Here’s how the Better:Work Project supports parents and their employers:
WORK-FROM-HERE SPONSORSHIPS
Employers can fully or partially sponsor Community Memberships for employees who are returning to work.
Parents design a flexible remote or hybrid schedule where they work onsite between 4 to 40 hours per week while their child(ren) are watched by our caregiving team (parents must remain onsite while children are in childcare).
ReTURN-TO-WORK COACHING + SUPPORT
To support their mental and emotional health, parents have the option to engage in 1:1 coaching with our Co-Founder, Leslie M. Bosserman, M.Ed., CPCC (mom of three, early childhood educator, and certified Co-Active Coach).
We offer additional support structures for parents from private lactation and nap rooms to bottomless local coffee!
Source: The Fifth Trimester
EMPLOYER BENEFITS
Our Better:Work Project is an option for Sacramento-based employers who want to offer the benefits of onsite childcare and a transitional work arrangement to compete with leading companies like Intel, without the cost, headache and real estate considerations. Here are some of the leading benefits Better:Work offers to employers:
Engagement and Retention: Keeping employees active and engaged in their work, especially as they transition back from parental leave, fosters a sense of trust and belonging and reduces employee turnover.
According to Forbes and the Harvard Business Review, offering remote work options reduces employee turnover. A recent study by Stanford University showed how employers who offer remote work to employees are 50% less likely to experience turnover. Plus, those employees have an improved performance of 13% compared to their in-person counterparts.
Employees who may have quit if forced to return to the office at twelve weeks or less is more likely to change their mind if given an extra month or two on leave or offered to work in a more flexible arrangement according to The Fifth Trimester (pg. 69)
Cost: Retaining a new parent is critical. It costs, at a minimum, 60% of an annual salary to replace one employee (studies found that it can be up to 200% in total cost), not to mention the impact on morale and performance of the greater team. Source: 2016 report, The Society for Human Resource Management, SHRM
Productivity: High performers have also been found to be as or more productive working remotely and with flexible schedules and mothers with support programs to help them breast-feed are shown to miss fewer days of work. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics found that productivity decreased by a staggering 7.5% in Q1 of 2022 as workers returned to in-person work environments after the Pandemic. This represents the steepest drop in productivity since1947.
Recruitment and Employer Brand Marketing: Our “work-from-here” program can be presented to your existing team or to new recruits as a progressive policy that supports the growing demand for flexible work by the massive cohort of Millennial employees, currently transitioning to parenthood. Source: 2019 LinkedIn Global Talent Trends Report
“Mothers who breastfeed their babies miss fewer work days than colleagues who don’t, and employers with lactation support programs have retention rates above the national average.” U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
EMPLOYEE BENEFITS
If you enjoy your work and want to go back, but are concerned that you’re just not ready to return to the office full-time, we have a Better:Work solution for you! Once you become a parent (for the first time…or the fourth!), you have an entirely new identity that includes juggling multiple roles. This is a transition that needs to be supported in the following ways:
Healing: A supportive environment or flexible role allows for you transition back to your core role in a healthy and productive way, before you show up physically in the office again.
Twelve weeks is not enough time for most birth moms to heal physically and emotionally to show up at the office full-time, even after the benefits of taking maternity leave. Research from NIH has shown that there are three stages of postpartum recovery, with physical and emotional healing six months or longer in some cases.
Most babies aren’t sleeping for seven hours straight (enough time for a lead parent to do anything personal and get needed sleep) until seven months or later. Source: The Fifth Trimester, pp xxxi
Productivity: For parents we interviewed in our research, the best and most productive work is done when one has the ability to shift back into a professional space and identity. This is often impossible in the early months of caring for an infant while working in a home-based environment due to many prevalent distractions (laundry! dirty dishes! pets!) combined with the loneliness and isolation that many new parents experience.
The Makers Place™ offers a professional coworking space with the option for onsite childcare with trained educators and caregivers who are prepared to help with this critical transition. Combined with a built-in community of other parents who are at similar life stages, new parents forge relationships and support each other.
New Reality of Remote Work: Living in a post-Pandemic remote/hybrid work environment has paved a path for employees to negotiate flexible workplace options, like our “work-from-here” model at The Makers Place™. A majority of employers now view remote work as viable and positive for employee engagement and retention (see benefits for Employers shared above for related data and details).
Support + Self-Care: We offer 1:1 coaching as well as personal and parenting workshops along with opportunities for self-care that is essential to being productive at work!
Community: One of our members favorite things about coworking onsite at The Makers Place™ is the incredible community of other parents who are navigating many of the same challenges and issues they are facing. Our village of support provides solidarity and encouragement that we never are parenting alone!
