EP 922- Parental Support Benefits Part One

Episode Notes

Transcript

Announcer:

Welcome to Heels in the Courtroom where the trial lawyers of the Simon Law Firm break down what it takes to win in the courtroom and in life.

Elizabeth Lenivy:

Hello and welcome back to another episode of Heals in the Courtroom. I’m Liz Lenivy, and today I’m joined by Katie St. John and a very special guest of ours, Sarah Moore. Welcome to the podcast, Sarah.

Sarah Moore:

Oh, I’m so excited to be here. Thank you so much.

Elizabeth Lenivy:

We are so excited to have you here. So Sarah is the VP of Consulting Relations at Progeny. Am I saying that right?

Sarah Moore:

You are.

Elizabeth Lenivy:

Okay. Good job. All right. Set it right. And for those of you who may not be familiar, and obviously we’ll let Sarah talk more about it, but Progeny, the work that Sarah does is consulting with companies on supporting employees, particularly in the family space. And I think there seems to be a focus on women in particular. Am I getting that right?

Sarah Moore:

I would say yes. I mean, we know this district rate impacts women probably at a broader level, deeper level, but men are what I call it a me event versus … Or it’s no longer a me event, it’s a we event. So this program really does support families as they go through pregnancy adoption, fertility, surrogacy, and parenting. Very excited about covering all the topics that growing families, new families, and parents struggle with.

Elizabeth Lenivy:

Fantastic. And before we get into all of that, just by way of background, I have known Sarah for, oh my God, over 10 years now because we went to law school together. We were both 2015 Slow alum. So can you tell us where … Okay, 2015, where did your career take you and how did you end up where you are now?

Sarah Moore:

Yeah, so 2015, graduated from SLU Law and started my career at Armstrong Teesdale in the corporate group as a young baby lawyer, just trying to absorb and work on as many different things as I could. Worked a fabulous group there, worked on all sorts of things, tax, labor and employment a little bit in the employee benefits space, but mostly commercial transactions, M&A, community banking. And I think for me, appreciated all the people that I worked with and the things that I learned. But sometimes it’s this, when we go through a life event, at times it can be life-changing. And I think having my son at Armstrong really was a light bulb moment for me as far as this is hard. And are we talking about it? Are we talking about how hard it is to go through that growing family stage, whether you require fertility treatment or don’t require fertility treatment, postpartum depression, childcare, breastfeeding challenges, working with your manager on your workload, how many weeks, what pay percentage, coming back to work, trying to be your full self, but so much has changed after you have a baby.

And sometimes I think there’s a disconnect there. There was definitely a disconnect for me. Your kids get sick on the regular in that first few, right?

Katie St. John:

Yeah. Yeah.

Sarah Moore:

It’s this constant revolving door of germs as you drop them off at daycare for the first time. And so you’re missing work, you’re feeling stressed about that, you’re wanting to hit your billable hours, your heart outside of your body is your child and you’re dropping them off at a daycare center. That’s hard to make that transition back into the workplace. And so I thought it would’ve been helpful to have had more support. Armstrong had really good benefits from a leave perspective, an EAP, and we’ll get into ways employers can support growing families as they build their family, as they come back to work, as they maintain their family. But Armstrong had really good resources. I didn’t necessarily know where to find them from that employee benefit package perspective, and then just have maybe the courage to live that part of myself out loud.

Katie St. John:

I mean, just initially what you said was, are we talking about it? And I feel like, so I graduated in 2020 and I had my first in 2022, and it’s kind of one of those things where it’s like I knew I always wanted to be a mom, but then now I’m here and it’s like, who do I go to? What is an appropriate question to ask? What can I not? I mean, it’s just one of those things, especially as a lawyer, and you want to stay in the game, there’s always some type of, you want to be consistent with hitting your goals personally, but also you’re staying up to speed with what your peers are doing in the workforce. And so it is definitely hard to balance. And are we talking about it? Right.

Sarah Moore:

It’s a full-time job. I mean, literally when you’re leaving your job in the practice of law and going home, you are going back home to a full-time job. Now that full-time job smiles and giggles and you cuddle and you read books and you do all sorts of warm, fuzzy things, but you do other things that are not as warm and fuzzy. There are tempered tantrums. I don’t want to think about dinner tonight. I don’t care what we eat, peanut butter and jelly, cereal. Who cares? It’s the last thing I want to think about when I’m going home. So I think how do you maintain your career at the same level that you were performing before now with all of these additional outside responsibilities? And to your point, you want to keep up with your peers, you want to continue to show up at work, but we’ve got to recognize that it’s a little bit harder now.

And women disproportionately take on the burden. I mean, there’s so much data out there that shows women disproportionately take on caregiving responsibilities and burden and the mental load and all of those things. This is not a one-person life event. So how do we help ease that burden on parents in general to make that work life integration? I don’t even know what it’s called anymore. Work-life integration, a little bit more seamless.

Katie St. John:

Yeah. So you said that you were at Armstrong, then you had your first son. So then where did you go? I’m

Sarah Moore:

Still so

Katie St. John:

Curious. Okay.

Sarah Moore:

I went in- house. I followed a really good team in- house at Spire, used to be Clead, so the natural gas company, great lawyers that worked there, a friend that used to work at Armstrong that was now in house at Spire. And I think I was excited about the opportunity and working with a really great legal team there, but I’m sure there was also a piece of me that was looking to evade the billable model. So I mean, a whole host of ideas on ways that we can continue to maintain female lawyers. I think there’s a lot of advocacy that lives within me. If you were to follow me around, I got a lot of fire in my belly. There’s so much we can do to help sustain the careers of, again, individuals, this is not gender specific, throughout their career, workplace supports, policies, some of these pieces that are low cost to an employer, but can provide a great deal of support and help retain that employee.

I mean, when you think about it, it is really expensive to recruit, and we can talk about lawyers specifically. It’s really expensive to go through the onboarding process, recruiting process, bring somebody in, train them up. They’re working with clients, building a book of business. Those are all things that we do not want to go out of the door. And when they do, when a lawyer leaves a law firm or leaves an in- house position, that is a loss of productivity, there’s real meaningful dollars. And to me, that was the impetus. There were sort of two impetuses to joining BenefitBump and doing a little bit more advocacy and solutioning work. It’s not necessarily that people want to drop out of the workforce, they just need help, a little bit of flexibility. Again, workplace supports and policies to get them through that trying time. It’s so extremely beneficial to their employer from a dollars perspective, not just from this is the right thing to do or a nice thing to do.

There’s real money and ROI in helping to maintain your workforce, which I know we’ve heard since the pandemic and all of these things we’ve heard a lot about. And then the second impetus is some amount of equity. I think going from a law firm that provides a good amount of leave paid at a hundred percent to the corporate world where there are companies, leave is expensive. It’s really expensive for employers to afford. So there are a plethora of different leave policies out there, and unfortunately, some employers are paying short-term disability paid at 60%. So when you go out on leave to have a child, at some places, you are taking a pay cut to have a baby. And I think for me, as a more affluent employee, that pay cut, you can bear. You’re able to save more, a little more discretionary income. But when I started doing the math on a $60,000 employee who’s making $5,000 a month when they’re being paid 60% on short-term disability for six or eight weeks, that $5,000 goes down to three, and that person was probably already living paycheck to paycheck.

That’s a hit they cannot afford to take. Once you get into this industry and the work, you peel back all sorts of layers, birth equity, all sorts of things where lower income individuals have a harder time.

Elizabeth Lenivy:

As someone who has not gone through the maternity leave process, I have no kids, but I have a lot of friends who have, and I have heard from them the struggles that they have faced. But it’s so interesting. Again, Sarah, you and I being law school classmates and the development and trajectory of your career going from firm life, the billables, and I’m sure all of the struggles that come with that experience, and then going in- house at a very sizable corporation here in St. Louis. And then now you are in this consulting space where it seems like you are able to take the passion that you have to directly impact companies and their employees. How did you get into that?

Sarah Moore:

Oh, probably a soul searching mission of I knew this was the space I wanted to be in. I’ve always wanted to make the world a better place, quite honestly. It’s why I went to law school, advocacy, wanting to do right by people that were less fortunate than myself. I really take that seriously. And our role as lawyers and advocates, that seems like a really good path to take, to be armed with the knowledge of the law in order to effectuate meaningful change. I knew I wanted to be in this space. I wanted to advocate. I saw, again, some of the disparities and I thought we need more awareness. We need more awareness about childcare challenges. It’s extremely expensive. It’s very hard to find quality care. We need awareness about postpartum depression. It’s more kind of closed door one-to-one conversations, but at a macro level, we see one in five women that are struggling with postpartum depression, and so how are we addressing that?

And again, not to go back to this employer perspective, but all of this has meaningful dollars for employers. When they can address an employee’s ability to go back to work, stay at work, feel good where they work, all of that has positive dollars flowing. So I didn’t know quite honestly where it was going to lead, but was in this soul searching, networking, just trying to understand who in St. Louis is doing this work, state level, federal level, what exists. Nonprofit organizations, private companies was introduced to Benefitbump through a lawyer that I had worked with at Armstrong, and I’m super grateful for that introduction. And she said,” I know your passion. I know your interests. And I think this person that I’ve worked with in the employee benefits space is doing some of the things that you want to be doing and that you’re interested in.

I really think you should talk to him. He’s one of the smartest people I know, and that’s where it went. The pieces fell into place. And by that, I don’t mean it was easy. I went from being a lawyer 100% of the time to being general counsel, head of sales and head of marketing for a startup. So that was, quite honestly, a little bit of … In an industry I knew nothing about. I didn’t know anything about the employee benefits space. And when you say consulting, it does feel like we are consultative, but technically BenefitBump is an employee benefit, just for those that understand the space. It’s an employee benefit that employers can’t purchase where a vendor, so to speak, to handhold employees through all of their benefits, their leave policies, their workplace supports, ERGs, help them find childcare, postpartum depression screenings, birth planning, adoption services, helping them find agencies and funding mechanisms through loan and grant programs.

So employers do hire us as a benefit for their employees, but it was a leap of naivete, faith, passion. It was probably not that smart, but the first six months were a grind and I was extremely difficult. I didn’t know how to sell. I didn’t know anything about marketing. I didn’t know anything about our buyers, their lingo, how this worked. I knew nothing. Luckily, the individual that I joined, the founder of Benefit, has been in this space for a long time, knows the audience, knows what was needed, identified this gap. And I think we just both agreed on the gap. So he had seen it from that employer lens and perspective that employees just really don’t understand all of their benefits, resources, workplace supports, leave policies. They need help. They need one-to-one handholding support, and it’s hard for employers to provide that. There’s a level of confidentiality to tell your employer, “I’m struggling with conceiving.” That’s a really tough conversation to have with HR.

Saying, “I’m struggling with breastfeeding here, I need more time,” or, “I need better support,” or, “My manager is putting all this pressure on me. ” That’s really hard. Those are hard conversations. I’m struggling with postpartum depression. It’s pretty severe. I don’t think I can go back to work. A lot of that is just extremely difficult to have back with your employer. And so whole host of reasons he started BenefitBump and I needed it. It was a program I needed after the getting up to speed, which took about six months and wasn’t pretty, it clicked.

Katie St. John:

So then you actually work, once a company signs on with benefit bump, then you work directly with their employees?

Sarah Moore:

Yes, absolutely. Their employees and their families, independent children. So it can be the employee, spouse or partner or the dependents. I know we’ve talked about mom, but it’s any path, any stage, any face. So lots of adoption, seeing same-sex couples, single moms by choice. It’s a broad landscape of families. There’s not a one-size-fits-all approach to our services. And we’re helping those employees in a really confidential expert way. We’ve got, it’s going to feel a little salesy, but just to explain the program, we’ve got doulas and lactation specialists and social workers and adoption specialists and all sorts of experts on the team. And the value is we also know the company’s policies. We know their medical plan. We know if they have a hospital indemnity, which pays you when you go into the hospital, which is super helpful on your maternity journey. We know leave. So we know whether it’s, gosh, short-term disability paid at 60%, 80%, 100%.

There’s a whole host of other parental bonding leave and other policies, sick time, vacation time. Can you stack it? Do you have to take it all at once, consecutive? We know about their mental health resources. This is such a trying time. And we’ve, again, focused on postpartum depression, but our lead clinician would … I’d be remiss if I didn’t say men struggle too, really with their own form of stress and anxiety through this process. So finances, I mean, more than 50% of households, working households are living paycheck to paycheck. So there’s a huge need across the spectrum of emotional, logistical, clinical, employer-specific, household to make this experience smoother. It’s definitely an attraction and retention tool, but it’s also productivity, NICU claims, high cost maternity claims are a big driver of spend for an employer. So they are looking to minimize complicated births and complications surrounding mom and baby.

And so we have seen, I would say, correlation between our program with not … We haven’t had a Milliman study just yet on the benefit bump side. Progeny has had Milman studies for their fertility services and driving down those costs, but employers have looked at benefit bump, participants versus non, and seeing lower all sorts of data that they’re looking at. And yeah, we’ve got happy clients that are seeing that cost go down. I think my whole point on that is there’s a lot of reasons to make an investment in this space.

Elizabeth Lenivy:

What is the value to the employer when trying to come up with these policies?

Sarah Moore:

So the value to the employer is multifaceted. As we talked about, there are one in five health plan dollars from a self-funded employer is spent on maternity. And so decreasing, again, those high cost claims, not only does a premature birth have such a monumental impact on a family, it also impacts their employer’s bottom line, anywhere from $50,000 to millions of dollars. So there’s real savings when we can reduce stress and anxiety and logistical challenges that all directly contribute. There have been studies since the 1950s that reducing stress and anxiety helps with full-term birth, and that has a meaningful dollars and cents impact to an employer. Retention is huge. When we calculate it, different industries look at different dollar amounts. We were at a healthcare conference and the head of HR over a large healthcare system said essentially when a nurse walks out of her door, that’s $70,000 to replace each time.

So when we think about the magnitude, depending on the population of that employer, do they skew younger family building age? A third of leaves for that employer could be related to maternity and parental leaves. So they’re real meaningful dollars and cents from a ROI perspective, hard dollars on the medical plan, I would say softer dollars from a retention perspective. Although I have talked to law firms that are calculating it, they are keeping track of within six months of somebody coming back from leave, one year somebody coming back from leave, is that employee still there? And so what we’ve seen across our population is that after one year returning to work, 93% of our participants are still at work and after a multi-year study, 89%. So I think it just depends from an industry perspective, job level perspective. A bank teller may not cost an employer $70,000 when they go.

When they leave, a lawyer is going to cost a lot more than $70,000 when they walk out of the door. So we do those calculations for our consulting partners and our employers when they’re saying, help us make the business case, help us talk to the CFO, help us think about … So typically we look at high cost claims, we look at their turnover, we look at benchmarking, what industry they’re in, who else they’re competing with in the market. There’s a whole host of ways we can get at a true ROI calculation that makes sense, but typically high cost maternity claims, retention, attraction, those are some of the reasons why employers raise their hands and say, absolutely. And then we just have some that say this is the right thing to do. There are multiple law firms here in St. Louis that offer the benefit bump program.

There are multiple companies here in St. Louis that offer the program now also offer, now that I know the progeny client list also offer progeny services. So it’s been overwhelmingly rejuvenating. I don’t know what the right word is. Hopeful, exciting to see a broader adoption of additional supports and resources. And I think proving out the business case helps with that.

Katie St. John:

The work that you’ve just explained in this short period of time is amazing, especially for myself hearing it as a young mom to know that BenefitBump and Progyny are available to some other individuals in the St. Louis area who may be going through these types of challenges. Do you also, aside from helping the employees throughout these different various stages of life, do you ever get involved in helping a company with their actual policy drafting? And what does that look like?

Sarah Moore:

Usually, yes, we absolutely can. Usually it’s a higher level guidance because they do have employee benefits consultants that have different policies and databases of resources for their employer clients. But we absolutely have helped some of our law firm clients. We’ve looked at their policies and sometimes it’s just a lack of, again, we talk about first filter. If you haven’t adopted a child before, you may write a policy as you get to take leave upon date of finalization, but the placement date occurs before that finalization of paperwork from a legal perspective. So you really need to start that leave time earlier. Well, there’s all sorts of things we’ve helped our employer clients with, whether it’s policy and does this make sense and is this what you’re seeing and are there tweaks we can make based on your other clients and your expertise? Also, workplace supports. There are a whole host of things that employers can do that are low cost.

When we think about breastfeeding in the workplace, those pumping rooms are important. Are there bottle brushes? Are there oil pins and are there refrigerators and sinks and milk storage bags? These are low cost things you can buy at Target that are not going to cost typically thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars. I think when we were doing a little bit of prep, there was a question about what are some, especially for the legal industry, what are some recommendations? And I’ve made this request a few times and I haven’t been taken up on it yet, but I would love to see a law firm offer billable pump time.

So not to take this conversation a whole different direction, but pumping takes … Women have different pumping needs. Pumping, you can do three times a day, five times a day. And if you’re working for eight or nine or whatever hours at the office, you’ll need to take multiple breaks. And when we think about each pumping session can go from 30 to 45 minutes. So when I think about a day, I think that was another challenge. When you’re on the billable model and you’re taking, let’s just call it two, two 45-minute pumping sessions per day, that is an hour and a half per day times five. And then do that over multiple weeks. You start to go, wait a minute, I can’t do this. How am I going to do this? And how do I explain this to my male managing partner?

Katie St. John:

Or better yet if I had it where I was in trial.

Sarah Moore:

Totally.

Katie St. John:

So I came back, I had just had a baby and we were in a trial and I’m like, how do I explain to this judge that I need a little bit longer of a break because I need to pump so that I have food to bring home to my baby?

Sarah Moore:

Great. And I think the industry is evolving. So when we look atBar taking the bar exam and now working, pumping time into breaks for the bar and more and more awareness that’s being raised by trial lawyers like yourselves that are saying, this doesn’t make sense. Mother’s Esquire is a great advocacy organization doing a lot of work in front of the scenes behind the scenes to make sure that trial lawyers and Esquire moms

Have an easier go because these are things that are repetitive. This isn’t just a you problem or a me problem. Every mom that chooses to breastfeed is going to have these same struggles. And so I don’t know if you can put the willow breast pump or a wearable breast pump while you’re doing trial works and hearings and depositions and all of that. I imagine that is awkward because it makes some noise. But how do we have these really difficult conversations about what are my expectations and how do I get the support I need in a traditionally male dominated industry? I mean, you also asked what was the impetus. There was a lot of impetus to joining this space and this work. And I think the research to me was loud and clear. When we look at law school graduates, 50% women, 50% men right out of school.

Elizabeth Lenivy:

I think that’s been that way for something like 30 years now.

Sarah Moore:

Right. Exactly. But when we look at the partners and we see 18%, 19%, oh, this big uptick to 23% female partners, oh, now we’re down to 21%, which is I think about the average. It moves a little bit up and down from there. But gosh, where did those 30% go?

Katie St. John:

I will say, I feel like I have been, since becoming a mother, have been very fortunate, and maybe it’s just because I think you were kind of saying, I don’t know, just naive or a leap of faith or what, but I’ve always found myself in situations where I’ve had really supportive partners and bosses that I’ve worked for where it’s still a weird conversation to have when you’re talking about I’ve got a pump and everyone has a different feeling on or a different viewpoint on pumping. Sometimes people are cool with it. Other times it’s kind of like, why are you talking about it?

Sarah Moore:

Sounds like a personal issue.

Katie St. John:

Yeah, exactly. So I do feel like I’ve been pretty fortunate to have people support me along the way and making sure I kind of had what I need, but I’ve never thought about the pumping billable hours. That’s an interesting concept. I think it’s now that I’m on the plaintiff’s side, I never ever want to think about billable hours ever again.

Sarah Moore:

Yeah. Right. Is it five hours a month? Is it 10 hours a month? It puts law firms in a really tough position because we get into this, well, if you’re giving credit for this, can you also give credit for this, this, this, this, this, and this? So I totally understand why it’s not a broadly adopted viewpoint. It impacts such a small percentage, but I think can go a long way when we have some of these micro initiatives can go a long way to support and make people feel seen and heard, and that has staying power for employees. And if that’s the whole point, when you do the math, CFO, law firm leadership, are you seeing the retention numbers you want to be seeing? Are you seeing when we look at the data? And then also what I saw after leaving Armstrong was more and more in- house counsel as they hired outside counsel, looking for a diverse population and team that supported their matters.

So there’s a whole host of reasons that from a business and financial perspective, it makes sense to lean in. Resources are very much wanting to support, but you You have to have the courage to have those conversations. And that I think is what’s so nice about a confidential outside third party to say, “Listen, we’re here to help you and so is your employer.” Don’t forget that they hired us for a reason. They have leaned so far into supporting you. So let’s create a plan. Let’s talk about what you need and what makes sense. And your firm or your company is already open to that idea of support because they’re already providing a whole host of resources that are helpful. And so let’s have that conversation because I think nine times out of 10, the conversation goes well and you get the support you need. And that’s where maybe just something that is harder to do for certain individuals.

I personally see a lot of value in having that conversation outside of the employer as a way to retain employees.

Katie St. John:

Yeah. I think the other flip side of that, I think my husband and I, because my first, I breastfed for a year, the full first year of her life. And then the second one was when I was in the trial. And that ultimately is when my breastfeeding journey ended just because the trial days were … I just didn’t know what to do exactly what you’re talking about. And it’s like it becomes a decision as a mom. I don’t know who’s going to help me figure this out. But when I calculated the expense of formula versus how when I was using breast milk versus formula and the expense that it was to my family, my husband and I to buy the amount of formula that we needed. And then there’s all the different brands and types and you have to figure that out, what’s going to work with baby.

It is crazy.

Sarah Moore:

It’s crazy. And just to pile on, there are physical benefits, health benefits to mom and baby. And again, when we think about taking care of families, that’s the right thing to do to support breastfeeding so that mom and baby have a better physical … There’s bonding, emotional health. But also when we think about our self-funded employers, that’s dollars and cents that we’re able to give back to them as well in improving the physical journey.

Elizabeth Lenivy:

Sarah, this has been such a great conversation. We’re happy to have you come back and chat more about this topic that really is so important and we need to be talking more about. Thank you to all of our listeners for joining us. And remember, part two of our conversation with Sarah Moore will drop next Wednesday. New episodes drop every other Wednesday, and if you’d like to join the conversation, you can reach us at heelsinthecourtroom.Law. Thanks, guys.

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