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Today's digital work environment has opened up a whole new world of possibilities for working outside the traditional model of 9-to-5, Monday through Friday, chained to your desk. While some jobs will always require employees to be in a certain place at a certain time, communications technology now makes flexibility possible for most knowledge workers in terms of where, when, and how they get their work done, at least some of the time. Flexible work is attractive to many employees, but it's more than just a perk: Many organizations are discovering that it can help drive important business goals such as engagement, retention, productivity, and inclusion. To that last point, flexibility is now seen as a valuable tool for helping working parents and caregivers manage their home obligations without sacrificing professional growth and career progress.
One company that has had a positive experience with flexibility is PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), which over the past ten years has evolved a culture of "everyday flexibility" that makes flexible work available to all employees, regardless of their role or circumstances. Anne Donovan, U.S. People Experience Leader at PwC, recently outlined what the company learned in this process at the Harvard Business Review. One key lesson, she writes, is to "be 'flexible' when creating a flexibility culture," rather than implementing a rigid, formal policy:
Flexibility for a caregiver might mean being able to leave work early to take an elderly parent to a doctor's appointment. For a parent, it might mean taking a midday run, so evenings can be spent with their children. And for others, it could simply be taking an hour in the afternoon to go to a yoga class and recharge. When we look at flexibility this way, it's easy to see why formal rules actually hinder adoption and progress. It's impossible to have a one-size-fits-all approach for flexibility. We let our teams figure out what works best for them, as long as they deliver excellent work, on time. The rest is all fair game.
Diversity & Inclusion • Management // All Roles Flex • Caregiving • Flexibility • Inclusion • PwC • Remote Work • Telstra • Women in Leadership • Working Parents
Feb 8, 2019 - 11:17am
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In today's tight labor market, US employers are having to work harder to attract and retain talent, not just by offering more pay and benefits, but also by targeting their employee value proposition to fit the needs of their candidates and current employees. As millennials take on the burden of caring for their aging parents while starting families of their own, and as progressive organizations strive to make sure motherhood doesn't derail the career of their women employees, many of the latest benefit trends are family-focused: paid parental leave, flexibility for working parents, returnship programs for parents returning from career breaks, and so forth.
Another increasingly popular family benefit is health insurance coverage for fertility treatments, to help employees who want to start families but struggle with infertility. In vitro fertilization, the most effective of these treatments, is increasingly common as women start families later, but is often prohibitively expensive, costing over $12,000 for just one round, whereas several rounds are sometimes required to result in a successful pregnancy.
Despite the cost, we've seen several large employers add fertility benefits to their rewards packages in the past year, including Cisco, Estée Lauder, and MassMutual. In a recent feature at the New York Times, Vanessa Grigoriadis takes a look at what's driving this trend, pointing to a recent Mercer study that found the percentage of large employers (of 20,000 employees or more) had increased from 37 percent to 44 percent from 2017 to 2018:
These days, I.V.F. coverage is "escaping" the sectors that have traditionally offered it, meaning tech, banking and media, said Jake Anderson, a former partner at Sequoia Capital and a founder of Fertility IQ, a website that assesses doctors, procedures and clinics. General Mills, Chobani, the Cooper Companies and Designer Shoe Warehouse have either introduced coverage or greatly increased dollar amounts for 2019. Procter & Gamble Company offered only $5,000 in fertility benefits until this year, when it increased the benefit to $40,000.
Many organizations are falling short, however, when it comes to communicating this benefit to employees and job seekers, Grigoriadis points out:
Diversity & Inclusion • News • Rewards // Attraction • Benefits • Benefits Communication • Family Benefits • Fertility Benefits • IVF • Pregnancy • Retention • Women at Work • Working Parents
Men Making Up Larger Share of Stay-at-Home Parents in US
Oct 5, 2018 - 1:26pm
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A new analysis of US Census Bureau data by the Pew Research Center finds that stay-at-home fathers are becoming more common, suggesting a slow shift in parental roles that Pew says is driven by more than just economic considerations:
The stay-at-home share of U.S. parents was almost identical to what it was in 1989, but there has been a modest increase among fathers. The share of dads at home rose from 4% to 7%, while the share of moms staying at home remained largely unchanged – 27% in 2016 versus 28% about a quarter-century earlier. As a result, 17% of all stay-at-home parents in 2016 were fathers, up from 10% in 1989, the first year for which reliable data on fathers are available. …
However, the long-term uptick in dads at home is not driven solely by economic factors. The modest increase is apparent even after excluding those who were home due to unemployment. Furthermore, a growing share of stay-at-home fathers say they are home specifically to care for their home or family, suggesting that changing gender roles may be at play. About a quarter (24%) of stay-at-home fathers say they are home for this reason. Stay-at-home mothers remain far more likely than dads to say they are home to care for family – 78% say so.
Pew also finds that Millennial parents are more likely to be at home with their children than Gen X parents were at the same age in 1999-2000, with a particularly significant jump among fathers from 3 to 6 percent. A larger proportion of Millennial dads are staying home deliberately to care for family, rather than as a result of unemployment or for some other reason.
Identifying "stay-at-home parents" is increasingly difficult in the era of remote work and the gig economy, which Pew acknowledges. Parents are defined as "stay-at-home" based on their employment status during the year prior to the survey, which is similar to how the Census Bureau categorizes them:
Diversity & Inclusion • News • Rewards // Child Care • Flexibility • Gender Equality • Gender Roles • Parental Leave • Working Fathers • Working Parents
ReimagineHR: D&I Success Stories from HSBC and Volvo
By LK Klein
Sep 12, 2018 - 2:20pm
In a panel discussion at Gartner's ReimagineHR event in London last week, Birgit Neu, Global Head of Diversity & Inclusion at HSBC, and Eric Way, Director of Diversity & Inclusion at Volvo Group, sat down with attendees to share their experiences evolving their organizations' D&I strategies over time. Although Birgit and Eric come from different organizations with different D&I journeys, common themes emerged from their stories that offer some insight into how to run a successful D&I program. A key point both panelists raised was that D&I must be "red-threaded"—that is, consistently part of the entire employee experience, both on an individual level and in interactions with colleagues.
Birgit was HSBC's first global Head of Diversity & Inclusion, which meant that her strategic direction was defined by the organization's need to understand what work was already being done in the space of D&I at the organization. Her first tasks were to build that understanding and use it to create a central theme for how the organization would approach their D&I mission in a unified way going forward. Being closely aligned with the talent analytics function, she said, helped her and her team to assess the experience of the bank's employees and identify opportunities for improvement.
One example she gave was about parents and caregivers: Many organizations assess the number of parents in the organization by how many individuals have identified dependents in the HR information system. At HSBC, however, Birgit and the talent analytics team were able to determine that when asked directly, many more individuals identified themselves as parents than the system indicated. This gave the company an opportunity to reconsider the experiences of the parents in its workforce and think about wellness communications in a different way. HSBC went back to employees to see if there was a difference between parents and caregivers, as they had previously lumped these groups together. They found that asking people these questions separately gave them a clearer picture of their employees' needs and challenges, and have been able to work with the benefits team to ensure that communications are relevant and timely to each group's needs.
News // Caregiving • D&I Strategy • Diversity Officer • HSBC • Inclusion • ReimagineHR • Talent Analytics • Volvo • Working Parents
Estée Lauder Expands Parental Leave Benefits for All US Employees
May 7, 2018 - 2:09pm
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As of this month, US employees of the Estée Lauder Companies can take advantage of an expanded range of family benefits, including 20 weeks of paid parental leave for all new parents, regardless of their gender or whether they became parents through birth, adoption, or foster placement. Birth mothers are entitled to an additional six to eight weeks of paid maternity leave, while employees seeking to become adoptive parents can request up to $10,000 in aid for adoption fees. Business Insider's Leanna Garfield passed along more details of the new policy when it was announced late last month:
Both hourly and salaried employees are eligible, as long as they work at least 30 hours per week and have been with the company at least three months. Before the change, Estée Lauder offered 12 weeks of paid parental leave. The company will continue to offer up to $20,000 per year toward fertility treatments, as well as child or elder care at a reduced rate to eligible workers.
In addition, the company is launching a back-to-work transition program for new parents. As part of this six-week program, Estée will give parents flexibility on where and when they work. For example, a new mom could work from home a few days per week if she chooses, or a dad could adjust his schedule in that he comes in earlier and leaves earlier than the usual 9 to 5. And those who qualify for Estée's new childcare/eldercare program expend a co-pay of $8 an hour.
Estée Lauder is framing this new benefit offering as a recognition of the fact that not all families are formed in the same way and that employees need more individualized options for starting their own. "We don't want to dictate what their families should look like," Latricia Parker, Estée Lauder's Executive Director of Global Benefits, told Business Insider.
News • Rewards // Adoption • EEOC • Estée Lauder • Fertility Benefits • Flexibility • Gender Equality • Parental Leave • Paternity Leave • Working Parents
Study: Stay-at-Home Parents Less Likely to Land Job Interviews
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In a recent study published in the American Sociological Review, Kate Weisshaar, a sociologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, examined how employers respond to applications from candidates who have taken time away from work to stay at home with their children, compared to those who are currently employed or had recently been laid off. To do so, she submitted 3,374 fictitious résumés to job listings in 50 American cities, representing these three types of applicants, and measured how many were called back for interviews or more information. Weisshaar's findings, which she discussed at the Harvard Business Review last week, suggest a significant bias among employers against parents who take career breaks to raise children:
The results show just how heavily parents reentering the workforce are penalized for their career gap: 15.3% of the employed mothers, 9.7% of the unemployed mothers, and 4.9% of the stay-at-home mothers received a callback. The results were similar for fathers. While 14.6% of the employed fathers and 8.8% of unemployed fathers received a callback, only 5.4% of stay-at-home fathers did.
Put simply, stay-at-home parents were about half as likely to get a callback as unemployed parents and only one-third as likely as employed parents.
To better understand this apparent bias against stay-at-home parents, Weisshaar also conducted a national survey in which respondents were asked to evaluate fictitious résumés that differed only in whether the applicant was continuously employed, had been laid off, or had taken time off to take care of children. Respondents, she found, "viewed stay-at-home parents as less reliable, less deserving of a job, and—the biggest penalty—less committed to work, compared with unemployed applicants."
Diversity & Inclusion • News • Recruiting // Career Breaks • Commitment • Gender Equality • Interviews • Motherhood Penalty • Working Parents
Shared Parental Leave Take-Up 'as Low as 2%' in UK
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The UK's Department for Business is making a new push to raise awareness of the Shared Parental Leave program, after finding that as few as 2 percent of eligible parents are taking advantage of it, the BBC reports:
Around half of the general public are still unaware the option exists, nearly three years after it was introduced, the government said. It now plans to spend £1.5m to better inform parents about the policy. Experts say that as well as a lack of understanding of what is on offer, cultural barriers and financial penalties are deterring some parents from sharing parental leave.
The government's campaign will encourage parents to "share the joy" through online advertising, social media and on billboards. Business minister Andrew Griffiths said the policy meant dads didn't have to miss out on "their baby's first step, word or giggle".
Nearly three years after Shared Parental Leave was enacted, the government is still struggling to get British workers to use it. Approximately 285,000 couples become eligible for the publicly guaranteed benefit each year, but by one estimate last year, fewer than 9,000 parents took advantage of it in the year prior to March 2017.
Diversity & Inclusion • News • Rewards // Gender Equality • Parental Leave • Paternity Leave • Shared Parental Leave • UK • Working Parents