Companies work to retain new mothers
In a sharp contrast to the health care institutions who eliminated my job with ALL THREE of my pregnancies (coincidence? I’ll let you decide), it’s refreshing to see that there are companies out there who are doing what they can to retain mothers. An article from Forbes via MSNBC
Companies that used to wave goodbye to their female employees once they started families are now looking for ways to help them balance motherhood with their professional lives. Ernst & Young is one of a growing number of employers offering new mothers a variety of services to help them shift back into the workforce.
While my place of employment had a breastfeeding room, there was only one, and, you had to sign up to use it. People had the lunch hours tied up for months on end, but, at least the company could claim they had a place for mother’s to breastfeed. I’m not sure if I would have done anything differently if there had been onsite infant advice, that seems kind of nebulous, but, that’s just me.
While I wonder if these are token efforts on the part of businesses, or, if they are really useful benefits, the idea that more businesses are thinking about these topics is a step in the right direction
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POSTED IN: Career, Career and Kids
4 opinions for Companies work to retain new mothers
Babylune - Where New Mothers Get to Keep Their Jobs
Feb 8, 2007 at 6:33 am
[…] Career and Kids has an interesting post about companies that actually work to keep new mothers in their jobs. The Forbes article mentions benefits like on-site daycare and flex-time that all parents have been crying for. […]
JayMonster
Feb 9, 2007 at 9:45 am
If I can be a bit of a wanker here for a moment. I don’t buy any of it.
Most companies seem to pay lip service to “family” but when push comes to shove seem to do everything in their power to not only discourage it, but “punish” you for it.
There are exceptions, but they are just that… exceptions. There is more than a few examples (and court cases) where people have been penalized by corporations for being “breeders.”
And to top it off (for me), this is the one place in the corporate world where men are actually treated worse than women. Even in some companies that tend to be “flexible” when women need to tend to the needs of the family (sick child, sick family member, etc.) are less that accommodating men in the same circumstances.
If I had to guess, I think some corporations try to give the impression that they are “family friendly” so as to provide “proof” that no new legislation gets rammed down their throats. (Such as the Family Medical Leave Act in 1993, which took us from being the only country in the world without any paid maternity leave, to matching the absolute bottom). By “freely” giving something, they hope to avoid any new legislation that might cost them a penny per share in their stock earnings.
emjaybee
Feb 10, 2007 at 11:36 am
We still don’t have paid maternity leave. We have 12 UNPAID weeks, IF your company has more than 50 employees AND you’ve been there over a year.
We still suck, and we still have this weird attitude that work and home must NEVER touch, like matter and antimatter, that there’s something shameful in having a personal life that affects your work life. If not for this attitude, we’d have smartened up long ago and gotten decent maternity leave, subsidies that allowed daycare centers to partner with businesses to provide onsite care to employees, and many more work at home jobs.
It’s also very wasteful, this idea that you must be in your office whether you’re productive or not. Many days I could get my work done in 3-4 hours, and then go home and see my family, but productivity doesn’t matter as much as chaining me to my desk and having me look busy.
Constant Opinions » Businesses Trying Harder to Retain Mothers
Feb 22, 2007 at 5:29 pm
[…] And then there are the times when a woman has lost her job essentially due to being pregnant. The reason is often enough disguised as something else to make it not appear to be discrimination, but it happens. Just look at the experience of Elizabeth at Career and Kids, where I found this article. She lost three jobs during pregnancies. Hard to consider that a coincedence, as she says. […]
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