EP 923- Parental Support Benefits Part Two

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 I’m joined by Katie St. John and our return guest, Sarah Moore.

Sarah Moore:

Yay.

Elizabeth Lenivy:

I feel like so many of the issues that women face have … Think about at some point it was something that, well, we’ll never get past this. A woman working period in an office, what would never happen. A woman working once she’s gotten married could never happen. A woman not wearing panty hose to court,

Sarah Moore:

Unimaginable.

Elizabeth Lenivy:

I mean, I feel like the only way to eventually get where we want to get is frankly to keep talking about it and making people aware of it. Because I’m sitting here, again, as a woman, I have never thought about how much time it takes to breastfeed. And then what that means when your time is being tracked, but then as the kind of work that we do, Katie, time is our most precious resource because whatever I don’t accomplish here, I’m going to have to go home and work on. I’ll be doing it over the weekend or whatever. And so I mean, I’ve talked to so many friends who are like, “Hey, do you want to go grab lunch? You want to go take an hour to unwind?” And no, because I got to get this done today. I got to get this done day. I got to pick up my kid at 4:30.

We got to get them to swim practice or whatever. And I’m like, “Okay, all right, your time is really important and there’s not very much of it, so do whatever you need to do. ” So it is that thing of, I feel like we don’t think about it until we either A, experience it or B, someone tells us about it. And at least for men, I feel like the only time is unless it happens to their wife or someone in an office has to have maybe an uncomfortable conversation with them. So keep talking about it. I

Sarah Moore:

Love it. I plan on it. Well, keep looking at the data. I think to your point, if you haven’t been through it before in a leadership position and you’re hearing this and you’re going, right, not that big of a deal, these women are just talking about sort of women things. Look at the data because the data speaks for itself how many … And again, we focus a lot on women, but there are implications for men on the mental health side, needing leave, childcare support, backup care, financial resources, and that impacts their health, wellbeing, productivity, retention. So there’s a lot of bottom line impacts that I want to make sure we continue to talk about. So it does have a broader … It gets the broader attention that it needs because it’s there. We just need to talk about it.

Elizabeth Lenivy:

Are you noticing differences in reception to this topic based on generation? I feel like, and maybe I’m living too much of my own bubble, but I feel like at least the men that I’m friends with, my husband, my colleagues, millennial men, I feel seem to be more open.

Sarah Moore:

Totally. And more involved maybe. I mean, I don’t want to slight other generations because I think that’s a misnomer too, that mom did everything.

Elizabeth Lenivy:

The absent boomer dad.

Sarah Moore:

Right. Mom did everything and dad didn’t show up. And I think that’s not accurate either, but we’re probably talking about and seeing it more. You’re seeing dads leave the office at four o’clock or show up at nine after doing drop off or daycare. I remember a few years ago seeing at the bus stop a whole crew of dads at the bus stop and thinking, wow, but maybe that wasn’t novel. We’re just picking up on it more because we’re having these conversations more. More and more women in the workplace and the fifty fifty. And I’m not sure what it is, but I do think there’s much broader adoption awareness, adoption of supports and resources. The fact that there’s breast pump acquisition through the health plan from an ACA perspective, you get a free breast pump, the EAP, almost every employer I’ve talked to, small or large has an employee assistance program, which provides emotional health support.

So not to get away from the boomer dad or millennial dad comment, but there’s so much more awareness raised, there’s more supports and maybe more expectations through social media or advertising or just women saying, “We’re really tired.” Dads have stepped up and I think that’s been that way for maybe longer than we realized, but continuing to have the conversation about it. But there is still a lot of data that shows the mental load and caregiving responsibilities are still a lot on women. So again, we’re moving the needle. Your friends and friends with the dads and watching them do the things, the daycare and staying home with the sick kid and taking the full parental leave that’s offered because that’s another great way for equity exists. We need equity in the home and can’t have that unless we have equity in the workplace. And so equal paid leave.

I mean, there’s a whole host of things we could talk about there, but I think dads are more visibly involved.

Katie St. John:

Yeah. Actually, my husband’s home right now with my sick one-year-old.

Sarah Moore:

Amazing.

Katie St. John:

I know.

Sarah Moore:

Good job, dad. Good job.

Katie St. John:

Yeah. And I’m like, I have to go into the office today. We’re going to have an interesting conversation I don’t want to miss. So it is nice to have that option from a family perspective. It also should be, and we’re all hopeful that it’s important to men that are interested and have families, that their employer is also open to giving them the different options so that they can not just support their wife or their partner, but be there for the kids and leave if they need to do pickup or if there’s a big sports game and they want to see their kiddo play, that they’re not penalized for leaving the office at 4:30 instead of 5:30 or whatever it may be.

Sarah Moore:

We’ve seen a cultural shift. I feel like we’ve seen a cultural shift with expanded paid leave for all family building, historically focused on birthing mom and now seeing much broader policies to incorporate birthing and non-birthing parents, adoptive parents that kind of caught up to the same equal amount of time as birthing moms. We’re seeing a much broader leave landscape to incorporate and be more inclusive. I mean, we’re seeing paid leave for in New York, for pregnancy appointments. We’re seeing paid leave. I think Rhode Island just put in, actually, these are protections, so not paid leave, but protections for menopausal women. We’re seeing a much more inclusive landscape, culture, policies exist in the workplace. And I think that’s contributed, right? Maybe it’s chicken or egg kind of situation, but yeah, we’re standing on the shoulders of those that came before us and they struggled. And I think it’s a testament and a gratitude to those that spoke up.

Katie St. John:

When you are consulting with an employer, have you ever been met with or felt like you’re getting some resistance on the front of if you’re talking about implementing certain policies, maybe it’d be for breastfeeding or those types of support?

Sarah Moore:

I would say 99.9% of the folks that are engaging with us have leaned in so heavily to, “We want to support our employees.” So that’s a baseline foundational element. You’re not buying benefit bump and paying on an annual basis to support folks going through pregnancy and adoption and fertility and parenting if you are not interested in supporting. I would say there’s probably a range of levels of support. Some employers have, because some have more financial capacity to put all the bells and whistles in, backup childcare, supercharged EAP programs, additional breast pump reimbursement, breast milk shipping, the SNOW, the bouncy baby bed. We see some of our clients put that in as an employee benefit. I’m trying to think of some others off the top of my head. And then we’ve seen others that are more, obviously, fertility benefits, so great to now be alongside Progyny, fertility benefit, holistic support, medication, IUI, IVF, handholding support, all of the donor, donor support, all of those things.

But there are some employers that are earlier in that process and that journey, whether it’s because they are just getting into this space or cost constraints. All of these additional supports, some of the ones I just mentioned are additional bottom line impacts. Again, we see each vendor, each additional support has their ROI calculations. And so you go through that and decide what makes sense and what doesn’t make sense. But I don’t know if that was T. I’m trying to think if there’s some T I can give. I mean, paid leave, we see varying levels of paid leave because we’re probably we being me, but I think we being the organization too, would love to see for some out there in the market, more paid leave, but that’s really hard. It can be a very expensive outlay upfront. And so you have to be willing to make that and/or have it in the budget upfront to then save it on the backend or see it through retention or improved outcomes or whatever else.

But right, we probably want more and more and more. We meet our clients where they’re at. That’s what I love about the Benefit Bunk program is it’s a wraparound to the benefits, resources, workplace supports, policies that they currently have. And we supercharge that to the best extent that we can. And then as they look to continue the journey, we make recommendations. But this is a really hard cost environment for employers right now. I probably don’t need to tell you or our listeners that, especially if you’re in the HR space, but medical plan renewals are exponentially increasing some in the double digits. We see cost of labor, all of these different cost drivers. And then there’s cost drivers the other way with regard to supply chain and other things that all contribute to an employer’s revenue and all of that. So we meet our clients where they are.

And I’d like to think, I think our clients would say, provide so much value to expand beyond what they have, but supercharging their current package as well.

Elizabeth Lenivy:

I’ll share my team. This conversation has made me think about a job I had years and years and years ago.

Katie St. John:

Here we go. It’s going

Elizabeth Lenivy:

To be good. I think it’s a good example though of how there has been a cultural shift and maybe how far we have come in a relatively short period of time. I don’t know. But I just remember being in an orientation for a new job and them walking us through the maternity leave and it wasn’t great, but they explained it to us and then someone said, “Well, what about dads?” And they’re like, “Well, you get the same amount of time, but you’re not going to take it. “

Sarah Moore:

Oh yeah.

Elizabeth Lenivy:

“You didn’t do anything.

Sarah Moore:

You

Elizabeth Lenivy:

Didn’t do anything.” And it got like a chuckle because ha, ha, ha, ha, what’s a dad going to do?

Sarah Moore:

Right. They’re so instrumental in the recovery.

Elizabeth Lenivy:

And there was so much, it was clearly such, I think, a nefarious comment of you’re expected to be back here and you’re expected to be working. 100%. I guess you can be there for the birth of your child, I guess, if you have to, but you are expected to be back.

Sarah Moore:

We’re absolutely moving the right direction and at certain points accelerating faster than others. And we’ve just seen a booming landscape of benefits, again, resources, programs like ours come into the market. And that is wonderful because it means we’re going to continue to make really meaningful change. For dads, we stand on the shoulders. They stand on the shoulders of those that came before where let’s say at a law firm, there’s eight weeks, 16 weeks paid leave, regardless of birth or non-birth parent, gender, those types of things, it’s the dads who took it, who said that got the blowback, that got the funny ha-ha joke that isn’t funny, but decided to do it anyway. And I will say, I mean, I very much remember this. There was a plea from female colleagues saying, “Take it, take it, take it, take it, take it. ” Because if you don’t take all of it, we’re still going to be seen as less than.

Katie St. John:

Yeah, I’ve never thought about that. It’s one of those things where you never want to think what your … As a female attorney, you never want to think of what your male counterpart may or may not do in terms of taking leave what ultimately affects you in that. It’s such a intimate experience growing a family, and so you don’t want to think about it like that, but that is a really good point.

Sarah Moore:

Super intentional. I think when you look at data and research and the anecdotal evidence that, right, I don’t think that was an isolated incident that you experienced, Liz, where it was like, “Haha, dads get all this leave, but you better not take it. ” The expectation is you don’t take it here. I don’t think that was a one-off situation. And so I have seen very intentional efforts by women that have had children that have marched around offices and said, “Take this leave. Here are the implications. Here’s how this does impact me as a female attorney or colleague, employee, what have you. ” And so right, seeing lots more adoption, employers offering more parental leave, defining it differently, being more inclusive, and people actually taking it that we don’t have a federal paid leave policy. I think we’re getting it back on the agenda again. I see a whole bunch of things from different organizations that I follow where paid leave for all and all that we’re getting.

We’re trying again, we’re going to try again to get this back. But a number of states, the states continue to rack up with regard to state specific leave policies and funding mechanisms. There’s more to be done from a number of weeks perspective, from a pay percentage perspective, but we’re absolutely having a number of wins across various states where nothing existed for certain employee populations. Now it does huge wins. The leave landscape is quite complex for an employer to manage, for an employee to navigate. So we’ll be interesting to see if at some point we can get a federal leave enacted and see how that works, butting up against different states. If one state has more than the federal policy, I mean, there’s a whole host of different scenarios and situations that can arise, but leave is very complicated for families to navigate employers to comply with and make sure they’re compliant with.

But I’m very excited to see people actually take the time off.

Katie St. John:

So something that I think we’ve kind of touched on a little bit, if Progyny and BenefitBump might not be within a company’s, if they might not be able to afford it, do you have some general tips in order for them to implement policies or best practices that could make a big impact on supporting their working parent population?

Sarah Moore:

So the answer to that is yes. And it’s one of my most favorite conversations because there’s so much employers can do right now that I feel like is not a heavy lift from a spend perspective. BenefitBump, we did webinars, had sort of a good, better, best landscape of things employers can do from a low cost, medium and high cost. So to get into some of those low cost items, we talked a bit about pumping rooms. When we talk to some of our prospective employer clients, they have varying levels of knowledge about what’s in the room, what shape it’s in, just because some of these larger employers have multiple facilities, multiple sites. And so I think that’s a really great place to start from an inventory perspective. Looking at the rooms that exist, do they have some of those basic supplies that pumping moms need? We’ve talked about refrigerator and brushes, electrical outlets, comfy chair, sync that’s preferable.

One of the things I like to talk about too are glass offices. So when we think about professional services, there are glass walls. And sometimes from a productivity perspective, it’s so much more helpful to just pump at my desk. And so is there a screen, right? World Market has screens.

Katie St. John:

We have aBOM right now that is pumping and she has this accordion type divider that comes out and blocks her office and then a little door tag.

Elizabeth Lenivy:

Is that what that is? Yeah. I saw it the other day. I’m not pumping. I would just like some privacy.

Sarah Moore:

Privacy, right? Otherwise it’s a fishbowl. What is this doing right now? Yeah. World market, whole bunch of, not to name drop, but target wherever. There’s a whole bunch of things you can do to make that space more private. And again, that increases your productivity. Now I can work and pump at the same time. So I’m not losing that billable time. Going into a separate room, trying to bring your laptop. It’s kind of a whole mess. You have to disengage all of that.

Katie St. John:

Lots of chords.

Sarah Moore:

Lots of chords. Feels better in a more private environment. So from a pumping perspective, that’s what I would say. Employers have, as I shared, employee assistance programs, which can provide support for postpartum depression and other challenges that employees face from a mental health or a logistical perspective.

Katie St. John:

Have you seen any specific type of programs for flex hours in terms of … There should be a standard working window, but I know sometimes if I start my day at seven o’clock in the morning because I know I need to leave by three to go to a soccer game, do you …

Sarah Moore:

100%. Flexibility is absolutely something that’s key and core. And again, that doesn’t cost you money unless you’re … I mean, it’s challenging when we think of corporate staff versus being a nurse on the floor versus being a manufacturing facility, that flexibility is really challenging. But even for those organizations, I’ve seen ramp up and ramp down policies. So still taking a little bit of that, again, short-term financial hit from a productivity perspective for that long-term gain. But flexibility is key to the extent an employer can offer flexibility and it doesn’t cost you anything. That’s a great low cost, no cost way. Does it matter if I’m working here from 10:00 to 2:00 or 3:00 or 4:00 or whatever the hours are, I go home, I throw a load of laundry in, I log on, and then do some of the kid things I need to do.

And then at night, I log back on from 8:00 to 9:00, 8:00 to 9:30, 8:00 to 10:00. Sometimes for lawyers, that’s like 8:00 to midnight. But anyway, I think that’s it. It’s trusting your employees. We do what we need to do. We are all aligned. We want to be the best professionals that we can be. It’s our personal reputations that are on the line, our income, all of these things. And so trusting your employees to get the job done, giving them that flexibility is huge. If you can throw a load of laundry in at lunch and make the taco meat for 10 minutes on the stove and again, make up that time elsewhere in your day, it’s so extremely impactful in such a positive way for employees, and it’s a low cost thing employers can do. What we also love to, I guess preach is a bad word, but sort of continue to share is there are … We’ve talked about EAP, we’ve talked about pumping rooms, there are free breast pumps through the health plan.

I’m part of the ACA for employers, I believe, over that have 50 employees are over. There’s hospital indemnity that some employers have. There are dependent care reimbursement accounts. Typically, the EAP has a childcare directory, so a great service to help you find childcare. There’s a whole host. There are leave policies. There’s a whole host of things that exist in the employer’s ecosystem already. So let’s maximize that. And ways to do that would be additional communications from the HR department, flyers, webinars. I mean, not to be prescriptive because HR teams know the best way to communicate with employees, but we’ve put together guides, so two to three pagers, sometimes one pagers, depending on how robust we want to make the pamphlet. But just pulling all of that together, the employer’s package, the benefits, the resources that that employer offers all together, call it a working parent, new parent guidebook or something like that.

It’s a great way, low cost way to connect employees with things that can be life-changing at low to no cost.

Katie St. John:

Yeah. And I think something you touched on that’s super interesting is just that trust. I’m sure I’ve never been at the top and I’ve had to structure a company or a firm or anything like that in terms of making sure my employees are getting what they need done. But I can say as an employee, knowing that if I need to leave so I can go see a soccer game, but then for my team to know if I have something due, I’m going to log back on and get it done. I know it’s not always been that way in our world, but it is something that we have here at Simon, I feel like it’s super helpful.

Elizabeth Lenivy:

I think it’s really helpful. And I think it’s also something that, again, kind of trying to bring it back to what is a company’s reasoning or the justification for doing this, it not only retains people, it attracts people to you.

Sarah Moore:

Absolutely. Absolutely. And we’ve seen that now working alongside Progeny. Employees will go work for an employer that has a fertility benefit. And if you don’t have it, I’ve seen this happen. Now employees are asking about that upfront, so I love the courage to ask that. And if it’s not there, we’ll go work somewhere else. And so we’re seeing more and more of that. I’ve seen that on the parental leave side of things, asking about leave policies, asking about those supports. And to your point, if some of those pieces are not in place, I’m saying, “I’m going to go work somewhere else.” So that also helps move the needle because we know this from different data sources, but when that directly happens one-on-one with the talent acquisition partner, then that’s something they can report directly back to the team and helps to move the needle as well.

Elizabeth Lenivy:

Yeah. Every time my husband has been recruited for a new firm or new company, something that they seem to always want to sell him on is, “And here’s our parental support package. Here’s our parental leave package.” And he talks to me about it. And it is something that we have certainly as a young two income households that we have certainly considered when deciding what is the best future for him. I mean, I’m happy where I’m at, but I know it’s something that he has definitely talked to me about. So there’s another plug to companies and to law firm leaders and business leaders of why this is important and why people should be paying attention and how it can help your company. And Sarah, I love your passion for this. And so Sarah, can you tell our listeners what might be the best way to find you, to find your company so that they can learn more about the services that you all offer?

Sarah Moore:

Absolutely. So progeny.com, P-R-O-G-Y-N-Y.com. There’s a way to get in touch with us and learn more about the supports and services. And always happy to have a conversation, even if it’s not, hopefully you can tell, even if it’s not about benefit bumper progeny, just personally very passionate about the space and how we can move the needle. So always happy to help.

Elizabeth Lenivy:

Great. Well, thank you so much for joining us. It’s been a real pleasure talking to you and learning about something that affects us all. And thank you to our listeners for joining us. Remember, new episodes of Heels in the Courtroom drop every other Wednesday. And if you want to reach out to us and join the conversation, you can at heelsinthecourtroom.law. Thank you so much. And until next time. Bye guys.

Sarah Moore:

Thank you for having me. Bye.

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