Your Company Needs a Better Retention Plan for Working Parents

Senior leaders need to make the “Working Parent Problem” a priority. Why? For one, the number of parents in the workforce is growing. These men and women are also carrying much heavier loads than previous generations — today’s average working parent is three times as likely to be part of a dual-career couple, or to be single, than to have a spouse full-time at home — meaning, for the majority of your committed, working-parent employees, there’s no slack in their system. And if your company isn’t doing anything to retain them, chances are they’ll start looking elsewhere. How you treat working parents is also an indicator of how you treat talent in general — or at least, in the eyes of prospective or more junior employees it is. Without a good approach to working parenthood that you’re willing to showcase publicly, and without some visible examples of working parents succeeding and thriving in your organization, it’s going to be hard to develop the reputation of being “a great place to work.”