During a recent presentation I gave on supporting caregivers at work, a man in the audience shared how he was proactively working to support working mothers in his orbit at work and asked what he could do to support them even better. I asked him where he was when I was young, balancing work with three kids with very few colleagues like him!
It was such a touching question, especially in light of some of the research I shared at the presentation, via Sarah Wells’ recent book, Go Ask Your Mothers. For example, Wells shares that the majority of mothers going on maternity leave feel profoundly unsupported by their managers. That lack of support hits hard, especially at what is often a first, though certainly not a last, pivotal shift in these women’s identities as family members and employees. In Wells’ survey work with employed mothers, she found that:
• "68% said their employers do not communicate with employees enough about support, and half of these moms are considering leaving their jobs right now as a result.
• “More than 50%...had never had any communication with their employer about working-mom support.”
• An additional 30% had just one conversation “most often about parental benefits, usually with human resources, often not even with their direct manager.”
Working mothers with new babies are the ones we often think of as needing—for some short period of time—a little extra support. The reality is, of course, motherhood doesn’t end at the end of maternity leave. Support for working mothers means so much more than a cursory note of congratulations and direction to HR about benefit.
And it’s absolutely not just mothers who need some attention to and accommodation for work-life needs. They’re just the ones most likely to represent a culturally acceptable way to remind us that some workers have bodies and acute family needs. It shouldn’t be hard to understand that we ALL have bodies and at some point in time, most of us will have acute family needs and/or acute health needs. Many of us will need support through chronic illnesses to care for ourselves. Other rites of passage in our lives can require extra caregiving and work-life accommodation, like gender transitioning for example.
As we continue to acknowledge the mental health challenges so many of us face in the wake of the pandemic, the continuation of political polarization, the realities of systemic racism, transphobia, and other threats to the well being of so many, it’s so valuable to lift up caring for one another and to support the care of those we love.
It’s one of the best things we can do to transform our workplace cultures, whether we’re a manager, a colleague, or an executive leader. And while we’re working on it, thank the women—and any allies and fellow deeply invested caregivers you see—for the often invisible work that holds together our society as well as our workplaces.
Here are just a few things you can do to support your co-workers and your team, regardless of whether you’re a manager:
· Take an interest in your co-workers as whole human beings with lives. Listen, connect, and show compassion.
· Elevate the professionalism of parents and others who are taking a formal leave or working part-time for health reasons. Let them know you see and value their workplace contributions, since many struggle with a feeling that their jobs might not be as secure and/or their contributions less visible while they are on leave or in part-time roles.
· Create space for conversations about caregiving. Find out who is involved in intensive caregiving work at this moment, or in this chapter of their lives, whether that’s family or community care, or care for a team in which a number of people just got laid off. What kind of additional support do they need?
· Consider what community care is or could look like for your unit, team, or your whole organization. How can a collaborative vision of that be built so that many people are sharing both the burdens and the opportunities of offering care to others?
· Learn about your workplace policies so you can be a resource to others. Examples:
· parental leave policies
child care options and elder care resources
· FMLA leave options for any approved need, including personal health,
· EAP opportunities
· pumping options for new mothers
· options for sick leave
· opportunities for engaging in community care,
· holidays, and religious observances that don’t always align with the standard federal holidays.
Want to learn more? I’m booking for trainings in 2025 for organizations who want to support and empower caregivers of all kinds, at work and at home.
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