The question we’re hearing most from HR leaders right now is: how can I best support my employees who are parents? What kind of gaps in care are employees who are pregnant experiencing? How can we drive down healthcare costs? What types of support, resources, benefits, healthcare, and more are parents looking for right now?
As we navigate a world without a playbook, we can help you fill in the blanks by sharing what we know about what women and families need right now, plus what we know from top HR teams who are adapting in different ways.
Here’s what we’re hearing from leading companies for working parents.
Trend #1: Filling in gaps in care for pregnant or newly postpartum employees is especially critical as employers focus on costs and long-term health outcomes.
Even in normal times, HR and Benefits leaders are focused on pregnant employees as a particularly vulnerable population from a health and retention perspective—in terms of access to care, driving positive outcomes, and lowering costs. Maternity spend is typically one of the top three healthcare costs for employers, based on our experience, and the latest research reveals that these costs have climbed by 50 percent since 2008. This is in large part due to the growing number of C-sections: in the U.S., approximately one-third of babies are born via C-section, while the World Health Organization recommends a rate closer to 10-15 percent. And C-sections are not linked to better health outcomes for women or babies.
With the COVID-19 pandemic and the many shifts in our daily life, more and more pregnant and postpartum employees have been turning to their HR teams for help navigating their care, getting answers to their questions, tapping into benefits, understanding their options for delivery, and accessing doctors and specialists. Many OB-GYNs have adapted telehealth appointments as part of a typical prenatal care schedule, and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) and leaders in the community are considering how this pandemic can help redesign prenatal care long-term to benefit both providers and patients.
What we’re hearing most from pregnant and postpartum women is that they’re looking for answers to their questions, experts to help guide them through this period, and a virtual support system. They want help tapping into a Doula to talk through their birth plan; to connect with an OB-GYN to answer their questions when their own doctor isn’t available; to be able to meet virtually every week with a Mental Health Provider who specializes in the prenatal or postpartum period; or to talk to a Lactation Consultant in the middle of the night.
What does this all mean? Prenatal and postpartum care delivery will be forever changed by this pandemic, and that will ultimately be a good thing for your employees, and for your bottom line. But lowering and managing maternity costs will remain a major challenge, and it requires personalized, on-demand virtual care and support for women and families.
Trend #2: Supporting working parents should be a top priority for every company right now.
Employee retention over the next few months may be a huge challenge for companies with a high population of working parents: At least 14% of women are considering quitting their jobs because of the additional load at home due to COVID-19 (Syndio). The reality is likely much higher, as women are struggling to balance the emotional, physical, and mental load of keeping a family and a home healthy, happy, functional, busy, clean, and more.
“As we navigate a world without a playbook, we can help you fill in the blanks by sharing what we know about what women and families need right now, plus what we know from top HR teams who are adapting in different ways.”
Also not surprising is that working parents are struggling to remain engaged and productive at work: 81% of employed moms said their ability to engage effectively at work has been negatively impacted (Working Mother).
Make it a best practice to survey your employees regularly about what they need from you. Ask them questions about flexible working hours, childcare, mental health, and access to pediatrics support. Tap into your employee resource groups to make recommendations and share ideas with you for what would make the biggest difference for working parents. And start taking action: communicate out what you’ve heard, the types of support your parents are looking for, and get buy-in from your leaders on policies, action items, or creative virtual events you can start implementing immediately.
%20(1).png)
.svg)
.jpeg)
.jpeg)
