This
is a new, simple label we can use to describe the sometimes
overwhelming challenge of trying to earn a living and build a career
while also parenting well. For organizations and people in positions of
leadership, it refers to the challenge of effectively employing and
fully unleashing the potential of the folks who are trying to navigate
the demands of work and family.
If
you’ve thought about the Problem before as a manager, it’s probably
been under a different, hazier label (“work-life balance” or
“integration”), and potential solutions may have seemed like a nebulous,
elective effort; there was no clear path or upside to getting involved.
Even if you’ve directly confronted the Problem in the past — for
example, you’ve had a star performer suddenly decide to stay home at the
end of a parental leave — the issue probably still felt adjacent to
your core business goals, a relatively small and inevitable cost of
doing business.
But
it isn’t anymore. In the current economic and cultural landscape, the
Working Parent Problem has moved up to the forefront of leadership
concerns, and it’s going to stay there. Ignored, it can become a
powerful and insidious threat to your team and organization’s success.
Here’s why focusing on working parents is so important:
Because the demographic is huge… Let’s look at the cold hard data: In the United States, the age-25-to-54 civilian workforce is
102 million people, and there are
52 million working parents, according
to the Department of Labor. It’s therefore possible — probable, even —
that 50% or more of your new-product sales team, or line managers, or
clinical care providers, or the candidates for that specialty role
you’ve been recruiting for and that’s proving impossible to fill, are
trying to be committed professionals while also raising their kids in a
present and loving way. At the same time, unemployment rates are at
near-record lows. So, if you’re having serious trouble finding the
talent you need already, it’s probably time to start paying attention to
ways you can attract this huge pool of working mothers and fathers,
retain them, and ensure they deliver at work.
…and the struggle is arguably more difficult today than in past decades. Not only is the sheer number
of working parents large and growing, but those men and women also
carry much heavier loads than previous generations have. Today’s working
parents are three times more likely, on average, to be part of
dual-career couples or to be single than they are to spouses at home
full-time. That means the majority of committed, working-parent
employees have no slack in their system: no one to whom they can hand
off the school pickup or pediatrician visit or 10 pm feeding. And as
wonderful as many technological changes are, some have also made working
parenthood harder: iPhone in hand, there’s no reason, or excuse, to
ever be “off” of work, even during the parent-teacher conference or
family dinner. Translation: Being a working parent isn’t a marginal or
occasional concern for mothers and fathers on your team; it’s one of the
central challenges of their lives, and they grapple with it daily.
You and Your Team Series
Working Parents
Because more working parents care more — and may vote with their feet.
Several recent studies
indicate that for working parents, flexibility and work-life balance
trump every other career decision-making criteria — including pay. And
research
shows that men, historically less engaged in childcare and other
child-related activities, are becoming increasingly committed to it:
today’s dads overwhelmingly report wanting to be present and on-the-job
at home. They’re becoming increasingly willing to
make serious career choices
around it, too. So working-parenthood isn’t a “women’s thing” anymore —
it’s a universal concern driving whether people join or stay in your
organization.
Because it’s a bellwether. How
you treat working parents is an indicator of how you treat talent in
general, especially in the eyes of prospective or more junior employees.
Do you include information about family-related policies in the Careers
section of your corporate website? If not, there’s a risk that
candidates — whether they have kids or not —will quickly move on to
other sites and job opportunities that appear more parent-friendly. And
if up-and-coming stars with young children are leaving your team or
organization to stay home, or for jobs where it seems more feasible to
combine work and family, their younger colleagues (folks who aren’t part
of that 52 million yet, but want to be someday) will notice and start
wondering if they’ve found the right place to build their long-term
careers.
Bottom
line: Without a good approach to working parenthood that you’re willing
to showcase publicly and some visible examples of moms and dads
succeeding and thriving in your organization, you’ll have a hard time
developing a reputation as a great boss or persuading people that your
company is “a great place to work.”
Because the issue pervades our public dialogue. Scan
the headlines, look at your screen, or type the term “working parent”
into a browser, and you’ll find a deluge of articles, commentary, and
opinion generated in the past two to three years — all underscoring the
immediacy and scope of the Working Parent Problem. It’s certainly
top-of-mind for anyone directly affected by it, and increasingly for
people who aren’t, and it’s likely to stay in that spotlight for the
foreseeable future. If you’re a senior leader who hasn’t yet gotten a
question of some kind about the issue from a reporter, investor, board
member, in front of a crowd at an employee town hall, or from a star
performer during a mentoring conversation, you probably will soon. You
don’t want to get caught without a thoughtful stance on a hot-button
topic that affects so many people.
Because external help probably isn’t on the way — at least, not anytime soon. Yes, there has been a lot of discussion recently in the United States and other countries about
working-parent friendly legislation,
including paid and/or extended parental leaves. While those types of
laws could eventually be helpful for parents and for organizations, they
may not pass or pass as proposed, and they could be delayed for
years. To be effective, your talent strategy has to be based on the here
and now, not on “maybes” of the future.
So
what exactly does a strong and feasible strategy look like? And how, in
the face of this large, complex challenge can individual leaders take
charge and make an impact? In my consulting work, I’ve advised
executives and organizations of all sizes and types in various
industries to focus on six key things:
- Demonstrate personal support for working-parent employees, in a highly visible way.
- Define
your organization’s working-parent challenge from the front-line
employee perspective, through both a quantitative and qualitative lens.
- Engage allies within and outside of the HR team to identify and execute on solutions.
- Take a comprehensive approach rather than relying on “silver bullet” solutions.
- Support — and help to shape — grassroots, employee-led solutions, such as peer-to-peer working-parent mentoring programs or Employee Resource Groups (ERGs).
- Out-communicate the competition when it comes to working-parent matters.
Ultimately,
every leader and organization will find different ways to solve the
Working Parent Problem. But, as with any challenge, acknowledging its
reality, size, and nature is always the right place to start.
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