Introducing Parents@Work And The Best Places To Work Right Now
Fatherly and Scary Mommy are proud to introduce Parents@Work, a joint initiative to help companies retain, recruit and support employees with kids.
Now more than ever, parents are burnt out. So much falls on our plates, and work-life balance is a unicorn. That’s why it’s important to know that the companies we work for are here to support us. Scary Mommy and Fatherly are proud to introduce Parents@Work, a joint initiative designed to help organizations recruit, retain and support employees with kids.
To kick off this initiative, we teamed up with academic and policy experts on a certification program that identifies some of the Best Places to Work for Parents. Based on a rigorous 148-point criteria, we evaluate companies on which of their policies, benefits, and cultural practices improve outcomes for working parents. The certification honor rolls, which currently consist of Best Places To Work For Moms, Best Places To Work for Dads and Best Places For Remote Working Parents, can be found below.
These honor rolls aren’t nearly exhaustive so we encourage you to submit your recommendations for other companies that deserve to apply.
The goal of Parents@Work is to establish a national benchmark that guides companies on the evolving standards by which their own efforts can be judged. It is our hope that by celebrating these companies, we can galvanize employers everywhere to take action and to create better conditions for working parents. According to all available research, this is not just the right thing to do but good for corporate bottom lines.
Parents are the backbone of the American economy. More than 80% of the nation’s 82.6 million families had at least one employed family member in 2019 (ah, “normal times”). This accounts for well over half of all jobs in the U.S.
And yet the multi-dimensional needs of parents are too often ignored when it comes to what motivates them to stay with a company or what attracts them to new opportunities. In survey after survey, parents have demonstrated that they would rather take less salary if it meant working in an environment that’s more accommodating to their needs as parents.
What does that accommodation look like? For us, it starts with inclusive, paid parental leave. The U.S. remains one of the only industrialized nations without a federal parental leave policy and even in organizations with generous parental leave, many men are still stigmatized into not taking leave available to them. This perpetuates the idea that care is exclusively women’s work, which further exacerbates systemic gender inequality. Outside of leave, we factor in healthcare and financial resources, social support, flexible work arrangements, access to backup childcare, among many other factors.
Ultimately, a program that promotes more humane treatment of working parents is integral to our mission of empowering parents to raise great kids and lead more fulfilling lives. Our own experience as Some Spider (the parent company of Scary Mommy, Fatherly and The Dad) is emblematic of what we want this program to do: spark conversation that spurs change. We initially did not pass our own criteria to become a certified company and after many conversations with HR, executive leadership and our own employees, we’ve implemented new benefits and begun memorializing cultural practices to make sure that we’re certified later this year
With Parents@Work, Fatherly and Scary Mommy are celebrating the companies that serve parents through family-first policy while providing a benchmark for those who want to do better. We hope these lists serve as a resource for advocates pushing for more progressive change, in organizations of all sizes across the country.
Parents@Work accepts applications on a rolling basis and will announce more certified companies later this year. Companies interested in applying can submit their applications here.
Best Places For Parents Working Remotely
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