Power of the Parent 5: S6 Ep5: Engaging Line Managers in your Parent and Carer Support Strategy

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Episode Transcript

Hello and welcome to Power of the Parent, the podcast.  This series is a new format and we are going to be focusing on a different topic each week, bringing you three things you need to know about whatever that may be, mainly from an employer perspective. But of course, there’s plenty of reframing that parents could do to benefit from the content as well.

We will be covering everything from parental leave transitions, managing boundaries, what to do when your talent pipeline looks a bit dodgy, tips on gathering feedback, and things like establishing parental support networks.  So, let’s dive in.

Hello and welcome to the next episode of Power of the Parent, Three Things You Need to Know About. And today I am talking about engaging line managers in your parent and carer support strategy.  This is one of those conversations that is a certainty in my world. How do we engage line managers?  And I’m going to go out on a limb and say it is a really deliciously varied conversation.

72 percent of an employee’s engagement is attributed to line manager behaviour which is a huge responsibility and let’s face it can therefore swing either way if we don’t pay attention to the possible outcomes of that influence. Today I’m zooming in on three talking points but expect this topic to be revisited multiple times in the future because honestly it really is a biggie.

So let’s dive in. First of all, the headlines of the three things I’m going to be talking about today are number one, all line managers need engaging, not just those without parenting or caring responsibilities. Number two, we need to be realistic about the commercials and number three, heading off the, ‘it isn’t a focus until it’s a focus’ mentality.

So first up,  all line managers, everybody, everybody everywhere, needs engaging in this conversation. And I’m starting with this because there’s this ginormous assumption that line managers who are parents or carers will get it, whatever ‘it’ is. And those that aren’t   carers won’t. And quite honestly, I find that very problematic in a few different directions.

Assuming that where a line manager is a parent or carer themselves will automatically equal and understanding for other parents and carers leaves a really big gaping hole. There are incredibly unique situations that won’t always be understood regardless of our own family setups.

So then when we go in with an incredibly high expectation that someone else will understand what we’re going through, and we don’t get that expectation met, it’s an additional challenge that we just don’t need. 

For example, I had a client  who was returning to the workplace, who had a line manager with children. The line manager’s kids were a few years older and they had well and truly forgotten the childcare shuffle of nursery bug days.  They also had family close by and would regularly have help. Now, my client was in a very different setup. She  didn’t have local family support. She had a handful of friends, but they all had their own lives going on.

So on week two of being back in the workplace, she got a call from nursery. It was a high temperature situation and her line manager was visibly and verbally frustrated. It really caught the parent off guard and it sent them, to be honest, into a bit of a state of panic.  

Now at the other end of the scale, I can honestly say the two best line managers I’ve ever had since becoming a parent had no children. Zip nada, never on their plan, never something that they wanted.  They did, however,  understand the value of engaging your team, of creating an environment where a job can be done and someone can have their needs met as much as possible. It didn’t mean that every single thing could be accommodated either way, but crafting a culture where we look after our employees, regardless of their or our own experiences is really where the true transformation happens.

Secondly, we need to be realistic about the commercials. Now, of course, there’s a, ‘it’s what we’re meant to do’ angle to supporting parents and  carers. Well, actually anybody, we should be supporting everybody in the workplace. However, I’m going to be blunt here. There are also very commercially driven reasons too.

Let’s call in the work of organisations like Gallup, who have that wonderful speciality of looking at the links between engagement, wellbeing, and commercial performance on the regular. In 2020 Gallup carried out. 56 research studies across 276 organisations in 54 industries and 96 countries. That survey totaled engaging 2. 7 million employees. Just let all of those numbers and stats sink in there for a second. Understandably, it therefore produced a whole snazzy list of differences between the top and bottom quartile performing organisations.

I’m going to leave a link in the show notes to the research, but some of the headlines were an 81 percent difference in absenteeism, 23 percent in profitability and 43 percent in turnover in low turnover organisations. I think it’s more than okay to share this side of the why behind supporting parents and carers in the workplace.

The seemingly opposite sides of ‘it’s a nice to do’ or ‘it’s part of our commercial strategy’ can coexist. And to be honest, I don’t actually think they’re a million miles apart anyway. 

And finally, point number three, heading off the, ‘it isn’t a focus until it’s a focus’ mentality. Now it’s not uncommon for us to think that supporting parents in the workplace comes when we’re looking at parental leave transitions.

The truth though, is that it is something much more varied. Preparing for or returning from parental leave is a moment in time, and a really big hinge moment, but by no means it’s the be all and end all. 

We also need to think about how it feels to be someone who might want to become a parent in the future. What do they see or feel when they look around your organisation? 

And how about parents with older children, children with additional needs, or parents with their own intersectionality to navigate?  

What we need to avoid here is that mentality of what if we put line managers through workshops and then they forget everything that they’ve learned by the time they actually come to use it. It’s a phrase I’ve heard a lot over the years, especially when we’re talking about returners, but it can be applicable literally across any point in time. 

Of course, there is that reality of if we don’t use something, we lose it. But that’s where the overlap between these lived experiences, day to day culture, and the upskilling need to triangulate so that it doesn’t become a, I must go on a course to learn some of this stuff. Instead, it is about being ingrained in our organisational culture. 

And that’s where I’m going to leave us for this week. I hope those three points have helped bring a bit of  fresh thinking all the way through from, remember it is all line managers and make no assumption there, don’t have those really high expectations of people who already happen to have children, and knowing that it’s okay to talk about the commercials and why your supporting parents isn’t just philanthropic reasons, there are real strategic commercial goals that want to be achieved here.

I hope that’s helped. And I will be back next week with three things you need to know about going beyond policies.

Thank you so much for joining me for another episode of Power of the Parent with podcast. If you have got a few spare minutes, who am I kidding? Of course you haven’t got a few spare minutes, but if you would like to choose to spend a few of your minutes  giving me any sort of review or rating, I would massively appreciate it.

It does help other people find it. And it also lets me know that I’m hitting the spot with listeners. For more free resources, you can head to the show notes. where you’ll find a link to the Power of the Parent website, or do head on over to LinkedIn and give me a follow. Search Charlotte Speak and my grinning face should pop up.

Until next time, take care.