Are you a parent with school-aged children at home? Or a leader with team members who have young children? Chances are you’re pretty stressed out right now — managing work and home life just got a whole lot harder, and with many schools switching to partial or fully remote learning, it’s a long road ahead.
With so many (awesome!) parents in the Small Giants Community — leaders, emerging leaders, and employees alike — we want to do our part to tackle this challenge as a community. We rolled out the welcome mat to our Zoom room to bring working parents and leaders together for a casual, open roundtable discussion to share strategies for managing work and family stress, supporting team members with children, and how to approach homeschooling as a working parent.
Here are the top takeaways and highlights from our roundtable discussion on how to juggle work, kids, and a pandemic.
Tools & Resources At A Glance:
For parents with kids at home for the long-term, you're going to need a strategy that goes beyond offering flexible work hours. During our roundtable, Small Giants leaders shared how they're supporting working parents right now and how to deliver individualized support across your team.
Survey Your Team Members
At imageOne, Connie Farlow and Emmy Georgeson offered a people-driven approach to supporting team members. Their management team is hard at work to develop creative scheduling, emotional support tools and more, but all of their efforts stem from what they're hearing from employees through surveys.
"We're surveying employees and asking tactical and emotional questions," says Georgeson. "We're creating a matrix of the results so we can objectively understand their challenges. From there, we'll build out an action plan to address the different needs."
Increased One-on-Ones
Likewise, Sabrina White shared how her organization, Text-Em-All, is taking a multi-pronged approach to supporting their small team of about 35 employees. First, they made sure every team member was set up for success working from home — from having the right length ethernet cable to excellent chairs, desks, and keyboards, every team member has what they need. Next, they meet with every team member to find out what their ideal work situation is and customize a plan for each person.
"They tell us what they want and we communicate the performance requirements for their role," says White. "We then work with them to come up with a plan and a schedule that allows them to meet their performance goals while also meeting the needs of their home and family lives."
From there, managers meet with team members on a weekly or monthly basis to discuss what's working and what needs adjusting, and to check in on employees' mental health and well-being. It's a time-consuming approach, but it's helping them maintain productivity while also caring for employees. And don't forget that just because people are at home, it doesn't mean that they're more relaxed.
"People are stressed, but they're not taking time off," says White. "We are actively encouraging time off. We have a flexible PTO schedule already, so we're reminding people to take a day or more off. Even if you just sit on your couch all day and watch Netflix with your kids, you need to take time for yourself."
Don't Neglect those without Children
Remember: we're all experiencing a pandemic, and it's impacting everybody differently. As you provide extra support to team members with children, don't neglect those who may be shouldering the extra burden from parents who need to take some projects off of their plates.
"In one-on-ones, we ask those without home challenges about the additional workload they may have picked up," says White. "You have to have transparency and vulnerability across the board: talk to all of your team members and communicate. These are the people keeping you afloat."
At Atomic Object, Brittany Hunter shared that they offer an Employee Assistance Program that allows employees to anonymously contact a counselor for personal problems. The organization foots the bill, and they never find out who uses the program — just how many people use it per month.
"We talk about it a lot so there's no barrier," says Hunter. "We've put a spotlight on mental health lately and send email communication spotlighting the different resources available to them and sharing mental health information."
Give Your Zoom Room a Break
While increased one-on-ones are a great way to keep the lines of communication open, be thoughtful about how and when you're putting meetings on a working parent's calendar.
"A word of caution," says Jason Kreger of Aladdin Electric Inc. "Make sure that your “check-ins” aren’t just one more meeting that they have to make work into their day."
Brittany Hunter echoes Jason's sentiment. A one-on-one won't serve its intended purpose if its just adding additional stress to an employee's day.
"Be thoughtful about whether video is necessary for certain meetings," says Hunter. "We’ve started doing our executive 1:1 calls on the phone instead, which allows us to go for a restorative walk or load the dishwasher or fold laundry while we sync up. Sometimes you need to be near the computer or have visual cues, but sometimes you don’t."
Returning to the Office? Bring the Kiddos Back, Too
For those working in essential businesses or who are returning to the office, shifting school schedules present a new challenge. If you're going back to the office but your kids are attending school remotely, how can you juggle both?
"We're back in the office, and 25 percent of our population have kids they need to homeschool or conduct remote learning for," says Melissa Chapman of Radio Distributing Co. "We’re asking each parent individually what is a good fit for them. We're also opening up some of our offices here and having parents set their kids up for homeschooling in our empty offices."
Realistically, things aren't changing anytime soon — we don't know when school schedules will return to normal, or when the age of physical distancing will be over. That means one-off strategies and ad-hoc adjustments to accommodate our new normal just won't cut it anymore.
Business advisor Jon Dwoskin shared some advice for how to implement family-friendly practices organization-wide to set your team up for longterm success:
There's one subject that made our Zoom room's chat blow up: snack time. As attendee Jean-Paul Lausell of Hickory Nut Gap Farm shared, his four-year-old and six-year-old are raiding the pantry constantly — and he even had to put a lock on their fridge. Attendees agreed: it feels like they're constantly making meals, dishes quickly pile up, and their kids are constantly asking: "Can I have a snack?"
With everyone in your family home 24/7, boundaries and routines are more important than ever. Here are a few tips for making snack time and other feeding routines better:
It's been a trying year for all of us, but one thing is clear: we're stronger when we stick together. We're so impressed by the ideas, empathy, and creativity demonstrated by parents and the employers who support them. There are more challenges ahead, and we're here to connect you to the relationships, ideas, and tools to keep succeeding.
We have virtual workshops, resources and learning opportunities designed to help you and your team members thrive. Consider us a resource for you, and please don't hesitate to reach out directly at hello@smallgiants.org.