Should Being A Parent Make A Difference?
Now here's a delicate issue—should workplaces provide benefits that support parents in the workplace? Well, of course, you say. Parenting reflects the natural cycle of life, assuring the future of our society and as long as parents don't abuse their rights at work, their needs should be supported.
Judy Olian
(Judy Olian is Dean of Penn State's Smeal College of Business and a leading expert in strategic human resources management.)
Now here's a delicate issue—should workplaces provide benefits that support parents in the workplace? Well, of course, you say. Parenting reflects the natural cycle of life, assuring the future of our society and as long as parents don't abuse their rights at work, their needs should be supported.
Hey, wait a minute. Organizations such as the American Association for Single People or No Kidding! say that parents are securing these benefits on the backs of singles and non-parents. In a recent survey (HRNext, 2001), 66 percent of the 225 respondents felt that parents get away with more than their fair share. The claim is that benefits like childcare, tuition subsidies for dependents, maternity and paternity leave, adoption benefits, disproportionate subsidy of healthcare benefits for dependents (more than twice as much is paid for employees with kids according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute), family leave, and paid childcare are available only to parents, depriving childless employees of an equal share of the company's benefit pool. The argument is that this is unequal pay for equal work—childless employees end up with lower compensation than their peers with children.
Individuals with children under 18 represent about 40 percent of the workforce. According to Hewitt Associates, 72 percent of companies offer some type of childcare benefits program - for example 13 percent provide emergency / sick childcare, and 10 percent offer childcare on or near the work site. The Society for Human Resource Management's 2002 Benefits Survey found that 17 percent of employers provide paid maternity leave, and 14 percent pay for paternity leave.
Other non-targeted benefits are more heavily used by parents relative to non-parents. Among employers responding to a Conference Board (1998) survey, 93 percent report more telecommuting by parents versus childless employees, 80 percent observe greater use of personal days, and 58 percent note more frequent sabbaticals. Benefit choices can elicit friction between parents and non-parents. Some childless workers gripe that those with children get first dibs on vacation times because of school holidays. Others claim they pick up the slack when parents rush off to care for sick children or transport them to soccer games. The good news is that these complaints represent only a minority - the Conference Board study reported that 63 percent of respondents said they would willingly cover for their peers with children.
The data show that parents are a good bet. They work an average of 36 minutes more per week than childless full time employees according to the Employment Policy Foundation (2001). Parents also appear to have lower rates of unemployment compared to those who have never been parents—5.7 percent among never-parents, versus 3 percent for parents with children under 18, and 2.2 percent for parents with children over 18 according to the Employment Policy Foundation. The Pew Internet and American Life project (2002) reports that parents are more likely than non-parents to be Internet users (70 versus 53 percent of the population) and among Internet users, parents spend more time on work-related online information search. Kids obviously prompt moms and dads to become Internet savvy.
The trend is toward larger numbers of women choosing to remain childless. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, women opting to remain childless grew from 2.4 percent of the women of childbearing age in 1982, to 4.3 percent in 1990, and 6.6 percent in 1995. Accordingly, the percentage of working parents is expected to decline below current proportions, fueling further questions about the disproportionate benefits provided to parents.
The fact is that for strategic reasons, companies offer assorted benefits to different classes of workers. Not everyone benefits from, or deserves, advanced educational opportunities, support for conferences, travel, executive perks, stock options, coverage for mental illness, sabbaticals, or family-oriented coverages. These are afforded because companies see their value in terms of employee attraction and retention, motivation, work climate, and cultural values.
The benefits are not designed to cover each employee equally, but are intended to go to those who need them, deserve them, or elect to consume (and pay for) them. Variability in benefit coverage and utilization is deliberate, a natural result of a diverse community of workers.
And here's a generalization—family friendly workplaces are also employee friendly workplaces because they care about the totality of employees' well-being, those with children, parents, disabilities, illnesses, or diverse community concerns. Take a peek at the benefit offerings of companies appearing consistently in the lists of "the best companies to work for". They are family and employee friendly. Workplaces are rarely compartmentalized. A good employer offers many forms of advantage - for those with children and without.
