Welcome back to another episode of HR Insights: The Podcast! Stuart Elliott sits down with two guests this week from Parents@work, the CEO and Founder, Sarah Meier and Partner, Celine Hendrick. They join Stuart to talk about the company’s aim to transform workplace culture for parents through Peer Coaching, Personal Development and Communication.
Sarah Meier is originally from South Africa and began her journey into empowering parents at work after having children of her own and experiencing loneliness when going back to work. She founded Parents@work around six years ago to help tackle these feelings and alleviate the stress of returning to a job as a new parent. Belgian born Celine Hendrick joined the company a year and a half ago and having faced similar difficulties when having her own children, was keen to join an organization that was solely focused on easing this transition.
In this episode, Stuart, Sarah and Celine talk about Parent@work’s mission to design bespoke programmes for different organizations to support new parents in returning to work, as well as encouraging them to find comfort in expressing their goals and future career plans within their organizations. They also discuss the importance of building a family-friendly environment to maximize hard work and loyalty amongst their workers.
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Key Time Stamps:
- 1:30 – Intro into Sarah Meier
- 4:55 – Intro into Celine Hendrick
- 17:55 – What are the main challenges for working parents today?
- 21:00 – Gender discrepancy for parents at work
- 26:40 – How companies can invest in people and do more for parents at work
- 28:40 – How to have empathy for working parents
- 33:05 – How parents fit into talent strategies within organizations
- 37:00 – Advice for people putting off having a family in case of career progression
- 42:50 – Parents@work’s three key processes
- 46:20 – Advice for companies to improve on their treatment of working parents
