of us living alone on an island as we try to navigate our professional goals and pathways,” she says. “Managers should create an atmosphere where employees can bring their whole selves to work — and by supporting your people, you’re supporting your bottom line.”
Employers do lose out if managers create a culture that inspires a high turnover rate. According to SHRM, the overall costs of replacing an employee can range anywhere from 90% to 200% of that employee’s annual salary.
Nationally, the economic implications only magnify. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 1.4 million moms are not actively working as compared to 2020. The National Partnership for Women & Families notes that fewer women in the workforce costs the U.S. economy over $650 billion each year. Amid a labor shortage, employers may not be able to afford a lack of empathy and communication.
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“Where the friction occurs is when managers are unable to step out of their own shoes and they bring their biases to the situation,” says Yadegari. “Today’s family, their roles and responsibilities, are much more fluid than managers may know from their own personal experiences.”
Villyge accounts for generational gaps in understanding what a family may look like and need from their workplace. Ultimately, Yadegari thinks empathy is built by having access to the right information — and it seems she’s on to something. Villyge claims to hold their clients’ retention rate at 96%, while the national average only stands at 57%.
“At the end of the day, most bosses want to be good bosses,” Yadegari says. “When they do something wrong or do nothing it’s often because they simply didn't know what to do or what to say.”
