COVID has shaken the daily routines of working parents in countless ways over the past 18 months. In the wake of abrupt workplace closures, many parents found themselves working from home while juggling child care and remote learning brought on by daycare shutdowns and a shift to remote learning.
As we finally begin to see light at the end of the tunnel, many working parents are contemplating what a post-pandemic return to the workplace might look like. Currently, working parents face the largest hurdles to returning to the office with schools on summer break, half as many daycare spots available across the US, and no approved vaccine for children under 12.
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Pew Research found that 54% of workers would prefer to continue working remotely after the pandemic ends, which means employers need to get creative in order to entice workers back into the office this summer and fall.
Luckily, there are some essential strategies that employers can put into place now in order to ensure a productive and positive transition into the office for working parents.
#1 Offer child care support
Even though the Biden administration has made strides toward legislation providing a broader child care safety net and financial relief for families, the burden of child care still remains squarely upon parents and their employers. When asked how employers can best support them, the top survey response from working parents was, “Offer child care benefits,” according to a survey conducted by UrbanSitter.
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There are a range of solutions depending on budget and employees’ needs, which may vary greatly by job type or location. Employers like One Medical are providing their doctors and nurses with backup child care access through UrbanSitter, enabling employees to book in-home child care by the hour with company-paid credits. Other employers like PwC are now offering a suite of child care benefits, including child care reimbursements, tutoring services, protected time, compressed workweeks, and sabbaticals.
#2 Support hybrid and flexible schedules
In addition to caring for their children and their paid positions, most working parents are also juggling other responsibilities that feel like full-time jobs, including managing their households and aging parents. Allowing for flexible schedules — where employees choose their own in-office days of the week and hours — helps them work around their non-work responsibilities. Companies like Ford, Target and Salesforce have already announced long-term plans to allow office employees to follow a hybrid model or work from any location after the pandemic.
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To ensure maximum overlap of in-office days, employers should encourage employees to mark their calendars with “in-office” blocks and ask departments to coordinate team meetings around everyone’s schedules. What’s more, they should only schedule mandatory meetings at times when most parent employees are available.
#3 Create an inviting refuge
Remind parent employees of the joys of a kid-free, distraction-free place to work by turning your office into an inviting refuge. Perks can be as simple as free snacks and gift cards for the coffee place next door to a full renovation like Cloudflare, a web infrastructure and security company, that is revamping its office to include outdoor space with furnished parklets and roof decks.
#4 Lean on your parent employee resource group
If you don’t already have one, start a parent employee resource group run by parents within your organization to best understand and address the needs of your parent employees. Lean on the group to solicit feedback from parents and develop initiatives aimed to get the most parents back into the office as possible. Allocate budget and staffing resources to the initiatives and encourage general employee-to-employee support through a Slack channel for parents, where they can offer each other support, share helpful resources and best practices for balancing work and parenting.
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#5 Let them truly “clock out”
An estimated 9.8 million working mothers in the U.S. are suffering from burnout, due in part to the “always working” mentality that came along with working remotely during the pandemic. Help relieve that burnout by giving parent employees the permission — or a directive — to “clock out” when they physically leave the office. No checking email, no responding to Slack messages and no evening Zoom calls. Encourage leaders in the organization to model this behavior to normalize it.
With over half of employees considering a new job this year, the time and resources spent toward making the transition back to the office a success are well worthwhile to retain your top talent.
