How small businesses are leading the way in support for working parents

Family-friendly policies have become an expectation for employees, and small businesses have risen to the challenge. 

Small businesses make up 99% of businesses in the U.S., according to the Small Business Association. New data from The Best Place for Working Parents, a public policy office seeking to better support working parents, also found that small businesses are also exceeding expectations when it comes to providing family friendly benefits to their workforce, despite working with smaller budgets and less resources. 

"We're overcoming this idea that family friendly is only for big business," says Sadie Funk, national director at The Best Place for Working Parents. "Small businesses are taking a role to ensure their workforce is well supported, which is so critical given that a majority of workers and working parents are currently employed by small businesses." 

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Eighty-one percent of the businesses surveyed by the organization — more than half of which are small businesses — offer maternity leave, 73% offer paternity leave, 96% offer remote work and 98% offer flexible PTO policies. When it comes to child care support, 10% of businesses surveyed offer on-site child care, 24% offer child care assistance and another 10% offer back-up child care options for parents struggling to find reliable resources. 

While flexible work is a critical benefit for many working parents, small businesses may not be able to offer this to their teams, Funk says. And though challenging to find the budget to subsidize as many family-related costs as larger businesses, the return on investment in terms of recruiting and retention vastly outweighs the cost of implementing these strategies.   

"There are small business industries like hospitality and manufacturing that require employees to have to be on site," Funk says. "So when you can't do flexibility, a critical way where small businesses can really get ahead of the curve is in offering better benefits, because then they have a silver bullet when it comes to not only retaining their top talent, but attracting top talent as well."

For example, the survey found that for businesses that implement a more quality suite of offerings for child care assistance, they have 3.9 times more motivated employees. Those that offer on-site child care have  employees who are 8.9 times more loyal to their employer. That kind of engagement is crucial to the long-term stability of small businesses and employers should be working hard to figure out exactly what will entice working parents to stay, Funk says.   

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"We encourage employers to pause and survey their employees to better understand what are their specific needs when it comes to caregiving," Funk says. "Do you have a set of working parents that have children primarily zero to five? Are they older children? Should you be thinking more about after school programs? Really check in with your employees to see what would be most helpful." 

She also urges small business owners to understand their own limitations when it comes to what they can realistically take on, while attempting to push the boundaries and find what policies they can change or restructure to make room. For example, a restaurant in their network started offering bonuses to other employees who agreed to take shifts for a working parent in need. It all comes down to making the pieces fit, Funk says. 

"It's not going to look exactly the same for every business and that's OK," she says. "There's a range and a suite of policies that business leaders can pull from that they'll learn to utilize by prioritizing their employees."