A press release from staffing company OfficeTeam crows that
Raising a family while working can be a challenge for most parents, but it seems many businesses are lending a helping hand. According to a survey, more than three in five (62 percent) companies have made policy changes to better accommodate working parents.
Oh, really. How do they figure?
Executives were asked, “In the past five years, has your organization made changes in workplace policy to better accommodate working parents?” Their responses:
Yes 62%
No 33%
Don’t know 5%
What I have to say to this is: psssshhhhhht. Okay. So I’m a muckety muck at a Fortune 500 company (the survey was “based on telephone interviews with 150 randomly selected senior executives at the nation’s 1,000 largest companies”). Some researcher gal calls me. Here’s how the conversation goes.
ME: Muckety Muck here.
RESEARCHER: Hello, sir. I work for an independent research company and am conducting a survey. I have one question: In the past five years, has your organization made changes in workplace policy to better accommodate working parents?
ME: (Thinking) Hmmm. We do have an empty office that we’re now calling the “private room,” you know, for lactating moms or some such. We did decide to extend healthcare to families of employees—at a price, of course. We do equip workers with Blackberries in the even they want to leave at some godforsaken early hour like 5 p.m. to pick up their kid from childcare. And we no longer ask young women if and when they plan to have children in job interviews.
So: yes! Yes, we have made changes in workplace policy to better accommodate working parents!
****
…ain’t that how it played out? Next time, how ’bout asking these execs: what exactly have you done? How’d you implement that? At what cost, if any? With what benefit, if any? In sum: are you really better accommodating working parents, or do you just think you are?