EP 972 Are Companies Responding to the Needs and Skills Working Parents Bring to the Workplace?

 Most families require two incomes these days to survive.  Thus, by definition the working parent is populating every workplace.  And while accommodating the needs of working parents may be difficult for some small companies with not a person to spare at any time, what about the larger companies that have infrastructure to do so?  Are they waking up to the types of policies and approaches that allow the working parent to thrive in their corporate environments?  And why should they?  Our guest Mason Donovan, along with Mark Kaplan, have written a book titled ” The Parenthood Advantage:  Building Corporate Cultures that Value Working Parents.”  Their cogent argument is that working parents have skills that make them MORE valuable.  Things like adaptability, efficiency and empathy.  And yet most workplaces have yet to figure out how meaningfully to accommodate them.  And the legal culture in America has never significantly strengthened laws around parental leave, daycare and other practices which might support these dual roles, so they harmonize better on a day- to- day basis.  It’s an important subject that we explain in depth on this podcast.

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