The pandemic has forced us to confront many faults in our system. It has uncovered how important it is to create flexible policies that allow parents to work in a stress-free environment while taking care of their children.
Supporting working parents isn’t just a humanitarian act on the company’s end. It ensures your employees aren’t handing over the resignation letter any time soon because they don’t have enough time for their kids. When you find a reliable employee through BCjobs, you don’t lose them because of simple mistakes with the company policy.
Let’s look at how you can protect both your company and your employee’s best interests.
How Your Company Can Support Working Parents
Both men and women are responsible for child-rearing and domestic tasks. However, the world has moved beyond working dads and stay-at-home moms.
Yet, the workplace policies seem not to have evolved. Not to mention the neglect towards the same-sex couples, who have four times the chance of adopting compared to opposite-sex couples.
When making your company policies, you have to adopt a neutral approach that accounts for everyone.
Parental Leave
Legally, a company must allow 15 weeks of maternity leave to both biological and surrogate mothers. Canada is ahead of other countries as it provides 35 weeks of parental benefits after a biological birth or adoption. The parents have the right to decide how they will share the benefit.
We can support our employees further by turning this leave into a parental leave instead of a maternity leave. Paid maternity leave is also only available to biological mothers and it would be a good idea to extend it to all parents. The law also stipulates that weekly earnings have to be under 40 percent of what they used to earn due to the presence of a newborn. However, it would be good to pay in full regardless.
Flexible Schedule
At the end of the day, you need the job done. So should it really matter how many hours an employee has logged in if they’re efficient? Indeed, work from home has proved how ineffective the old system is.
How you make your office flexible for parents is up to you. You could give parents the chance to decide the days they will work at the office versus at home. You could allow them to have paid leaves when the situation calls for it, apart from the parental leave.
Some companies have begun to introduce unlimited paid leaves. It’s a way to showcase trust in the employee’s discretion to use these only when needed- be it for looking after their child or when they’re sick.
Childcare Benefits
Children are a big part of the parent’s life or their everything, for that matter. So when you make policies to support them, you need to think of long-term ways in which their children are cared for.
This can come in many forms. For example, some companies keep a list of childcare providers on call for days when employees can’t miss out on office work. Other companies allow children to join their parents in the workplace, setting aside a room where they can play and study until their parents are done for the day.
Final Thoughts
In the end, the best way a company can support working parents is by asking them. Open a clear line of communication with your employees regarding what childcare support they need to feel comfortable in the workplace. We can assure you that no one will take advantage. If the company meets its employee’s emotional and financial needs, there is no reason to do so.
About the Author
BCjobs.ca is Western Canada’s largest job board, and host of “Innovators” a weekly podcast interviewing top recruiters in BC and across Canada. Check out our recent interview with Fernanda Ave, Head of Tech Programs at CICCC (Podcast link), and Sachi Kittur, VP of People Strategy at StickerYou (Podcast link).
