Making All Paths to Parenthood More Inclusive For Your Employees
At experiential outdoor sports company Woodward, the VP of talent and culture, Dan Kwong, is just getting started with family support benefits. Starting with the basics: nailing down an employer value proposition to guide the choices he will make, and underscoring current benefits, like paid parental leave. Perhaps most importantly, Kwong is taking his time to figure out what the workforce needs with two questions. First, “What are the key demographics of the talent pools that we currently attract, and that we want to attract? It’s not just the talent you currently have, but also the talent you want to grow in future years,” he said. Second, “What are the needs of each talent pool? We assume we know what people want and need. Sometimes we’re wrong.”Kwong was a part of a panel of talent and benefits professionals for a From Day One webinar titled “Making All Paths to Parenthood More Inclusive For Your Employees.” The group discussed strategies for identifying workforce needs and how to design a package that is as inclusive as possible.Kwong is careful to not make assumptions about what family structures look like or even who qualifies as family. Woodward employs a relatively young workforce, many are aged 18–24, often living far away from their biological families. Their needs outside of work aren’t necessarily typical or predictable. “This one’s pretty personal to me,” Kwong said. “Most of my family is abroad in Hong Kong; I’m a single guy in Utah. My family structure may be non-traditional or different, and my family may not be genetically or blood-related.”Woodward isn’t the only employer taking note of the diversity of needs. “Everybody’s family looks different,” said Corrinne Hobbs, the general manager and vice president of employer market at family health platform Ovia Health. “[Employers] are recognizing those differences by making sure there are solutions that support people where they are. For women’s health and family-building, it’s having a solution that’s inclusive of preconception maternity, parenting, menopause, and then general health in between. Wherever and whatever journey people end up on–and it could be two or more journeys at once.”Hobbs sees the appetite from companies for kinds of new family-building benefits, ones that encompass more employee experiences and needs. Inclusion of all workforce demographics is top of mind for employers, and for some, it’s become a differentiator.The panel included Dan Kwong of Woodward, Corrinne Hobbs of Ovia Health, journalist and moderator Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza, and Shawna Oliver of Manulife (photo by From Day One)A particular point of interest for employers, says Hobbs, is finding healthcare support for workers who live outside of major metropolitan areas, often in “care deserts,” where healthcare isn’t easily accessible. And much of the care that’s needed is for members of the LGBTQIA+ community and women, especially black women, and their family-building needs.Identifying the Diverse Needs in Your WorkforceTo design inclusively, HR teams have to know who’s working there, how they identify, and what they need. But that’s not necessarily easy. “People don’t always feel comfortable speaking up,” Hobbs said. “There’s also the element of loneliness, and that feeling limits a person’s ability to speak up.” To remedy this, tap the knowledge of your employee resource groups, says Hobbs.Kristy Lucksinger, head of global benefits and commercial real estate firm JLL, does this. She proactively asks the firm’s ERGs about their needs, and the resource groups approach her too.“We also do employee surveys to find out directly from our employees what they’re looking for and what they’re interested in,” Lucksinger said. “We’re in the process of considering, evaluating, and moving forward with a conjoint survey across the world to find out exactly where our employees’ wants and desires are.”Still, employers should allow for some margin of error when surveying workers, says Shawna Oliver, the head of global benefits and wellness at investment management firm Manulife. “As much as we put a big effort into gathering identity and demographic data about our employees, the truth is, we don’t always get 100%. Some people aren’t comfortable [sharing] vulnerable and personal information. We have to assume that there are pockets of people within every population that need every sort of benefit that’s out there.”Promoting Family-Building BenefitsBenefits teams can put together the most rock-solid communication plan and the slickest guides, but it doesn’t mean people will read them, or use those benefits.A few times a year, outside of annual enrollment at Manulife, Oliver and her team host informational sessions about benefits, beyond the basics of copays and deductibles. They could be about anything: family-forming benefits, mental health, retirement, or financial resources. Then they open up the floor for an Ask Me Anything. “It’s unfiltered,” she said. “We ask people to not share personal information, but we have a very candid conversation in those moments. It’s humbling, the amount of questions we get, from things as basic as ‘how do I find a provider?’ to ‘I used these benefits, and it didn’t work for me.’”Opening the door for employee feedback helps ensure every dollar invested in family-building benefits counts. “The total rewards pie is only so big,” said Lucksinger. “We really want to hear from our employees about where they feel the most value. So we reach out to our employees and say, ‘We understand there’s an interest here. What’s more important to you: This or that?’ It’s about offering a vast array of benefits, but investing the money where our employees see the value.”Editor's note: From Day One thanks our partner, Ovia Health, for sponsoring this webinar. Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is a freelance journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about work, the job market, and women’s experiences in the workplace. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Quartz, Fast Company, and Digiday’s Worklife.