While a new law was passed in March that requires public employers and many private companies to provide up to 80 hours of paid sick leave, businesses with less than 50 employees are exempt, meaning their employees can’t benefit from what still only amounts to 10 days of extra relief. And paid sick leave is, of course, only one part of a much bigger picture. According to a survey of 1,000 working moms produced by HeyMama and InHerSight , flexibility and empathy are the two biggest things they say they need from their companies right now. (Although, among survey-takers who selected “other” as their answer choice, the most common response was that they want help from their employers in paying for childcare.) Tellingly, flexibility — as it pertains to deadlines, working hours, time off, and location — is something that, according to a 2018 survey by the Harvard Business Review , 96 percent of employees, whether parents or not, say they want from the company they work for (just 47 percent say it’s something they actually have). Empathy is a less tangible thing for a company to strive for, but it’s certainly more likely to be achieved when there are people at the top who understand, in this case, what it’s like to change a diaper and take a phone call at the same time, which is part of the reason it’s so important not only to have diversity in the top rungs of companies, but also to make it possible for working parents to move up the career ladder.