Work Advice: For this single mom, ‘Bring Your Kid to Work Day’ is every day

Q: My project manager gave birth last year. During her parental leave, the father of her child and his family became abusive. That upended her plans to have his mother provide day care and forced her to move out of his home — causing her rent and living expenses to go way up. She asked if she could bring her child to work when she came back from leave. Because she was dealing with a lot, I said: Of course.

She has always worked from home three or four days per week and supervises multiple staff. She now continues to be a full-time caregiver while she is supposed to be working full time. The baby is in all Zoom meetings, and she brings her into the office on the days she comes in. I have broached the subject of child care, and she tells me she can’t afford it. She earns about $100,000 but lives paycheck to paycheck. She has no family nearby and lots of student loans.

At first, the baby was sleeping most of the time, but now she’s mobile and needs more attention. My employee has been really distracted.

I’m struggling with how to support her but also get her working without watching her child at the same time. She was referred to our employee assistance program during the domestic violence situation, so I know she’s aware of that resource.

A: To quote sociologist Jessica Calarco: “Other countries have social safety nets. The U.S. has women.”

The well-being of mothers in this country depends primarily on the whims of their individual marital or employment situation. That’s not your fault, and it’s not something you can fix. It’s also not something your project manager can fix alone, although plenty of observers will insist that she should because it is “her” fault.

So thank you, thank you, thank you for accommodating this village-less mother for the better part of a year so she can build an independent life free of abuse.

That said: Businesses don’t run on goodwill. And the pandemic proved that simultaneous full-time employment combined with full-time caretaking is not sustainable or healthy — for businesses, parents or children. I’m sure your project manager is aware on some level how much productivity is slipping through her peek-a-boo fingers. It’s past time to come up with a workable solution.

Cynthia Calvert, founder of HR consulting firm Work+Family Insight and senior adviser for the Center for WorkLife Law, which provides a free legal hotline for working parents and parents-to-be, frequently fields questions like yours from employers struggling to find the right mix of compassion, compliance and capitalism. The good news, Calvert said, is that you’re “doing a lot of things right: getting to know employees, keeping lines of communication open and making use of company resources.” Here’s how Calvert recommends you take these three key elements to the next level.

• Make sure you’re judging her performance without bias. Motherhood bias often “affects what we notice and inferences we draw” about mothers in the workplace, Calvert notes. Yes, an infant attached to her at all times is a pretty obvious drag on productivity — but you should still offer the same benefit of the doubt you would give any employee carrying less visible burdens, such as illness, aging parents or divorce. Try to quantify what “distracted” means in terms of performance: Slow responses? Forgotten deadlines?

• Keep lines of communication open. Calvert recommends regular performance check-ins with all staff members in which you ask how they think they are doing and what they need, then give feedback on what you have observed and what you need in return. That way, your employee is taking part in an ongoing conversation about performance “instead of feeling attacked” when you explain that you need her to find ways to be 100% present sans bébé when she’s meeting with clients or collaborating with colleagues. Likewise, you will have less pent-up frustration if you’re working with her on finding solutions, instead of biting your tongue.

• Offer support from a professional distance. To avoid becoming enmeshed in more personal detail than is appropriate for a boss, Calvert suggests locating some kind of parental transition or life coach who can confidentially guide your employee through managing finances, finding lower-cost child care (college-age nannies? child care swaps?) and locating other means of support. Providing or subsidizing this service would cost you, but not as much as replacing her.

Meanwhile, focus on business solutions in your power — the more flexible and creative, the better. Consider pretax dependent-care savings accounts, mindful scheduling practices, maybe even finding space at the office where a weekly sitter could watch the baby out of everyone’s earshot. You should also keep an eye on company priorities and resources to avoid shifting burdens to everyone else and feeding resentment.

In short, let her know what you need from her, offer what reasonable support you can, and allow her to figure out how to make it happen — without presuming to know her options better than she does. Sure, her six-figure salary is a king’s ransom in parts of this country, but in others, it’s just above what a well-publicized recent survey determined is the average minimum salary for a single child-free adult to live “comfortably” — spending 50% on essentials, 30% discretionary, 20% savings. It may be just enough to make her ineligible for public assistance while also falling short of what she needs to make ends meet. She may even fall into that gap where she can’t quite make ends meet, but also doesn’t qualify for public assistance.

I know you’re running a business, not a nursery. And there’s always a risk you’ll be taken advantage of if she lacks the ability or initiative to make good use of your support. But the potential payoffs of helping her through this crisis — keeping her on as a loyal project manager while inspiring other employees who see how you support workers in crisis — could help justify the rocky start.