How to keep RTO mandates family-friendly

As an HR leader, Jessica Larsen admits that she didn't always understand concerns about workplace flexibility she'd hear from her colleagues with kids. The urgency, she says, was lost on her as a childless worker.

"I used to have the mindset of, 'Working parents can get off early to go pick up their kids? Well, I might want to go to an earlier gym class,'" ​​says Larson, senior HR specialist at workplace solutions company Insperity. "Then I became a parent during COVID." 

Now, Larson is all too familiar with the pressure to be in multiple places at once that so often comes with being a working parent. With news of return-to-work mandates increasing across industries and a two-year-old son at home, she counts herself as one of the lucky ones: She has the comfort of knowing that her retired mother lives less than a mile away, creating built-in backup child care on the days she has to go into the office as part of her hybrid schedule. And while not all of her colleagues have the same at-home support as her, Insperity's flexibility helps take some of the burden of finding full-time child care off their shoulders. 

Read more: Can employers solve the child care crisis?

"Having increased flexibility at work helps them with emergency situations, like when kids are sick and they're forced to be home," she says. "Now they don't have to take time off to be with them." 

But that isn't often the case for working parents across the country. The pandemic presented working parents, and specifically mothers, with a number of challenges that initially forced nearly 12 million women out of the workforce, according to data from management consulting company McKinsey. When the dust settled, remote work has allowed many of those parents to return without sacrificing time with their children or their career growth. Sixty-nine percent of working parents feel they've been able to be more involved in their children's lives because of more flexible work schedules, according to a recent study by KinderCare. 

But return-to-work mandates threaten that newfound work-life balance, says Dave Jacobs, co-founder and CEO of Homethrive, a caregiver support platform. 

"Even if the return-to-work is two days a week, the needs that an employee might have with their family could easily overlap with those days in the office," Jacobs says. "Over the last three or four years, employees have gotten used to flexibility — they've built their entire lives around it. Maintaining that is going to be very important for organizations moving forward."  

Read more: This platform is helping employees send their kids to college

Child care can cost families up to $3,190 a month for nanny care or $1,230 a month for a daycare center, according to Care.com. Dealing with any complications related to those schedules undeniably happens during work hours, adding a layer of stress should the employee have to arrange backup care from their desk. Potentially having to shift child care arrangements while juggling return-to-work mandates can require employees to ask for time off to tour new facilities, not to mention re-crunch monthly budgets. 

"It's not as easy as a snap of a finger," Larson says of these demands. "Employers should be taking the time to talk to the employees and get their opinions on what it is they want, because a return-to-work mandate should look different from organization to organization. There are ways to roll out a return to the office while still keeping that flexibility for employees." 

Read more: In these 10 states, being a working parent comes with perks

These solutions include specific flexible days where employees can work from  7-to-3 rather than 9-to-5 in order to handle some of their caregiving responsibilities. Another option, according to Jacobs, is to let employees choose which days of the week they come into the office. If they can't be flexible, employers could add concierge services to their benefit offerings in order to offload some of those daytime tasks stealing parents' attention at work.

"Give people the support to navigate these challenges," Jacobs says. "Whether it's talking to insurance companies, going to doctors' appointments, calling doctors' offices, arranging different services, to the extent organizations can, give people assets and resources to allow employees to be more present and more productive at work and still meet the needs of their family." 

Over half of workers say that whether they can work flexibly will impact their decision to stay at their current organization, according to a recent survey from EY. Better supporting working parents doesn't just alleviate employees' stress, it's good for the bottom line. 

"I love going into the office and connecting with my co-workers, but I also love that I'm able to work from home and spend quality time with my family and with my kid," Larson says. "And when you have happy employees that feel supported, we're going to perform, we're going to meet our goals and ultimately the business is going to succeed."