5 Ways Managers Can Support Working Parents
Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
(Editor’s Note: Today’s article is brought to you by our friends at Circle In, a global employee engagement platform focused on building a better working world for families and caregivers. Check out their recent guide on “The Future of Work: The Importance of Flexible Workplaces”. Enjoy the read!)
For working parents, having a supportive manager is essential to overcoming some of the challenges faced in the workplace. This is supported in research conducted by global engagement platform Circle In, who found that 68% of respondents said the flexibility they have is dependent on who their manager is. However, the same research also shows that most managers do not believe they are being unsupportive.
So, the purpose here isn’t to bash managers. Instead, it’s to offer some ways for organizations to give managers the tools they need to offer caregiving support whether it’s for working parents or eldercare.
Over the past year, we’ve spent a lot of time talking about how the pandemic has changed work. But it’s also changed our personal and family lives. Especially if you’re a parent. About half of employed parents (52%) say it’s been difficult to handle childcare responsibilities during the coronavirus outbreak, according to Pew Research. In addition, we’re hearing that childcare is an obstacle to employees returning to the office.
I get it. Managers, like their employees, are exhausted from COVID. But this doesn’t mean we can ignore the disconnect. Managers must provide employee support on top of everything else they are juggling. It’s hard. And organizations rely on managers to get it done.
So, the purpose here isn’t to bash managers. Instead, it’s to offer some ways for organizations to give managers the tools they need to offer caregiving support whether it’s for working parents or eldercare. And this is where a platform like Circle In can help. It’s an employee benefit platform that provides guided support for managers, enabling them to lead with empathy and confidence.
Give Managers the Tools to Support Working Parents
Organizations need to recognize that our definitions of family are changing and what that means for our employees and their caregiving responsibilities. Here are five things that Circle In suggests organizations consider when helping managers support working parents:
- Establish expectations with the management team. Organizations ask managers to set expectations with employees. That means the organization needs to set expectations with managers as well. Learning something new takes time and can be challenging. Some managers might say that they’re simply too busy and don’t have time. But ultimately, they need to be held accountable because a poor employee experience translates into increased turnover and decreased productivity.
- Acknowledge any biases or preconceived notions about working from home, remote work, and/or hybrid work…and eliminate them. The work environment must be equitable for all. In the past, managers might have relied on sight to evaluate employee performance. Today, organizations need to provide manager training on how to measure outcomes, not hours.
- Strike a balance between flexibility and structure. While we’re still in the pandemic, organizations need to think beyond it. Our work, school, and home life have become very intertwined. Working parents are not only expected to continue to execute work responsibilities, but do it while simultaneously being a teacher and parent. To provide support in a timely fashion, managers need to be equipped with practical tools and resources that they can consume and use in bite sized snippets 24/7.
- Show empathy towards the team and their needs. 53% of parents believe their manager could be doing more to support them through parental leave. Unfortunately, managers often don’t know what to say, so the default is for them to say nothing. This hurts the relationship with an employee. Instead of side-stepping difficult or awkward conversations, organizations should include learning how to navigate these conversations a part of manager training.
- Put trust in trust. Sometimes caregiving conversations need to be discreet. The subject matter could be something highly personal. For example, consider how a manager would support an employee who has suffered a stillbirth or an employee experiencing menopause. It’s possible that a manager would not feel comfortable or able to ask HR for help in navigating such an unknown conversation, but we still want the manager to receive the resources they need.
Supporting Parents Benefits the Organization
There’s one more thing that I want to add to the last point about “putting trust in trust”. And that’s when we talk about trust, we don’t always need to have all the answers ourselves. We can find an outside expert that we trust to help. This is an opportunity for us as human resources professionals to demonstrate the value of leaving some topics to the experts. Role modeling is very effective when it’s visible and consistent.
If your organization wants to equip managers with the tools and resources to better support working parents, check out what Circle In has to offer in this archived webinar on “How Culture Amp enhanced support for working parents and caregivers”. Powered by AI and machine learning, Circle In delivers hyper-personalized workflows, experiences, and resources to make the demands of life easier for caregivers and managers both at home and at work.
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