Checklist: How to Support Working Mothers in the Workplace

Quick look: Millions of mothers in America work, and many of them have specific preferences regarding their work schedules, employee benefits plans, and company cultures. To honor Mother’s Day, here’s a glimpse at what work is like for modern-day moms and how employers can fine-tune their policies and benefits packages to build an inclusive, family-friendly company culture.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 74% of mothers with children under age 18 work, and nearly 70% of those with children under age 6 are employed. With millions of moms juggling personal and professional priorities, employers have the opportunity to provide much-needed support and enhance their ability to attract and retain this valuable talent segment.

Let’s explore what work is like for mothers and what policies and employee benefits small businesses can consider offering to empower them.

What’s work like for mothers?

Multiple factors play into what work is like for moms. To understand how to best meet their needs, business leaders should first review recent data on employee benefits, work culture, and mental health trends for working mothers.

Employee benefits

Ovia Health by Labcorp recently published its third annual report on women’s and family benefit trends, Future of Family Friendly 2024: Benefits That Matter. The data highlights which benefits working women have, don’t have, or wish to have.

Key findings include:

• 94% say family benefits are very or extremely important
• 73% of those surveyed would leave their current role for a lateral move to a company with better family-focused benefits
• 56% desire easier-to-understand benefits
• 51% want mental health support
• 49% would like a more pumping-friendly work environment
• While 38% of employees would like alternative family-building support, very few have access to benefits for adoption (14%), surrogacy (5%), and foster parent support (7%)
• Only 31% of those surveyed have access to an employee assistance program (EAP), just 16% have access to lactation consulting, and 15% have access to family-building services

Company culture

Culture and employee satisfaction go hand in hand, and cultivating a family-friendly workplace can help employers better attract, retain, and provide support for working mothers

While significant strides have been made for women in the workplace, there is still room for further improvement. According to the American Association of University Women (AAUW), 23% of working parents say they’ve been treated like they aren’t committed to their work because they have children, and 17% report being passed over for an assignment due to their parental status. AAUW also reports that nearly 25% of working moms have turned down a promotion due to struggling to balance work and parenting, signaling the value a flexible work environment can provide.

The Ovia by Labcorp research mentioned above also found that 62% of respondents didn’t consider their employer family-friendly, and 71% wanted a more family-friendly workplace culture.

Mental health

While not localized to the workplace, the mental health challenges employees face have a significant impact on businesses; poor mental health is associated with decreased job performance, lack of engagement, increased absenteeism, and reduced physical and daily functioning capabilities.

Motherly’s most recent State of Motherhood report found that approximately half of mothers are burnt out by motherhood. Additionally, 46% seek therapy, with the top reasons for doing so being anxiety (32%), relationship issues (16%), postpartum concerns (15%), and depression (12%).

Checklist: The best ways to support working mothers in the workplace

Many mothers want (and need) to work, but now more than ever, they require an employer that can offer flexibility, a family-focused culture, and a benefits package. Here’s how small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) can best support working moms.

✓ Identify where you are

To most effectively assist your employees who are mothers, you must first understand what your workplace is like for them.

Take a look at your management team and determine if any working mothers hold those roles. If not, is that something you can improve upon?

It can also be helpful to use your HR platform’s reporting functions to examine retention rates for working moms and notice any relevant patterns. Are the mothers at your organization staying, or are they quitting, and why may that be? ExtensisHR’s DEI Dashboard can help by providing actionable data on pay equity, salary trends, employee turnover, promotions, and previous hires.

Business leaders can also administer anonymous employee pulse surveys to garner honest feedback and opinions about their workplace culture, employee benefits offerings, and more.

✓ Offer tailored, easy-to-understand benefits

The right benefits are more important than ever to working moms, and they can help small businesses distinguish themselves from larger competitors. As you plan your organization’s benefits package, consider the entire family lifecycle—from pregnancy to college—and provide benefits where needed.

To appeal to working moms (and dads), employers should consider offering the following family-friendly benefits:

• An inclusive family-forming support program that provides:
  • Access to benefits experts, fertility clinicians, emotional counselors, and lawyers
  • Discounted rates at fertility clinics and adoption and surrogacy agencies
  • Personalized care plans
  • Prescription ordering and delivery
  • Support and educational resources for every stage of growing a family
• A healthcare plan with a flexible spending account (FSA) that can be used to pay for childcare, including preschool, summer day camp, before- or after-school programs, and child or adult daycare.
• Mental health support, including access to an employee assistance program (EAP) and health insurance plans that cover mental health services. This is especially important when you consider that about 15% of new mothers develop clinical postpartum depression.
• Paid family leave, which is something that’s been shown to positively affect maternal health, paternal caregiving, health outcomes, and breastfeeding rates—however, as of May 2024, it’s only mandated in 13 states (California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Washington, Colorado, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, and Oregon) and the District of Columbia.* That means many new parents rely on their employers to provide paid leave, which employers should consider offering if feasible.
• Financial planning for college, including assistance with establishing a 529 college savings plan, something that can also help parents receive federal and state tax breaks, age-based plan options, prepaid tuition, and more.
• A breastfeeding support program that provides access to expert lactation consultants and tools like a mobile app to track feedings, connect with other new mothers, and more.

* Please note that paid family leave policies vary significantly from state to state. We encourage you to check your local laws and regulations to understand the specific provisions that apply to your situation. This blog provides general information and should not be taken as legal advice.

Communicating these benefits is just as important as offering them. When new hires are onboarded, they should be informed about these plans, and any benefit additions or updates should be communicated to all employees. Sometimes emails are missed, so offering internal webinars on especially significant changes can be helpful.

✓ Foster a welcoming office environment

Your staff should not only be equipped with benefits designed to help their families but should also experience a welcoming work environment and company culture.

To start, employers should provide a comfortable, private, and clean lactation room. This space doesn’t need to be fancy—a quiet area with a lockable door, comfortable chair, and refrigerator for breast milk would suffice and put new working moms at ease. It’s important to note any applicable laws regarding break time and space required for nursing mothers, such as the Providing Urgent Maternal Protections (PUMP) for Nursing Mothers Act.

Additionally, business leaders should encourage employees to talk about their families if they’re comfortable doing so. Making family life a welcome topic and facilitating discussions about parenting can make working mothers feel less alone. These conversations can also help mitigate any bias (whether conscious or unconscious) that working parents are less devoted to their jobs—something that can also be achieved by administering a course via an SMB’s learning and development platform.

Lastly, implementing a mentorship program greatly enriches every employee’s life, especially working moms. A properly executed program can foster relationships between mothers and provide them with a safe, vulnerable space to discuss work-life balance, their parenting and career journeys, and what it’s like to be women in the workplace.

✓ Provide flexibility

Life is busy, especially when children are involved. Employers should implement hybrid or remote work options for their employees if possible. This flexibility can enable working mothers take their children to appointments or pick them up from school without using their paid time off (PTO) but it expands beyond that, too.

According to Future Forum, 53% of workers who are dissatisfied with their company’s level of flexibility say they are burned out, versus 37% of those who are satisfied with their flexibility level. Additionally, 46% of women report being burned out compared to 37% of men. The research also found that a flexible work schedule is associated with a 39% increase in productivity and a 64% better ability to focus. Further, staff with flexible work arrangements are equally or more likely to feel connected to their immediate teams than fully in-office workers are and more likely to feel connected to their direct manager and the company’s core values. These statistics demonstrate that providing flexible working options, if possible, can significantly impact employees and the entire organization.

Please note that workplace flexibility and competitive employee benefits should be fair and equitable across all employees, and mental health issues like burnout can impact all workers. We do not wish to erase those experiences or realities by focusing just on working mothers.

Everything working mothers want—from one place

Between potential benefits and company culture changes, tailoring your workplace to better provide support for working moms can feel daunting, but you don’t need to tackle it alone.

Professional employer organizations (PEOs) specialize in providing small businesses with dedicated human resources (HR) support in crafting policies on paid family leave, lactation rooms, mentorship programs, and more. PEOs, like ExtensisHR, also administer and manage a variety of Fortune 500-level benefits, including perks designed to appeal to working parents, such as:

• Health insurance plans with mental health services and FSA options
• An inclusive family-forming support program
• A breastfeeding benefit plan, including an employer toolkit with information on milk expression policies, lactation room signage, and more
• College planning services, including cost calculators, information about different types of student aid, and access to 529 savings accounts

Together we can make the workplace more accommodating and welcoming to mothers. Contact the experts at ExtensisHR today to discover how you can better support working moms.