Back to School: How to Support Working Parents in the Time of COVID-19
Back to School: How to Support Working Parents in the Time of COVID-19
As the summer comes to a close and the school year begins, many working parents are dealing with the difficult balance of keeping up at work while their children learn from home. This burden falls disproportionately on full-time working mothers who, on average, have spent 22 hours a week on childcare in addition to their jobs since the COVID-19 pandemic began (Fast Company). In fact, a staggering one-third of working parents have left the workforce since March -- 70% of whom are women (Forbes).
As leaders and colleagues, let’s be proactive in offering support, maintaining open communication and finding creative and practical solutions for working parents to help ease the burden that the school year will bring. If you’re looking for tangible ways to support, here are five ways to get started:
1. Adjust Meeting Times
As school begins, parents will become overwhelmed with caretaking duties at certain times of the day. Consider surveying those employees to find out what hours are most inconvenient for them and discourage meetings during those times.
2. Offer Flexible Schedules
Empower working parents by allowing them to make their own schedules. Give employees permission to work non-routine hours to plan around their kids’ school schedules. Be generous in response to employees’ childcare accommodation requests.
3. Subsidize Internet Access
With kids attending school sessions online while parents are in Zoom meetings, internet connectivity is bound to be an issue. Get ahead of the game by subsidizing the internet plans for working parents to allow them to afford more bandwidth so that their work isn’t impacted by poor connectivity.
4. Normalize Common Challenges
Many working parents are concerned about how their work-family balance might impact their work performance. Mitigate your employees’ anxiety by normalizing the stresses that are unique to working parents during this time. Consider taking 15 minutes as a group to create an “It’s okay…” list, giving explicit permission to employees to shift their mindset on things that may have not been universally agreed upon. (Here’s a great example).
5. Commit to DEI
While the above commitments will help to ease the burden felt by working parents in the short-term, companies should also invest in long-term structural change. By investing in diversity, equity and inclusion and committing to hiring and retaining working mothers especially, companies can begin to create an environment that is inclusive to parents with unique circumstances. Implementing a successful DEI strategy takes time and resources, but it’s never too late to get started.