The New Strategic Road Map for Attracting and Retaining Working Parents

The collective experience of the past pandemic year has led many employees and employers alike to reprioritize the importance of employee quality of life and well-being. For some working parents, this has meant reevaluating and recommitting to their choice of where to live.

Traditionally, companies have chosen locations based on institutional needs such as large talent pools, good infrastructure, tax incentives, and brand exposure. Businesses have expected new hires to do the moving, often including incentives such as relocation packages in job offers for those workers with the flexibility and freedom to relocate geographically.

But the expectation that workers will uproot and move from the places they love for new work uniquely complicates the career choices of working parents. Employees with children, especially school-age children, are often limited in this path to job opportunity and career growth; parents’ preference for community stability competes strongly with career mobility once kids become part of the equation.

Recent data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics indicates that there were 33 million families with children under the age of 18 as of 2020. At least one parent was employed in 88.5% of those families. That number jumped to 95.3% among married couples with children, and both parents were employed in over half (59.8%) of this segment. Millennials (now aged 24-40), currently the largest generation represented in the workforce that spans parenting years, have historically valued work-life balance and, since the pandemic began, have indicated its increased importance, along with flexibility in hours and location.

We analyzed data gathered in July 2020 by a U.S.-based business and technology newsletter that had surveyed subscribers (men and women across a wide range of industries and salary levels) about their plans to move over the next six months and their reasons for either moving or not moving. We focused on the parent responses in the sample — 150 cases, or 9% of the 1,618 valid nonmover responses — due to the unique needs and growing size of this segment of the workforce.

Parents Prioritize Community and Lifestyle

The data revealed two dominant factors that explain parents’ preferences for where to live: community embeddedness and replicable lifestyle qualities.

Community embeddedness. The extent to which individuals are enmeshed in their communities through close-knit relationships — which support family well-being — emerged as a key preference for parents. This was especially relevant for parents of school-age children in our sample.

People’s desire to build a life close to friends or family, having “roots,” and/or ensuring that their children are developing lifelong relationships often outweighs any other factors in considering a geographic move — including relocating for work. One parent identified extended family and a vibrant religious community as the main reasons his family opted not to relocate.

The emotional cost of relocation, such as disruptions in children’s friendships, also affects families’ willingness to move. One parent cited pandemic-era school requirements as a factor in deciding not to relocate: “It’s already hard enough that they can’t see their neighborhood friends in school, so moving away from our neighborhood would disrupt what normalcy they have now even more.” Schooling, specifically, was mentioned repeatedly, either in the context of moving to a community with “good schools” or not wishing to uproot children from their current schools.

Replicable lifestyle qualities. A checklist of desired attributes is also a driving force for parents weighing whether to move and, in our sample, choosing not to do so. While individuals’ checklists vary, dominant themes for most parents include tight community ties, a lower cost of living, good schools, low crime, and both indoor and outdoor space. Some of these attributes mattered to parents with children of all ages, not only those with school-age children. Values also played a role within our sample, with some parents purposefully choosing between communities that lean progressive or conservative.

We consider these lifestyle qualities replicable because of their possible fulfillment in more than one location. However, also important across our sample are the relational attachments connected to a given location, given that family, community, and/or school are consistently identified as significant factors for these parents when considering where to live.

How Companies Can Support Community

As companies examine the viability of current brick-and-mortar locations in a post-COVID-19 world, they may pay a cost for not embracing a new perspective on where work occurs. The pandemic has revealed the feasibility of remote work, and working parents increasingly have options to pursue jobs without leaving their community of choice. Many companies are now instituting work-from-home or work-from-anywhere policies or choosing to establish offices in locations where talent resides. For example, companies such as Facebook and Airbnb are establishing hiring hubs in cities like Atlanta to engage a diverse talent pool where it already exists rather than adhering to the traditional worker-relocation model.

What does this mean for companies, and how might business leaders respond in ways that resonate with working parents? Below are five recommendations.

1. Consider current working-parent preferences in company relocation or expansion criteria. While individual preferences can differ, most parents have a particular set of criteria in mind concerning where they wish to raise their children — a list companies can consider when determining new policies and decisions around the “where” of working. Whether parents acknowledge it or not, myriad locations are likely to possess the qualities they value, providing parents and companies with multiple geographic options when considering a move.

Surveying workers or mining the location data of your current workforce — particularly if any workers have moved over the past year — can inform whether and where future company locations are needed. For example, a pre-pandemic survey on office locations shows how worker views may differ from company assumptions: Although the majority of companies seem to think that locating their offices near dining options is important, most workers placed a higher priority on locating an office close to home.

Who are your high performers? What do their moves (or lack thereof) during the pandemic indicate about where you should open your next workspace? Is one central office in a specific city optimal for your organization, or do multiple cities or towns match your particular worker and company needs? Or is remote work an attractive way to accommodate diverse locational needs? Fatherly and Scary Mommy recently published their inaugural list of Best Places for Remote Working Parents, which showcases options that employers can tailor to parents. A bottom-up approach to relocation decisions can not only retain talent but inspire and attract similar high performers.

2. Embrace greater flexibility when adding locations, such as hub-and-spoke or flex-space models. Working remotely doesn’t necessarily mean working from home, and parents are an element of the workforce that can especially benefit from flexible work models. The case for multiple locations beyond a single headquarters is growing as companies recognize that geographic diversity attracts workforce diversity and also happens to make economic sense.

Tech companies such as Facebook, Airbnb, and Amazon are embracing this charge by opening decentralized hiring hubs and branches. Many organizations are finding cost-effective ways to establish “spokes” as coworking spaces recast themselves as flex spaces for enterprise companies. For example, this past November, Deloitte leased 35,000 square feet from WeWork for employee office space. Standard Chartered Bank went a step further and recently contracted with flex-space provider IWG to allow the majority of its employees the flexibility to work at any of IWG’s 3,000-plus locations worldwide.

3. Be creative around community, no matter your space. Current trends reveal that many workers appreciate a hybrid of both in-person and remote work. While hybrid arrangements are easily attained for workers living near headquarters or a satellite location, remote workers located elsewhere can feel isolated. Nimble organizations can find creative new ways to foster a sense of community for remote employees.

The role of community integrator, for example, isn’t a new idea; it’s just new to business. The role is already prevalent in health care and in organizations with public missions of wellness and inclusivity. Its overarching goal is to enable disadvantaged individuals to participate at the same level as their nondisadvantaged counterparts in community life. Translated to companies, the idea is to ensure that remote and dispersed workers are on an equal footing with onsite and headquartered workers.

Someone in the new role of community integrator could serve as an in-person company representative responsible for reaching out to clusters of remote workers — or even to individual remote workers — in order to engage them in organizational life. The CEO of Censys took an inspired approach by serving as a community integrator himself. He traveled among five different states to personally meet with employees working remotely during the pandemic, which he called his CEO Roadshow.

In-person events such as new-hire orientations, companywide town hall viewing parties, or coffee shop brainstorming sessions can all help build community, whether they are held inside or outside of an office. Ultimately, these opportunities for connection help build employees’ attachment to their workplace. Research shows positive outcomes for worker attachment and retention as employees become more embedded in their organizational communities by participating in shared activities and establishing networks.

4. Ensure that geographically “stuck” working parents have advancement opportunities. Some parents who feel tied to a certain geographic location might fear that their careers could become frozen in place as well. Historically, remote and satellite workers have been stereotyped as less promotable and less valuable than employees at headquarters. While this perspective has begun to shift during the pandemic, it’s important that leaders proactively engage in remote-enabled face time with offsite employees and to offer everyone equal opportunities for advancement — whether they are working in person, in a hybrid arrangement, or remotely. Track advancement rates to spot and stop any unjustified discrepancies in career opportunities between your remote and onsite employees.

Companies may consider making formal commitments and establishing policies to include remote workers in all office activities, along the lines of IBM’s Work From Home pledge taken by workers at the beginning of the pandemic. Some managers may require training on managing hybrid teams and ensuring that all team members maintain equal footing. Yelp is one of many companies acknowledging the potential for managers to fall into old habits once they return to the office. To remedy this, the company plans to actively monitor equity in remote worker advancement and provide equal opportunities for contributions by continuing to conduct meetings virtually.

5. Listen to your workforce. Implement feedback loops to ensure that you have a comprehensive understanding of employees’ needs and well-being, either through regular pulse surveys, immediate feedback loops via text following meetings, or small group or one-on-one virtual lunches with team members across departments. CEOs should leverage and encourage their executive teams to be their eyes and ears throughout the company to better understand the current status of front-line workers.

Colt Technology Services’ employee engagement strategy, as described in a Willis Towers Watson case study, reveals the potential payoff when companies effectively listen to employees. The pandemic presented Colt, a provider of bandwidth services, with a simultaneous surge in customer demand and the need to pivot its employees to remote work. It added all-hands meetings, an anonymous-question tool, and a pulse survey, which enabled the company to quickly understand how to help workers adapt and how the organization could successfully support workers’ well-being. Listening is particularly important now, as worker choice expands amid increasing remote work options amid pent-up worker churn.

The prevalence of remote work options unbundles job mobility from community stability and reframes community of choice as a competitive benefit companies must consider. While companies have larger talent pools to choose from if adopting permanent remote work policies, job seekers have more options available to them as well. Working parents stand to benefit from these expanding options and warrant specific company attention.

Many companies already provide useful resources for working parents, such as parental leave, support for child care, and flexible schedules. Support for community of choice is an emerging addition to this list. While some families may still choose to be near large employment hubs, the new opportunities for geographic flexibility may significantly shift where workers choose to work. Uncoupling work from geography may reduce the polarity of parents’ career and work decisions and perhaps even afford them more of the work-life balance most workers seek.