In the post-COVID world, the issue of male parenting has become a more prominent topic than before. Mostly, we only we recognize that women who work need support in parenting and advocate for policies that enable them. Men are often overlooked when it comes to parenting and end up receiving no benefits or even acknowledgment for the effort they put in. So this Father’s Day we thought we should write a blog exploring how companies can use employee engagement to support fathers in their job, parenting and life endeavors.
35 Ways to Drive Employee Engagement Towards Supporting Working Fathers Better
Five Ways Employee Engagement Can Help Working Men With Parenting and Better Business performance
Communication is Support
Key Takeaways:
- Talking more often about parenting challenges helps men open up more freely
- Companies must focus on enabling them to juggle work and parenting by talking about it openly.
- Virtual coffee chats can help working father be more open and communicative about their parenting challenges.
Working men have been increasingly taking up parenting tasks of late. Certain studies have shown that men now spend as much time raising children as women. Although the numbers are skewed slightly towards the women’s side depending on the region, the trend is certainly noticeable. And much like women, the first and foremost way to support working men with parenting is to enable them to communicate with another colleague. This Forbes article explains why,
According to the data, working fathers are also more likely to wish their employer would do more to support their childcare needs (52% vs. 45%) compared to working mothers.
For companies, this translates to setting up an employee engagement standard like parenting leave policy standards. They should also get a virtual coffee chat app that brings both hybrid and remote working parents in communication with their colleagues. The benefits here are obvious with more communication men are likely to open up more actively and also seek advice on parenting from colleagues if needed. This can directly impact the quality of their life for the better and often create a deeper bond with their fellow professionals.
TLDR? We know blog posts can get tedious to read. So, we made a quick 60 sec or less vid for you to get all the best insights. But do finish the blog too. We love having you stay over!
Creating Cultural Acceptance
Key Takeaways:
- Working culture across the world is yet to fully acknowledge parenting necessities that working father face.
- Cultural acceptance will enable men to ask for help more freely instead of doing things by their selves.
- Companies can use employee engagement programs to create more awareness of this issue.
One of the biggest issues that men face when voicing their Parenting challenges is that this problem has primarily been the province of women forever. Trying to communicate their own problems or their own challenges is harder for them. So, to overcome this problem of lack of cultural awareness, companies should consider creating a culture of acceptance of working fathers. They can also pursue employee engagement activities on days like Father’s Day or Bring Your Child to Work Day. This engagement process will enable men to showcase their relation with their children an also talk about it more openly. This, combined with other support systems like virtual coffee chats or membership programs with peers who share or understand the burden of raising a child can have an immensely positive impact on men’s lives and ability to perform in business.
As this HBR post explains,
More than 50 million Americans are juggling jobs and child-rearing—and finding that hard to do. In fact, according to a 2015 study by Pew Research Center, 65% of working parents with college degrees—who have better career and earning prospects than less-educated parents—reported that it was “somewhat difficult” or “very difficult” to meet the simultaneous demands of work and family. And the issue isn’t limited to the United States; statistics are equally striking in other countries.
Offer Dedicated Mentoring Support
Key Takeaways:
- Hybrid and remote working men may often get overlooked for promotion and this affects their parenting processes.
- Steadily growing careers give working fathers motivation to parent well.
- Peer learning programs among working fathers is a great support strategy.
While parenting can be a task to say the least, building up the momentum for doing it well for men often hinges on their work successes. More specifically, if they are growing their careers they’re much more likely to enjoy parenting and do it well. It has now become a well-known fact that hybrid and remote-working males can often get overlooked for promotion. This obviously creates a negative charge in their lives which can then translate into their relations including those with their children.
Mentorship as a means of supporting working fathers with parenting by enabling career growth
So, enabling working men and supporting them to parent better hinges on giving them the opportunity to grow their careers. For this, one of the most effective ways is to nurture their career prospects with dedicated mentorship programs. Further, these programs can function as an extension of the employee engagement campaign the company is working up. In this case, the membership programs will go in tandem with virtual coffee chats water cooler moments other search employee engagement activities.
Companies know that one of the best ways to enable people to grow is through peer learning and cross-team collaboration. Giving working men the chance to network with colleagues through virtual coffee chats and peer-based mentoring programs is a good way to support their career ambitions and thereby, their zeal for parenting.
Offering Parenting Counselling
Key Takeaways:
- Parenting needs may increase as children enter adolescence
- Parenting leaves and support becomes crucial to handle these issue properly.
- Parenting counseling can help working fathers do their parenting jobs better
Well, the early years of a child are their most important, things don’t get necessarily easier when they enter adolescence. In many cases, a working parent is needed even more during teenage years but not every working parent will know how to regulate their work commitments and their parenting requirements evenly and effectively.
For this issue, companies can offer parental counseling and parenting support through active groups as well as certified professionals if needed. Considering how turbulent teenagers can be, offering this kind of advantage will certainly add a degree of performance value to any team that parenting fathers odd part off.
Creating a healthy work-life balance
Key Takeaways:
- Parenting benefits from health work-life balance
- Creating parenting friendly policies for men on par with women is the nee of the hour.
- Virtual coffee chats and 5-minute icebreakers are a good strategy for creating parenting support for working fathers.
One of the biggest problems that men face when parenting is the sheer lack of time. Juggling work responsibilities and handling parenting concerns is not easily accomplished day after day so understanding how any company can enable its parenting fathers to find a better balance in their personal and professional lives is a significant advantage.
It could be as simple as using pool service to find out how many working fathers are in an organization understanding their particular parenting-related problems and seeing how that translates into actionable In the workplace. Check out this Deloitte post for insights on what an ideal parenting support program may look like.
Further, using techniques like 5-minute Ice Breakers and group discussions through water cooler chats can enable them to communicate more openly and clearly and then take this ability to communicate with their children. Once the company has enough data they can understand how they can manage their team functions and operations such that working fathers get enough time to spend with their children.
Finding a good balance both for the individual working parent as well as for the team. This can enable the business to perform significantly better while also retaining a high degree of work satisfaction and job-related happiness.
How will your company support working fathers this year?
Parenting is hard, especially with work commitments to take care of. But it is definitely something that can be made easier with the right kind of support system as well as favorable work policies. Since fathers are more and more involved with their parents since fathers are more and more involved with their children now.
Their presence is a crucial element of the growing up phase of a child’s life, it is important to consider how companies can contribute towards the quality of life of working parents and therefore the quality of life of their children.
One of the best ways to do so is by creating employee engagement programs that create a supportive culture and provide insights into what kind of challenges working fathers are facing. Further using apps like the lead dot bot can create the ideal work scenario through virtual coffee charts water cooler discussions and other such employee engagement techniques to enable companies to discover how they can add value to their lives.
The same applies to working parents and working fathers and a culture of open communication and flexible working is guaranteed to improve not just employee health and happiness but also overall business performance.
LEAD.bot is a team engagement platform available on Slack and Teams. It is an all-in-one team development software with features like virtual coffee chats, buddy programs, birthday celebrations & work anniversary celebrations, new hire onboarding programs, and Pulse Surveys.
LEAD.bot also offers cutting-edge Organizational Network Analysis (ONA) for big enterprises and institutions. Executive to mid-level managers use ONA to gain highly actionable insights and build strong workplace connections. Using this app enables developing innovative employee engagement ideas to connect employees and foster better organizational health, employee retention, and overall performance with this simple app!
LEAD.bot is a product of LEAD.app and we also LEAD.bot’s sister app Sunrize which showcases workplace attendance by graphs right on Slack! Book a demo now!
