How family-friendly is your business?

Being a family-friendly business has perhaps never been so important as it is right now as we sit in the midst of a global pandemic, in lockdown once again.

Last year, 3 in 4 mothers with dependent children (75.1%) were in work. And 92.6% of fathers - that’s millions of people who are now juggling work with being a maths teacher (despite barely scraping a pass at GCSE), a music teacher (despite being tone deaf) and/or stopping their toddler using the white walls as a perfect blank canvas. And the end isn’t in sight. 

In the UK, it’s not inherently in our cultural and structural nature to value and support working parents. And in business, I’ve often seen working parents – and mums in particular - put under a bright spotlight of unnecessary and unfair judgement and criticism. I’ve witnessed wrong assumptions, outdated beliefs and wholly unreasonable treatment. All because the individual dares to raise the next generation of leaders, innovators, change makers.

We know many working parents have fallen sacrifice to this pandemic – psychologically and financially - and this is devastating. However, there may be a silver lining. Being forced to work from home has shown that it isn’t such a bad thing after all. In fact, one client told me they’d seen productivity rise substantially since the pandemic – something they would never have believed possible. Businesses are seeing the value in flexibility and new ways of working are emerging, which, if sustained, will help working parents.

Being a family-friendly business is significant and complex; an ongoing mission that requires continually conscious attention. It is an eco-system of structure, policies, ways of working – all of which must be agile enough to give real agency to your people. And in the eco-system is expectation, attitude and behaviour. And it’s the behaviour that makes the real difference.

Imagine a house with no furnishings. The house is the structure. The furnishings are the behaviours – the things that make the house liveable, workable and of benefit to everyone.

Let me share some examples.

Working when you’re on holiday

Or as Tim Allen, CEO of Care.com did - wrap up a conference call while he raced through the hospital doors the day his twin sons were born. After all, it’s easy to keep an eye on emails or answer quick messages when you’re not actually at work. Only later did Tim Allen realise the detrimental impact of this behaviour on other working parents he was leading.

Reading Tim Allen’s story highlighted to me how prevalent this challenge is. The push and pull of work and home and the implied messages of our behaviours. It too reminded me of several of my leadership coaching clients.

One aspiring Finance Director felt it imperative to be seen, available always, whatever the sacrifice and regardless of the discontent it brought to his personal life. After all, it was the only way he’d get promoted. Until he saw that his behaviour also meant he was letting his kids down, never fully present for them. And letting his wife down too. Through our work, he gained a new perspective, a catalyst for change, which has catapulted his family up his priority list. Not long after, he got the promotion to FD and his CEO told me he is operating better than he ever has.

How ironic that the very beliefs that make us put work first can actually prevent us getting where we want to at work.

Don’t just do flexible, be flexible

Many of us are now working from home. For some businesses – Twitter, Facebook, Nielsen, Shopify – this is the new normal. It’s a form of flexible working historically regarded as ‘the slackers way’. Yet it gives working parents critical extra time, space and energy. Other businesses allow people to work adjusted hours, some job share, there are term-time workers and shift swaps. This is doing flexibility.

What’s harder is to be flexible; the act of doing something that demonstrates flexibility. Yet it’s the managers who lead with flexibility who make the real difference - moving the daily 9am check-in to 9:30am to enable the new mum in your team to breastfeed her baby, publicly excusing the parent who’s joined a call when you know they are due at a hospital appointment for their child, be the one to suggest an employee leaves 15 minutes earlier to make sure they don’t miss pick-up, ensure there are always dial-in numbers on a meeting invite to ensure everyone can attend, even if they’re stuck at home because of a sick child. Because rarely, do these things actually negatively impact results.

It’s the small behaviours that loudly share how much you value working parents – for the parents and also their non-parenting colleagues. It’s these that help embed a truly family-friendly culture.

Embrace the unsolicited Zoom appearances

I suspect we’ve all been party to a small person appearing on a video call at some point this year – our own or someone else’s. And for most of us, it’s not how we prefer to work – kids aren’t sent to childcare simply to be educated. However, this year has not been as straight forward as all that.

And so how do you react when it happens to one of your colleagues? My clients have shared stories of deep frowns and tutting, an impatient tap of a pencil, a slightly raised eyebrow, a loud sigh. Another coaching client, a Global Director, has had her professional ability questioned. And even worse, when colleagues agreed with her position to embrace the appearance of little people, they chose to keep quiet for fear of being categorised the same.

It’s these types of behaviours that directly undermine and devalue hugely talented and brilliant employees. And there are real consequences of not attending to this vast group. It reduces performance, dampens creativity and innovation, creates toxicity between groups and team, diminishes your talent pool, causes burnout and other mental health issues. All things that are critical to your bottom line and commercial and personal success.

And so, as a leader, manager or working parent advocate, I urge you to reflect on your behaviours. On how you’re leading by example. On how your leadership and management teams are leading by example. Bring behaviour into conscious awareness and facilitate the success of parents who work for you rather than undermine it. And embrace those photobombs, when they come.