Transcription below:
Alyssa Place: (
Welcome to Perk Up! A podcast about workplace culture and benefits, brought to you from the team at Employee Benefit News. I'm Alyssa Place, executive editor at EBN, and we're diving into stories of businesses that have implemented forward thinking, covetable workplace policies and benefits, keeping their employees happy and their company's bottom line thriving. Last week, we heard about the benefits of a four-day workweek and a group that can definitely use that extra personal time is working moms.
On this week's episode, associate editor, Amanda Schiavo, is talking about some innovative benefits that are helping working moms bring their best selves to work.
Amanda Schiavo: (
Thanks for joining me for this week's episode of Perk Up. I'm Amanda Schiavo, an associate editor at EBN and today we're going to be talking about moms.
Amanda Schiavo: (
We all know that the COVID-19 crisis put undue pressure on working mothers, but what does it look like for brand new moms? Well, when you're having a baby in the middle of a pandemic, you have to expect the unexpected.
When Carolyn Bushell gave birth to her baby girl in February of 2021, the experience was anything but business as usual. When her daughter was born, she needed to spend some time in the NICU and because of strict COVID safety protocols, Bushell wasn't able to stay at the hospital while her daughter gained strength. Her months-long efforts to find a hospital that was certified baby-friendly — meaning they would teach her everything she needed to know about breastfeeding and bonding following the birth — ended up being in vain.
Carolyn Bushell: (
I had planned to give birth to my daughter and then be at this baby-friendly hospital where they train all of their staff that you interact with on lactation consulting. So everybody is prepared to help you at any time to feed your baby. And so that was really important to me. And I thought that I was going to learn everything I needed to know about chest feeding at the hospital. But as it turns out with all things babies, things did not go as planned. I did not get to spend that one-on-one time with her while recovering, like I had planned. And because of COVID, we didn't spend very much time in the hospital. So I didn't get to take it advantage of the baby-friendly aspects of the hospital, where we gave birth to my daughter. So when I got home, I very quickly realized that I didn't really know how to feed her. And that, that was something I was gonna need to figure out right away.
Amanda Schiavo: (
Bushell's daughter is almost one-year-old today and thriving. When she looks back at her birthing journey, Bushel is thankful for the different support systems she had to guide her through it, including those from her employer. Bushell is the finance manager at digital products company Work & Co., and prior to taking her parental leave, she had a long conversation with her HR leader about a particularly useful benefit. The company made available Milk Stork, founded in 2015 by working mom, Kate Torgersen. Milk Stork focuses on breast milk shipping and lactation consulting. As a benefit, its mission is to help working moms better balance the demands of their careers with being a new parent. Milk shipping, for example, provides women with everything they need to pump, store and safely ship their breast milk back home to their babies while they're traveling on business.
Kate Torgersen: (
Work & Co. has onboarded Milk Stork. In addition to breast milk shipping, they are also offering virtual lactation support. So they'll provide unlimited support for one month or three months, depending on what women need. So many women have given birth in this kind of isolating COVID experience that we have and getting support for breastfeeding and just not feeling isolated and having to figure this out on your own is incredibly valuable.
Amanda Schiavo: (
That's Torgerson, who first came up with the idea for Milk Stork in the spring of 2014, after an eventful business trip. She was traveling on business and at the same time breastfeeding her new twins. This was her second time breastfeeding. And while the experience with her first child was easier, the twins had a harder time.
Kate Torgersen: (
Uh, my first child, I always tell people it was rainbows and unicorns. We had a great latch. She breastfed for 18 months, no supply issues, no challenges, but with the twins, it was a much harder journey. We were tandem nursing. We had poor weight gain issues. We had latching issues and a lot went into this investment of breastfeeding them. So when this four day business trip came up, I really wanted to take the trip, but it was also, I had a lot at stake personally, in our feeding relationship. And I didn't know how I was going to create, I was going to need two gallons of milk for a four day trip.
Amanda Schiavo: (
For all you non-parents out there, making sure a baby has enough extra milk to keep them fed while mom is away can be challenging. Especially if the mother's natural milk supply is on the lower side, babies need to take in milk every few hours, which means any mom who needs to travel will need to add extra pumping sessions to build up a stock of milk for the baby to consume while they're away. But adding extra pumping sessions isn't always easy and it can take a toll on the body, as Torgersen knows all too well.
Kate Torgersen: (
So it's really hard to produce extra milk. It means that you have to create a false demand and your body will meet that false demand by producing more milk. And you have to do that weeks in advance. So I added pumping sessions to create the surplus and to leave my husband with two gallons of milk while I was away. And then while I was away, I had to pump every three hours to make sure that my milk supply wouldn't drop while I was gone. So during the four days, I produced another two gallons of breast milk that I then had to keep cold in a hotel mini fridge. And milk, once you pump it, the time is running out on it. So, you know, four days is a long time into the lifespan of that milk.
Amanda Schiavo: (
She ended up carrying that extra two gallons of milk back with her through the airport. As she was making her way home to the Bay Area from San Diego, she was stopped by the TSA and questioned about why one person would be carrying so much breast milk. According to Kate, every breastfeeding mom knows that the TSA is going to be a crapshoot, but she still wasn't expecting the pushback she got about the quantity she was carrying.
Kate Torgersen: (
And I had to explain that I have twins. I had also packed it in these hard, plastic Nalgene backpacking bottles, because I had so much milk and I didn't wanna have a million packets. And I had to carry ice. I had so much milk that I needed a lot of ice to carry. It was like 26 pounds, and I had to dump all the ice out at TSA and then go find a bartender to refill the ice. It was just a huge pain. It was humiliating, frankly, to have to answer those questions. And it was just, I was mad. I was hopping mad when I got through TSA and I came back and I was like, I gotta fix this.
Amanda Schiavo: (
Torgersen is on a mission to make it easier for moms to pump, store and ship milk home to their babies. We'll get into how her TSA experience gave birth to a new benefit. But first we're going to take a quick break.
Welcome back to this episode of Perk Up. We were chatting with Kate Torgerson, who after an unforgettable experience with the TSA, knew that working and traveling moms deserved an easier way to get their breast milk home to their kids. Even though Torgersen did make it home to her twins with her milk supply intact, the stress and humiliation she experienced getting it there lingered with her. Why should working moms be punished for being working moms? She started thinking about the solution that could help moms keep working, keep traveling for work and still take care of their kids without any additional stress or anxiety.
Amanda Schiavo: (
After about a year of laying the groundwork, Milk Stork launched in August of 2015 and focused exclusively on breast milk shipping as a direct-to-consumer product. Torgersen didn't expect employers would ever be interested in offering her product as a benefit, but much to her surprise, only days after the company launched, they were contacted by a Fortune 500 company who wanted to onboard Milk Stork for their employees. Immediately, as more moms used Milk Stork, they told their employers and the employer-demand quickly grew. As the company grew, they were able to provide moms with greater tools and resources to make their journey into motherhood as smooth as possible.
For Work & Co.'s Carolyn Bushell, Milk Stork's lactation coaching resources would support her in a way she had not expected. Breastfeeding isn't as simple as it may sound, and plenty of moms and babies need some extra guidance to make sure they can latch properly and that moms understand their supply and their flow. When the presence of COVID meant that Bushell couldn't get that guidance at the hospital, she turned the Milk Stork platform, something she had originally thought would be just a nice-to-have resource, but quickly became imperative.
Carolyn Bushell: (
I went online I think before I even unpacked a bag and scheduled an appointment for the next day. And then within 12 hours, I was doing a Zoom call just like this with a very lovely woman who showed me how to feed my baby.
Amanda Schiavo: (
Bushell's virtual lactation coach spent two hours just getting to know her and her baby so that she could provide the right advice and care for the new mommy-daughter duo. By the end of the first session, Bushell was able to get her baby to latch and learn how to manage her milk supply. The coach also focused on teaching Bushell how to recognize her baby's cues to make sure she could breathe properly while feeding, and to make sure that her daughter was actually getting some nourishment. Learning how to pump between feedings, and making sure your ducts don't become clogged, which can cause infections and other issues, was another key area Bushell's coach covered.
Carolyn Bushell: (
It was really, really great. I knew that I would probably need a lactation consultant, but you know, when you're getting ready to have a child, especially if it's your first child, my focus was everywhere but on myself. It was about getting ready to leave work for such a long period of time. You know, even leading up to a vacation it's stressful, you know, you have to plan coverage and make sure all your ducks are in a row and you have to tie up as many loose ends as possible. So that was really my focus at work. And then at home, leading up to having our daughter, the focus was on getting ready for the baby. I didn't know what I was gonna need, but somehow Work & Co. did. And I was really, really grateful for that because it was a benefit I didn't even know how valuable it was gonna be until the second I realize I needed it immediately.
Amanda Schiavo: (
This all reflects favorably on Work & Co. and on the other employers who were seeking new ways to support their workforce. Sixty percent of employees who feel cared for by their companies say they plan to stay at least another three years, according to research from the Limeade Institute. When employees feel cared for, 94% say they feel personally engaged at work and have well-being in their lives. Employers are uniquely positioned to provide employees with resources that they may not have otherwise known about by expanding their benefits to include programs that meet them during the different milestones they will hit in their lives. That's a value that Caitlin Lillie, the director of talent at Work & Co. says the company has.
Caitlin Lillie: (
If providing support like this for employees for their larger lives outside the office makes it easier for them to return to work, easier that for them to stay with us, that's absolutely worth the investment in the benefit like this. It also signals to new candidates what our values are. You know, I think it can still be a little bit taboo or feel taboo rather for candidates. When they're talking to new companies to raise questions around family benefits, you know, whether that's parental, how does it look to be a new parent returning to the office that can feel scary for some parents? So benefits like this allow us to proactively share what our benefits are. We do that alongside the offer process, and no one has to ask, no one has to feel uncomfortable about that. And we hope that that sends a message. It's a good thing. You know, we want people to join us. We think it's a really exciting time for folks, and we're also happy to invest in different ways in their return. And you know, I think Milk's Stork is part of a larger package.
Amanda Schiavo: (
Employees have come to expect more holistic support from their companies. It isn't enough to simply provide a paycheck anymore. Employee always want to know their organizations have their back.
Carolyn Bushell: (
I previously have worked at companies where they're more of a startup-type environment where there were no other employees themselves had given birth. Wives and partners had maybe had children or adopted, or fellow employees, but no one directly I had worked with. So the benefits were pretty nonexistent because the demand wasn't there. So when it came time to switch jobs and find a new place to work, it was very appealing to me, the amount of benefits surrounding leave that Work & Co had. To me, it was a way them signaling to me as a new hire that we see you. We understand the kinds of needs that you have. And it was a way of signaling to me that they value and respect people that were looking to start families and trying to support those people holistically.
Amanda Schiavo: (
Employers can spend all day looking at data points, trying to understand why a particular benefit makes sense for their organization, but all the data in the world won't provide the valuable insight that an actual employee can. And as Bushell can vouch for, the support she received from Milk Stork through Work & Co. has impacted the way she feels about her employer.
Carolyn Bushell: (
Supporting people holistically, as whole people, people that have families, I think that it just speaks volumes about what the company values and how they see their employees. For me, it definitely spoke to me as this is a place where you're welcome to live your whole life, you know, not just show up and do the job and then go home that, you know, they're offering more than the standard amount of leave that the law requires. They're pursuing benefits that are, that are important. And one of the things that I felt while utilizing this benefit was that I was benefiting from other working mothers' experiences and that Work & Co. had taken that feedback and run with it and was looking to find unique and new ways of supporting people that have children in ways that is kind of unprecedented.
Alyssa Place: (
Thanks for joining us and stay tuned for next week's episode of Perk Up! about how remote work is changing the game when it comes to recruiting and meeting diversity and inclusion goals. This episode was produced by Employee Benefit News with audio production by Kelly Malone. Special. Thanks this week to Carolyn Bushell and Caitlin Lillie at Work & Co. and to Kate Torgerson from Milk Stork. Rate us and review us wherever you get your podcasts and check out more content from the EBN team at www.benefitnews.com.