The following is a transcript of our podcast conversation with Dr. Anne Welsh. You can listen to the full episode on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
Sarah Wilkins
Hello and welcome to Humans Beyond Resources, an HR podcast by Reverb where we cover topics from culture to compliance. Reverb believes that every decision a leader makes reverberates throughout the organization, from hiring your first employee to training your entire workforce. We believe in building healthy, inclusive cultures that engage your team. I’m your host, Sarah Wilkins. Joining me today is Dr. Anne Welsh, a clinical psychologist, executive coach and consultant, and mother of four. Anne left her career at Harvard to build a practice supporting working parents in growing their careers and families through coaching and consulting. As a working parent myself, I’m really excited to chat with Dr. Welsh today. Welcome, Anne.
Dr. Welsh
Thank you. I’m so excited to be here.
Sarah Wilkins
Great. Will you start by sharing more about you and your work supporting working parents?
Dr. Welsh
Of course. I actually started my career as a psychologist doing research on the transition to parenthood. It was a really understudied transition at the time. One of my interests was in career development and transitions, and so it seemed like a great place to start. But newsflash, it did not actually prepare me for the transition to parenthood. When I had my first kid, I was surprised at how the transition felt for me and what a major shift it was, not instantaneous, but one that snuck up over time and trying to figure out the working identity and the parent identity and how those worked together. Then when I was pregnant with my second, I was working at Harvard and I decided I wanted a little more flexibility and I wanted a slightly longer leave. They were pretty inflexible with that, and so I decided to leave, which was pretty scary at the time, but it ended up all as well that ends well. For the past 15 years, I’ve been running my own practice supporting individuals through therapy and executive coaching and really in that working parenthood space for new parents, parents of older kids, as well as in leadership development and executive coaching. Then in more recent years, I’ve also moved into consulting with companies that maybe want to develop some bespoke policies to support and retain women and support and retain working parents in a way that reflects the unique values of that organization and their unique needs. I’ve been finding that, in particular, in a post -COVID world, there seems to be a larger gap between what working parents and what parents in general need and maybe what companies are doing, especially as they try to go back to pre -COVID policies and that there’s more need for support. In that, like I said, I do that executive coaching piece. I do something called parental leave coaching, which is also a specific coaching program supporting parents to be before they take their leave, during the leave, and then as they return to leave, which has a huge impact on retention. Then I also do workshops and policy review and policy development within an organizational level. Wow, I wish I knew about you
Sarah Wilkins
when I was returning from my leave or going out on it and making that transition. I’m so glad there’s someone like you to help. I know what you said around working parents or caregivers in general needing more flexibility or support and how some of the return to pre -COVID policies are affecting them. We see that in our work in HR as well, how companies can retain parents and caregivers and women. As we know, there’s a large number of women who left the workforce over the last three years. How can your work help maybe with the
Dr. Welsh
retention of women and working parents? I think some of the big issues that parents are facing is that lack of flexibility. In particular, parents that became parents during COVID, it was so hard for them. They’ve developed systems to have childcare around flexibility that then is not working, as I’ve seen increasingly so in just the past few months, workplaces returning to work. I think that retention piece is really important and the flexibility has to be there. Kids get sick. They get sick more now. Than they did in a pre -COVID world, there’s just more illness. Childcare shortages, childcare is exorbitantly expensive. Without that flexibility, when there’s maybe a gap or a sixth kid, it starts to feel impossible. It’s particularly challenging for women because typically, if there’s a couple and someone’s not going to work because of child or caregiving concerns, it’s going to be the person with the lower income. Given the pay gap between men and women, that is typically the woman, not always, but typically. It’s important from supporting working parents and supporting women in general and retaining them.
Sarah Wilkins
I think this leads well into you having shared with me that you feel there’s a secret gift of parenting and that it can really maybe help organizations. Can you share a little bit more about that secret gift and how maybe organizations can leverage that?
Dr. Welsh
I think historically, we think about parenting and working in separate silos. The ideal worker is based on a typically male nine to five job with support at home and that ideal mother, if you will, is at home full time and never the two should cross paths. Yet, that’s not reality and it’s not true. There’s actually so much that you gain in parenting that you bring to the table at your workplace. Even on a biological level, when you have a child, and this is true of men and women, not just birthing parents, your brain changes in a way that makes room for increased empathy, increased communication skills, or increased ability to read others. These are all things we want in our leaders. Workplaces are missing out if they don’t recognize this incredible opportunity for learning. I say that parenthood is like an ultimate leadership crash course and really, you get skills developed in three broad categories. One is those people skills, empathy, teamwork, emotional intelligence, communication, collaboration. You are doing all of those things every moment that you are a parent. The next bucket would be things around hard work and productivity. You become a parent and you have suddenly three million things that need to be done at any given moment. You have to be really efficient with your time. You have to be very persistent. You have to be patient as a parent. Anyone who’s tried to get a toddler to do anything knows that. You have to figure out how to prioritize and make quick decisions. Then the last bucket is more of that big picture thinking, almost that mental load piece that we hear a lot about in caregiving these days. It’s things like anticipating needs, problem solving, project management, multitasking, creativity. I just listed a whole lot of skills that any employer would be lucky to have. As a parent, you make leaps and bounds of growth in these areas. If companies recognize this and then celebrate it, A, that just creates a culture where working parents want to be there. First of all, it just makes workers, I think, feel more appreciated and they’re more likely to stay. Also, as an employer, you can help working parents name that bridge. You can help them see where they’re accessing all of these skills and then help them really tangibly figure out how they apply at work. This is actually where coaching can come in super helpful because A, sponsor coaching says to the employee, hey, we’re investing in you and we care about you. Also, it can be that really personalized process of, hey, let’s think about what skills are you using at home and how do we really, really clearly apply those to the workplace. All of those soft skills that I just listed are getting a lot more attention in the leadership literature. This is just yet another way to grow them. Yeah, I like that. I like hearing the
Sarah Wilkins
superpower and the secret gift of the learning and everything you learn as a parent and leveraging it versus making it a hindrance. I think in my work roles prior to Reverb, parenting was a bit of a hindrance to your career, your ability to be seen or doing things right. I don’t feel that way anymore, which is really great. I want more working parents to feel the same way as well. I love how you shared that, all the great skills that come from parenting.
Dr. Welsh
I think parents don’t even always realize it. Companies don’t, but I don’t think we, until you stop to think about it, realize it as parents. One of the things that I hear a lot from parents is I feel like I’m failing across the board. I can’t be the employee I want and the mom or the dad I want to be. Really, there is actually a lot of overlap between the two and ways in which you’re growing and you don’t even know it. Oftentimes, I help people look back and say, yeah, but look where you were and where you are. Also, you’re actually doing a pretty amazing job.
Sarah Wilkins
You may be hit on this a little bit, but what are the five most common struggles that you hear from working parents?
Dr. Welsh
Yeah. One is, like I just mentioned, that feeling of failure across the board. I think both, again, at home and at work because of that sensation that there’s just more to do than I can ever do in one given moment. Another common one is that the sense of either I miss my old self or kind of relatedly, work is the one place where I feel competent. I think that’s one that doesn’t get spoken about too often, but a lot of times, parenting is new and scary. As a species, as adults, we’re not really very good at being comfortable learning new things. You’re used to learning as a child. You don’t learn and really struggle with things so much as an adult. I think sometimes when we have kids, work is that place where like, oh, right, I know what I’m doing here. I know how to lead this meeting or give this presentation. I can nail it here if I have the time. I don’t have the slightest idea how to handle X, Y, or Z at home. The other thing, and the next two are pretty related. One is that this feeling of being overwhelmed. I think a lot of people that I work with are pretty high achievers, and they’re used to being able to get everything done. They’re used to kind of effort in leads to progress, and that’s not how it works with parenting. Honestly, it’s not how it always works with working parenting, right? Things come up, things get in the way, and that can feel really hard and overwhelming. And then relatedly, a lot of parents talk about not feeling supported, and that’s true at home for sure, but also at work. And often it can be something like, you know, my manager doesn’t really support me. I get flack for, you know, leaving for daycare pickup by 530, even though I’m signing on and working, you know, again from nine o ‘clock to 11 o ‘clock at night or what have you. But that’s a huge complaint is when there isn’t a lot of support and not really knowing how to broach that. And then the other big piece, and I think this connects to that flexibility piece we were talking about, is that a sense of like, I don’t know how to fit in any sort of self -care anymore, right? That there’s no more flexibility around when can I go to the gym or when can I, you know, just take five minutes to have a deep breath or eat my lunch not in front of my computer. And that’s the piece I’m seeing kind of people grapple with even more now as there’s a return to in -person work because that commute takes that anything that they did have for self -care away. Like that’s the self -care is the first thing to go when you’re now back in your car for an hour or two a day. And so that’s, that one’s coming up quite a bit these days.
Sarah Wilkins
On the flip side then, how can organizations use policies or coaching or other things to help reduce these struggles for working parents?
Dr. Welsh
Yeah, I know I’ve said it a lot, but I will continue to hammer on the flexibility piece because I think it’s so important. But I think thinking of flexibility not, it doesn’t have to be, workers could just do whatever they want and show up whenever they want. And although that could be great, but that there is some understanding that work can be done at home and also providing like the tools for asynchronous work, the technology, the support to allow for that, the communication patterns. And that things might be a little bit seasonal, right? As a great example, I’m in Massachusetts and schools don’t go back until after Labor Day around here, but college students are all back in school. And so if you had a college student as your nanny, you don’t have any more childcare or, and there are only a few camps, right? So I know even for me that a lot of my working parents may not be able to meet for the next couple of weeks because it’s just a bit of a scramble. So kind of being aware of things like that, that are coming down the pike for your parents, or that kids are going to be sick and that’s probably going to happen more often between November and March and kind of having some flexibility around working from home for those reasons. So that kind of flexibility is number one. And relatedly, I think really having a culture of trust and respect for your employees your employees want to show up and do their best. And your working parents, I guarantee they are putting in the effort and want to do well. They are not trying to shirk responsibility. And so if you have a culture of trusting that, they’re going to live up to your trust. And it’s just going to feel better. Again, it’s going to create that culture where people are invested in the organization and their own work, whereas micromanaging tends to eat away and deteriorate that exact feeling. The other piece, obviously, and I know you guys have spoken it on the show before, but having really strong leave policies, making sure that they’re gender neutral and that people actually are encouraged to take it. I think I’ve definitely seen companies where it’s not gender neutral, but even where the policy is that any parent can take it. And in practice, men don’t or it’s kind of discouraged. And the thing is, men taking leave is vital to evening out that playing field for women. If you have a gendered policy or even if it’s just a gendered way in which people use leave, it kind of takes dads out of the equation. It says they don’t matter. Child care is women’s stuff and it’s women’s problem to solve. And it really hurts. It hurts all women, not just working parents. Another one is child care benefits. I know not every company is big enough to afford them, but if there is some way to afford it, I think child care benefits can be really, really, really important. And then the last piece, I know you mentioned coaching. I think that that can be so important. Parental leave coaching, as I mentioned, is really specific to that transitional time. I’ve talked with so many parents who struggle to come back after leave because not only are you still adjusting to parenthood, you’re adjusting now again to working parenthood. And it’s kind of this double whammy. And if you’re not supported, it can feel like just an impossible task. And so even if you’re a company that occasionally has, you’re a 20 person company and only one person ever in your entire existence has gotten pregnant, that’s still a service you can offer, even if some of these bigger picture policies aren’t
Sarah Wilkins
accessible. And then on the child care benefits, what are some things you’ve seen with companies you’ve worked with or people you’ve worked with that have been really supportive and maybe accessible to some companies to kind of bring on?
Dr. Welsh
Yeah. So a newer one I’ve seen is just a stipend. It doesn’t ever cover it. I mean, again, if you’re someone that’s paying for child care, you know it’s a college tuition. But it’s at least something. The other service, when it’s done well, that can be really helpful is backup care of some sort. Again, that’s one that can be done, executed really well and executed really poorly. When it’s done poorly, it’s inaccessible. There’s never any spaces. There’s only spaces if you plan ahead. And sometimes that’s not how backup care works. The idea of being a backup. But again, if it’s done well, it can mean that, oh, hey, nanny’s out, we have someone else to fill in. Or, hey, my daycare is closed for vacation, but this daycare is open. And so we can have child care for our toddler or what have you. And then, you know, again, bigger companies can have child care on site, right? Like that’s huge. I get that that is not accessible for a lot of smaller organizations. But if we’re talking about bigger organizations, that can be like a massive, massive support for your working parents.
Sarah Wilkins
Yeah, absolutely. And then on the kind of return, I know, having gone through it myself, like it’s quite, quite a lot to come back from, you know, a parental leave. And obviously the coaching is great. And have you seen anything else or would recommend anything else that companies could do to make that transition smoother? You know, whether that be part time and working up or, you know, whatever those things may be that could be really supportive?
Dr. Welsh
Yeah, I mean, I think, A, even if you can’t make any change to policy, ask, right? Like make it a conversation with your employee. So that’s kind of like the low hanging fruit. But yeah, I think graduated returns are great options. Because it does, you know, even just again, if you’re a parent, you know, this getting out the door with your kids in the morning and daycare drop off and the stuff that comes with it, like that just takes you a little while to get into the swing of it, it becomes routine, but it’s not routine from the beginning. And so if there’s maybe a shorter work day, or a shorter work week for a longer period when people come back, or if there’s a policy of not scheduling meetings before you know, on that person’s calendar before 10am, just in case drop off as a disaster, you know, if that’s an option, or, you know, an extended work from home policy, right, especially if it’s trying to nurse, then that actually makes breastfeeding easier. So you can play around with that flexibility piece I mentioned, to ease that transition. The other thing I think that is really helpful is making sure that managers have some sort of training. I think the tendency is that people essentially avoid what makes them uncomfortable to talk about. And so you end up with people who kind of think, Oh, I don’t know if I’m supposed to mention the baby or not, or what I’m supposed to say. So I just won’t say anything. But that leaves the new parent just feeling like I was just did anybody even miss me? Did it matter that I was gone? I just went through this huge thing, and no one’s willing to talk to me about it, it can feel really lonely and isolating. So if you can have some kind of, you know, again, it doesn’t have to be hours and hours and hours, but a little bit of manager training on, hey, what what are we supposed to do here? What are the right things to say? How can we support our folks returning from leave? I think that can actually go a long way.
Sarah Wilkins
I love that. Yeah, training managers, I think that’s so important, because they’re the, you know, the one that that employee sees and, you know, the most and, as we know, you know, people leave managers and not necessarily companies. And so bolstering up your managers with some good kind of training and how they can support people returning is a great idea. What you know, I guess we’re kind of nearing the end now. So what final parting thoughts? Would you like to leave with our listeners?
Dr. Welsh
Yeah, you know, I think that work and parenting, you know, as I mentioned earlier, are inherently entwined. And, and I think that that connection really shifted through COVID, right? It’s like a wall came down. And there was more COVID did horrendous things. But in terms of that mixture of work and parenting, there had to be a new level of, of flexibility, of resiliency, of humanity, right. And my hope is that we can hold on to the good that came from that and improve work life integration going forward. And to help parents and organizations see those leadership skills that you grow with, with parenting, you know, so if you are a listening and you’re a founder or CEO or someone with power, I’d love to talk with you about how we can support working parents at your company. If you’re not a decision maker, but this all still feels aligned. I’d love to talk to you about who to bring on who are those those stakeholders, and if maybe you’re not any of those those buckets, maybe you’re an employee, and you have no say, and you’re just a working parent or a parent to be and you just are thinking, I’m overwhelmed. I’m in that category of I have all of those five concerns you listed. In those cases, I’d also love to hear from you, right? You know, I do offer XAID coaching, and I’m also launching a working mothers group coaching program in January, that offers support both kind of directly as well as that community of other working parents that get it. So you know, no kind of no matter what level you’re at, there’s help, and we can do it better. And I guess that’s kind of the mission I’m here on, right?
Sarah Wilkins
That’s great. Thank you so much. And I’m so glad that you’re out there on this mission to support parents. So thank you so much. Of course. Thank you for having me. Thank you for listening to this episode of Humans Beyond Resources. Visit ReverbPeople .com to find free resources, subscribe to our newsletter, and connect with our team. If you haven’t already, subscribe to stay up to date on all of our upcoming episodes. We look forward to having you as part of our community.
