Workplace Flexibility Is the Key to Attracting Talented Working Moms

What is your current strategy to attract talented working moms to your company? When you want to hire the best possible talent for your open positions, you need to keep in mind that appealing to working moms is a great recruitment strategy. Recruiting in the candidate-driven market means finding ways to stand out among all of the other employers in your industry and in your geographic area.

Working moms are a vital part of the American workforce. The internet is full of advice for working moms, single working moms, and even executive moms about how they can make the most of their roles in multiple settings. However, what are the best pieces of advice out there for employers who want to appeal to talented working moms?

Before we can talk about how to appeal to working moms, we should address why companies need to attract this particular demographic. There are a ton of reasons! Among them:

1. Companies with more gender diversity are more productive, increasing sales, customers, and investments! Not all women employees are mothers, but keeping in mind the needs of working moms makes you a more appealing workplace to women in general, and that increases the gender diversity in your workplace.
   
   

2. The candidate-driven market means that we have more job openings available than job seekers. Candidates can therefore be a lot pickier about where they want to work. They can find an ideal employer instead of settling for whatever is available. This means that employers have to be proactive in building a workplace culture that appeals to top tier talent. Appealing to working moms can be a great strategy for doing just that!
   
   

3. Ethical employers care about closing the gender pay gap. Many of the policies that benefit working moms help to shrink that pay gap that exists between men and women. Need a good example? Companies that provide excellent paid parental leave don’t penalize women for taking time off to give birth and spend the first months of their babies’ lives at home with them. This means that women aren’t experiencing pay stagnation during this time, and they’re not forced to re-start their career each time they have a baby.

So what do working moms want the most? Now that you know the importance of attracting working moms to your company, what can you prioritize?

Working moms need flexibility!

Flexibility will look different from company to company, but here are some of the strategies we encourage our clients to implement.

Great Paid Time Off

Paid Time Off (PTO) can be approached in a lot of different ways, but one thing is the same everywhere: working parents look for companies with great PTO programs. This way, they can attend school meetings, appointments, and special events without losing money.

Does this mean you end up paying people to be at their kids’ schools instead of at work where they “should be?” That’s a pretty pessimistic way to look at it. Instead, consider how happier employees are better workers, and enthusiastic employees spread the word about how great it is to work for your company!

Paid Parental Leave

Paid parental leave is only mandated by a few states, but now is the time to make yourself stand out as an exceptional employer by providing outstanding paid parental leave. That means time off for new moms and dads when their baby is born or when they adopt a child.

Opportunities for Distance Work

Being able to work from home or on the road is so valuable to working moms, who often want to be in more than one place at the same time. This way, when a kid is at home sick, she can stay home as needed, until the child is cleared to return to school, without losing work time. This keeps your company’s day-to-day operations running smoothly and keeps her from feeling stressed about falling behind.

Breastfeeding & Pumping Locations

This is another one of those things where there are already some federal and state guidelines, but you can be an outstanding place to work by going above and beyond. Employers must provide their workers with breaks to pump or breastfeed, as well as a place to do so in private. It can’t be a bathroom.

Working moms often pump at work (or have someone bring their child to them) throughout the first year of their child’s life, and sometimes longer. Being able to pump in comfort allows them to navigate the complexities of those first months of parenting with more support!

On-Site Daycare

If possible, consider providing on-site daycare. Maybe your company is too small to provide such a thing yet, so consider if it is something you could have as a goal. On-site daycare is one of those things that will absolutely improve your company morale by supporting the working parents in your office.

Here are 8 companies that currently have on-site daycare and some information about how they make it work.

Now that you know about the importance of this, what’s next?

First, we recommend that you download our free Employer’s Guide to Pay Gaps and Gender Equity! This useful and informative guide can provide you with insights into the current state of the gender pay gap in America and what companies are doing to shrink it. And then, let us know what questions you have! Talk to us about your ideas, your questions, and your concerns as it relates to recruiting this specific target audience.

Top tier candidates are taking things like this into consideration as they search for their next job, and you have the opportunity to stand out among your competitors as the best place for working parents to take a job. Contact us to talk about how we can help your recruitment goals become a reality.