In 2018, over 41 million U.S. workers were caring for at least one child under the age of 18 in their home, according to the nonprofit public policy organization Brookings Institution.
The pandemic forced many of these parents to not only adjust to fully-remote work environments, but also serve as unofficial homeschool teachers for their children.
Benefits Manager Rahab Hammad said leaders at social media platform Snap recognized that parents might be experiencing amplified challenges during this tough time. So the company made sure its parent-focused benefits — like 80 annual hours of subsidized backup child care and six weeks of fully-paid family medical leave — were still available and accessible.
Snap sought to provide still more resources to support its employees who are also parents. Hammad said the company held a number of open forums where parents discussed what they needed. Snap then made efforts to offer support inline with what parents found most effective.
“Our goal is to co-create solutions to help team members get adequate access to care and resources,” Hammad said.
The input from parents led Snap to develop resources like online engagement tools for children, an employee resource group (ERG) for parents and more discussion channels for parents to share their experiences.
What were the first steps you took to help working parents at Snap transition to remote work?
Our first step was to make sure that the benefits and support we offer parents translated to a virtual environment well. We also made sure to communicate that these resources were available, because they may need something different when transitioning to working from home.
It’s important for us to understand the varying situations parents working from home are experiencing.”
How are you working with the parents on your team to understand what they need right now, and what came of those discussions?
We recognize there is no “one size fits all” solution. So it’s important for us to understand the varying situations parents working from home are experiencing so we can provide stronger support.
We started by setting up a series of meetings open to all Snap parents for them to share the challenges they are facing. From there, we created impactful solutions, like online engagement for kids at home and mental health support. We also know how important it is for parents to connect with one another, so we created the SnapParents ERG. The group hosts virtual opportunities for parents to share with each other via online forums and a practice we call Council.
Join the Council
How has this experience changed the way you think about the perks and benefits you provide parents at your company?
New work arrangements require new benefits frameworks and changes to the way we work to support one another. This moment in time has shown us that we can be flexible in where, how, and when we work together. We expect some of that flexibility will persist when we return to the office.
