Transcription:
Paola Peralta (00:09):
Welcome to Perk Up, a podcast about workplace culture and benefits brought to you from the team at Employee Benefit News. I'm Paola Peralta, your host for season three. It's hard to believe, but we are sadly wrapping up this season, and we've spent the last few months talking about what it takes to become a working parent, and all of the ways in which employers can be part of the village employees need to feel supported, and that's especially true for when parents are coming back to work. So today I'm back with Editor-in-Chief Alyssa Place who spoke with Chief Digital and Transformation Officer at Bright Horizons about all of the things new parents need when they're ready to return from parental leave. Hey, Alyssa, welcome back.
Alyssa Place (00:45):
Hey, Paola. I cannot believe we're at the end of season three.
Paola Peralta (00:49):
I know I've learned so much over the last few weeks, but even though we're wrapping up this season, many working parents are just now starting this entirely new phase of life.
Alyssa Place (01:00):
Yeah, that's really true. We've covered planning for the baby, having the baby taking care of the baby. Now new parents have to go back to work and basically pick up with their professional lives with this whole new person that they have to take care of too. It's super challenging both emotionally and just logistically. For example, finding childcare for your new baby. That has become a crisis in America, both from an access standpoint as well as financially. And in fact, 43% of new moms will actually leave their career because of these childcare challenges.
Paola Peralta (01:33):
I can't even imagine what that's like. I have a hard enough time making it to the office and making my bed in the same morning,
Alyssa Place (01:41):
That's for sure. But fortunately, like we've discovered throughout this whole season, there are plenty of outstanding employers that are aware of these challenges and they're actively working to find solutions and provide benefits and support. I don't know about helping you make your bed, but when it comes to childcare, I got to chat with Priya Krishnan from Bright Horizons, and they have more than 700 childcare centers across the US and many of those are actually within workplaces on site. She talked to me about a good timeline for making a return to work plan, and then other ways to tackle the transition back, including paying for childcare for those new working parents once they're ready to return. Let's take a listen. Thank you so much for joining us today, Priya. It's great to chat with you. I want to just start by talking about what working parents are going through today. Our whole podcast season has been focused on what it's like to become a working parent, and obviously a big part of that is balancing work and home responsibilities. So can you just talk to me a little bit about some of the biggest challenges that working parents are facing once they return from their maternity and paternity leaves?
Priya Krishnan (02:52):
Sure. Childcare and supports are a critical area that working families and employees look for, and typically it's a tri that is going through their heads, which is, how do I get the highest quality care for my loved one? How do I get it at access which is reliable? So either it's close to home, close to work, or on my commute path, and how do we find great affordable care? We also know that employees require financial support, especially in an economically inflationary environment that we live in today. So what kind of supports can employers provide during this time to ensure that the affordability of the care exists? And we are a big proponent of employers providing this support because this is a two-way street. I mean, successful relationship comes from employers having happy employees in the workplace and employees getting the supporters from employers. So employers of choice of the future would be the ones who provide the right set of supports for what's a new phase in employee's lives, which is being a working parent.
Alyssa Place (04:03):
And I've heard horror stories of people, perhaps not horror stories, but I've heard stories of parents before their child is even born, they're looking at childcare facilities. Is there a timeline for when employees and employers should be collaborating on a return to work plan and making sure that some of these benefits that you spoke about, childcare are kind of locked in before they're getting ready to head back to work?
Priya Krishnan (04:29):
It afford a decent planning cycle in general E because you have nine months to have the child and then you have maternity leave and parenting leave that most employees provide. It's somewhere between a 10 to 12 month period that the employee has to decide how they're going to return to work after their parenting break. And in an ideal world, this should start when parenting leave is about to start, but this notion of starting three or four months before the baby's born and supporting the transition three to four months after the child's born is usually a good mechanism for employees and employees.
Alyssa Place (05:12):
That seems to be a good time span where it's not too overwhelming because obviously parents are overwhelmed before and they're certainly going to be overwhelmed after, right,
Priya Krishnan (05:24):
Right. That's absolutely right.
Alyssa Place (05:26):
Yeah. And when you think about some of the other elements that come with returning to work specifically about that sense of overwhelm, I mean, their lives have completely changed and they might be stepping back into a role that hasn't changed at all. So do you have any advice for employers or managers for easing the emotional transition that new parents might be facing as they return to the workplace?
Priya Krishnan (05:52):
If the person's coming back into their own role, clearly thinking through how do you ease the person back into office? So could you start at one day a week, two days a week? So flexibility being one of the levers to ease the person back in. And then if the role's gotten distributed amongst gears, how do you also then think about transitioning various parts? So can it be a partial transition as against a whole transition person by person so that the returning employee has somewhere between three to four weeks to settle the child into a routine, setting themselves into a routine and then come back into work knowing fully well that they both understand the role and are ready to function? And I'm a firm believer. I listen in the fact that if you're not personally anchored at home with yourself and your loved ones, you can't be successful at work. Even the ability to just work from home to ensure that I can run to a doctor's appointment is helpful and goes a long way in building loyalty for the employer and creating peace of mind for the employee.
Paola Peralta (06:58):
And we'll be right back after this brief message. So Alyssa, over and over again, there's been this theme of flexibility and that's so critical no matter what stage of life you're in as an employee.
Alyssa Place (07:12):
Exactly. And working parents certainly need that flexibility, but caregiving doesn't just end when your baby hits a certain age. Priya herself is a caregiver for her mother, and she's been able to lead by example when it comes to taking advantage of the open communication and flexible policies she was just talking about. She's going to share even more about that in just a couple.
Paola Peralta (07:32):
And I feel like as an employee, it must be so great to see your boss use the benefits that you yourself might be too hesitant to look into
Alyssa Place (07:40):
For sure. And that's great advice for any leader listening today. Employees need to feel comfortable asking for help. And the best way for them to do that is to see you taking advantage of your own employee benefits. And when it comes to the benefits that make the biggest difference, it's really important to have an open mind. When you think about the childcare piece. Priya is going to talk about the importance of having an onsite childcare center, why it's actually not as expensive as you might think it is, and why it's really life-changing for employees.
Paola Peralta (08:10):
I'm excited to hear more.
Alyssa Place (08:12):
So Priya, you mentioned flexibility as being such an important part of this, and that obviously spans no matter what stage of parenting or caregiving you're at. So I'd love to hear a little bit about your experience with caregiving and how flexibility has helped you and how you want it to help others as well when they're in a caregiving situation.
Priya Krishnan (08:33):
So if I as a leader in the organization, say I take the time off to go and run my mom to the doctor's appointment, there are two, three things that are occurring when that happens. One is I am role modeling, but two, I'm giving younger people within the organization the opportunity to say, Hey, it's okay, and there is permission to do this and access that. And the good news is 78% of respondents in our Modern Family Index survey that we run annually say that they are much more comfortable speaking about their family related responsibility. Just certainly wasn't true when I entered the workforce, but with Gen Zs and millennials that their clear requirements to sort of say, these are my needs and I would appreciate them from the employer, but if I'm not getting them, I'm willing to move.
Alyssa Place (09:23):
And can you tell me a little bit about what this type of support looks like at Bright Horizons? How are you supporting the full spectrum of family at your company?
Priya Krishnan (09:34):
I think caregiving, it's the most exasperated when you have a child. And we are very fortunate at Bright Horizons to both provide full-time childcare to our employees onsite in our home offices. So when employees are coming into work, they have access to a high quality childcare center on premises, but also areas like backup care and college coach, which support at these various life stages. So I feel very fortunate that in addition to the flexibility, we have these supports that we provide and this is really our rallying, Craig. We work with employers to make sure that they're thinking about these supports for their employees because happy employees just means productive employers.
Alyssa Place (10:21):
And yeah, I mean I think the onsite childcare is such a huge benefit and one that is pretty rare, obviously the expense of it and also kind of the technical challenges of setting that up. What is some advice that you give employers that you're working with or that you would give employers who maybe can't manage to do an onsite? What's the next best thing in your opinion?
Priya Krishnan (10:45):
The first thing I would urge you to rethink and all the employers overall, it says the fact that it's not a cost, it's actually an investment. And that's certainly one of the things that we talk to employers about is when you're providing access to childcare, you are making an investment that pays off in speeds. But if that isn't an option for employers, then at least starting off with providing backup care support and a clear return to work policy, which might be slightly more generous than your backup support to say, yes, we know you're returning to work. Let's give you 50 days off support of backup care or a hundred days of backup care. So your first two to three months are taken care of as you're transitioning back into the workplace. And that itself goes a long way in supporting employees.
Alyssa Place (11:36):
And are you optimistic that employers are getting that message that it's an investment?
Priya Krishnan (11:41):
Yes. I'm optimistic that employers are getting that message. So we are very encouraged by the fact that employers are stepping up to really sort of say, this is a support that we need to provide. Because like I said, the employees themselves are much more vocal about this, and it's becoming table stakes in terms of what they expect from employers as well.
Paola Peralta (12:02):
Well, that's the end of this season, but certainly not the end of the parental journey.
Alyssa Place (12:07):
Definitely not. And it's been really awesome learning from employees themselves and hearing from top leaders about all of these different stages of becoming a working parent. I hope you've gotten some good ideas on how to support your people no matter where they're at in life.
Paola Peralta (12:21):
Thanks again to Alyssa Place at EBN as well as Priya Krishnan from Bright Horizons. And thank you listeners for tuning in every week. Be sure to check out the full season of Perk Up for all of the episodes, our previous award-winning seasons, and all of our content at benefitnews.com. Rate us and review us wherever you get your podcasts. This has been Paola Peralta signing off.