how to change a company culture that has been treating parents and non-parents differently

by Alison Green on May 28, 2025

A reader writes:

I recently accepted a new job where I will be managing a newly created team. I have been a manager before, but this new job will be a new challenge. The team I am managing has been tasked with leading a culture change in the company.

The company has had many employees leave. In some cases, they left without another job lined up or took a job somewhere else with less pay or a lower title. Most gave little or no notice and left on poor terms. It’s been a problem for a long time, but things have been getting worse recently. Some former employees did agree to exit interviews but all of the ones who left over the problems had the same complaints:

* Parents receiving preference when it comes to time off requests over people who aren’t parents, and in some cases people without children having their time off requests denied or rescinded to accommodate their colleagues who have children
* Parents being allowed more time off, shorter hours some days, or being allowed to leave early some on Fridays while people who don’t have children are not
* Parents being given preference in work assignments, being allowed to do less work, or being held to lower metrics and standards than people without children
* Parents being allowed to leave early or to work from home some days to accommodate appointments and other child-related activities, even though almost all job duties can only be done on site, while people without children are not allowed to leave early for any reason, or to work from home at all and are made to pick up the slack for parents who are not in the office
* Discrepancies in things like the amount of time off, or other perks and in at least one alleged case pay between those who are parents and those who are not

After I accepted the offer I was told that in addition to retention issues and resignations there are legal issues, since where we are it is illegal to discriminate based on family status (including whether someone does or does not have children) and apparently the company has gotten into hot water over this.

Upper management and the board of directors have recognized this as a widespread problem which can’t be ignored any longer. My understanding is that there have been some changes at the top that allowed this to happen. The company is large and has hundreds of employees, so change is not as easy as sending a memo and the people at the top want improvement and permanency.

I’m a parent so I appreciate a company trying to make things easier for parents. (I am fortunate that my husband is self-employed and can dictate his own schedule, so he is able to take care of anything that comes up with our child while I am at work. I recognize not everyone has the luxury of child related issues and emergencies not affecting them at work the way I do.) However, I also do not agree with doing it on the backs of people who don’t have children.

On my team, I am the manager and have three co-leads under me. One is a parent and two are not. (Additionally, two of the co-leads are lawyers.) There will be a diverse group of employees hired for the team. The goal is to create a better culture and create balance between parents and those without children. Do you have any advice on how to change a culture?

The imperative here is less about changing the culture and more about changing policy and practice. This is a case where if you change the policies and practices, the culture should follow in time.

To start, anyone with management responsibilities in the company needs to hear — clearly, firmly, and immediately — that the company’s policies and practices around family status have changed and that going forward parents and non-parents must be treated without distinction from each other. Then spell out what that means:
* Time-off requests need to be considered without regard to family status. Parents don’t get preference over non-parents, and parents’ time off doesn’t bump the time off of non-parents.
* If a manager offers flexible schedules, shorter hours on some days, or the ability to work from home, that can’t be a special perk for parents; it needs to be offered to everyone within the same job category. (Define “same job category” as meaning similar roles or similar performance level — i.e., work factors, not parental status.)
* Assignments must be given without regard to family status.
* Performance must be assessed without regard to family status.
* Salary, perks, and other benefits must be allocated fairly and without regard to family status.

Explain why, of course: the legal liability, first and foremost, but also the unfairness past policies created for non-parents … unfairness that resulted in your company losing good employees and putting you at a competitive disadvantage with other companies in your field, as well as the human cost to non-parents who have families and non-work lives that were being treated as unworthy of concern or support.

Sometimes when benefits are made more equitable, the group that used to get special privilege feels they’re losing something. You should explain that this is about ensuring the company is supporting everyone, whereas before it was only supporting some people.

The company also needs to explain to managers that because this is a change in how things were done previously — and because the past practices were illegal  — there will be more oversight in these areas for a while. For example, you’ll be monitoring how these practices are getting implemented, soliciting feedback from employees, and generally acting to ensure that the commitment the company is making is being carried out.

And then you need a system in place to do that. Depending on the scope of your role and your authority to poke around, that could include anything from meeting with managers to dig into the specifics of how these things are playing out on their teams to interviewing a selection of employees on each team to find out what their recent experience has been.

Importantly, though, this message needs to come from the top. Upper management needs to make it clear that they want the change, and it’s not just something by driven by your newly created team. They should explain that they’re personally empowering your team to be their eyes and ears (and voice) on this, but this is coming from them, they’re personally committed to the change, and they will be holding everyone in the company accountable to it. Otherwise it’s going to be a much, much harder battle. (Also, if that happens not to be true about the commitment from the top, run! You can’t do this kind of job if they’re not fully bought in.)

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    1. Anny*

      YES!! As a caregiver to a father who has dementia, the previous policies would me that I wouldn’t be accommodated for my caregiving responsibilities simply because I have no children. That would leave me walking out the door.

      1. Eldritch Office Worker*

        As you should. These policies are incredibly short sighted, even if well-intentioned.

        1. Arrietty*

          I struggle to see how it can be well-intentioned that parents got better work assignments. My 3 year old has never remotely been affected by which project I was working on. The other stuff, sure, you could argue it was about a greater need (you’d be wrong, because everyone has reasons why flexibility is useful for them, but at least there’s some logic) but this one? Totally irrelevant and straight up discrimination.

          1. Eldritch Office Worker*

            I think it depends on what those assignments entail and what makes them desirable. If it’s about the hours they require (either amount or time of day), getting opportunities to make up for training deficiencies due to other flexing, or being easier, then that would follow the same logic as the other tradeoffs.

      2. StarTrek Nutcase*

        As someone without children OR a family member in need of my care, the previous policies would have me walking. I don’t care WHY someone gets benefits I don’t or WHY I’m required to do their work. Employees are hired to do a job, and pay & benefits/perks shouldn’t be determined by their personal lives. I (F) am old enough to have dealt with blatant gender hiring & pay inequities – theory that men supported families so deserve jobs over women, and jobs held by men should pay better because again men supported families (assumed wives didn’t really need to work & single women had few expenses).

      3. AnotherOne*

        so much.

        the fact that in the midst of our busy season, it means so much that I was able to ask to be full-time work from home for a few weeks so I could fly out of state so I could stay with my dad because I got a last minute ‘dad wants me there while he recovers from surgery.’

        and my offices only request was could I wait to leave until the weekend.

        no one in my friend group asks why I stay at my job after the past 2 years.

        1. Freya*

          My boss has done similar things for all kinds of family emergencies, involving parents, spouses, and pets. She just asks that we get our work done and let her know early if we’re struggling so she can reallocate tasks appropriately.

          When my mastiff needed stitches (chased a cat down the side of the house, bent the gas meter with his ribs and broke a fence paling with his face) and couldn’t be left alone for hours until the cone of shame was off because the cone was too wide to fit through the biggest doggy door available, and he needed someone to take him outside at regular intervals to pee, boss took all of 5 seconds to approve me WFH for the week. I know she would do no less if I needed to fly interstate to deal with something for my parents.

      4. OMB, Bees*

        Similar for my time helping my mom until I could get her into a care home. Tho I worked fewer days unpaid in my case, but still a necessary “perk” compared to full time work

    5. ICodeForFood*

      Yes, we defiitely need an update as to how this goes… Hoping it goes well, OP!

    6. Judy*

      Doesn’t this sound like the company someone in wrote in about? On her way out a colleague told her the company secret about how parents in the company got more PTO, WFH, left for soccer games without making up the time, even a higher 401K match??

  2. learnedthehardway*

    Sounds like the letter writer is joining as the head or a senior management level in the Legal department – if so, they have a unique ability to really make the case for a culture change across the organization.

    I would loop in the head of HR, the head of Legal (if that isn’t the OP), and build a game plan from there. If this is something that is a company-wide problem, then it will take a broad range of senior level stakeholders to change, and HR policies have to be the starting point. After that, manager training and some change management. Then enforcement.

  3. Joan of Snark*

    All these changes OP’s been hired to implement are things leadership could have done on their own but chose not to. I really hope they have OP’s back, but I expect there is a reason they never did anything themselves and are now bringing in outside help to fix it; I would bet good money there is at least one person high up in the company who thinks parents *should* be getting preferential treatment and is fighting this change.

    2. Hannah Lee*

      Yeah, I hate to be cynical but this does read like they’re bringing in OP to “fix” this but someone somewhere at a high level is not on board. Otherwise they would have already just fixed it through their existing structure.

      I’m always a wary when a company brings in an external hire, especially when it’s something human resource policy related. This is a major change in how every manager in every workgroup has been operating, for years, apparently (long enough that multiple employees were negatively impacted, got grumpy, couldn’t get any relief, got fed up and quit)

      Unless this a 100% driven,visibly, from the top down, in a unified push from the executive team, OP’s got an uphill battle. All the “but it’s the law” from a new team that’s not in the revenue generating chain of command is not going to prevent individual managers doing things the way they’ve always done some out of resistance and some just because it’s the culture and they’re not paying attention.

      1. PegS*

        Agreed. And I think companies often misunderstand how to enact a “culture change.” I love Alison’s accurate reframing of this as requiring a policy and practice change that will lead to the culture shift.

      2. RC*

        The fact that “oh by the way, this might be illegal, ha ha you can fix that though, right?” came after the offer was accepted is… not a great sign IMO.

    3. Midwestern Communicator*

      As a communication’s project manager, leadership putting money & a team behind redoing company culture is them doing something about it. It sounds like they have a good team from OP’s letter.

      A lot of leaders don’t have the capacity to fix this kind of culture issue. I agree though that OP should make sure she has leadership support – and consistently check in with them on progress and have talking points for them.

      But as someone who has been tasked with creating culture change, it’s quite difficult.

      1. Me, Myself and Fries*

        A friend told me culture change is very difficult because you can’t swap out all the policies or all the people. Op should prepare for a period where disgruntled parents leave, and then hopefully a stasis once all employees are treated equally. Hopefully, everyone gets some grace around personal issues, not “nobody can ever leave early because we used to do that and got in trouble.” Godspeed OP.

        1. Dido*

          Yeah those parents might change their mind real quick when they go interviewing and realize no other company is going to break the law to appease them

          1. Mad Scientist*

            Unfortunately it seems like they might actually find other companies who are willing to break the law to appease them! (Especially since this is illegal at the state level and not the federal level, if I understand correctly)

        2. Ellie*

          Maybe, but as a parent myself, this former policy would have driven me up the wall. I don’t want any of my single, hard-working co-workers being denied the flexibility to take care of their own needs, or their parents, or even their pets. I’d feel like the worst person on earth leaving early for parent teacher interviews, when the person sitting next to me can’t leave early to get their root canal taken care of.

          Alison’s wording around supporting everyone would resonate with me strongly. Making sure upper management is on board with the changes is key though – it has to be a complete change, for everyone, with no exceptions.

    4. Sloanicota*

      I had the exact same thought. If you’re talking culture change, it matters what individuals in power are behind or against the status quo. If you don’t figure out how the company got into this weird place, which is apparently much more out-of-balance than the average company, you will not make meaningful change. In my experience, the answer is almost always that somebody in a leadership role set it up this way for their own reasons. You need to find those people and make sure they’re on board.

      1. Grumpy Elder Millennial*

        Good point. Trying to figure out the forces that created the situation could be really important in figuring out how to change things.

    5. Leenie*

      I agree that caution is warranted. But, at the same time, the LW said that her understanding was that there were changes in management. So it sounds like this newly constituted upper management is doing something about it, by bringing in the LW. Only time will tell, but hopefully that means they actually do want to see this change, and will visibly support it.

    6. Cacofonix*

      I’m in this field and it’s quite common to see leadership fail to see what may appear to be minor cracks and then not having the skills or time to pull themselves out when they finally realize that it’s too far gone. Many are otherwise good leaders with good intentions. Executives are attuned to risk management and this one escaped them.

      It’s a lot of work to turn the ship around – look at the work effort that will be required to follow Allison’s suggestions. At least they have the good sense to hire people to help them, but the execs still need to own and lead all changes the OP’s team prove are required. Although they don’t seem to have hired an experienced person to lead it, that too can be overcome. OP should run if the execs don’t own and communicate policy changes, including holding managers accountable. Were I OP, I’d literally require sign-off of execs commitment once I presented an early plan.

    7. Cabbagepants*

      and/or there are parents who would quit (or threaten loudly to quit) that senior mgmt doesn’t want to part with.

    8. Pay no attention...*

      Absolutely. This doesn’t even read as a culture change to me. As Alison says, create a policy and ensure that it’s followed. BUT, I’m guessing that the leadership actually wants to continue doing it this way, but thinks there’s a magic way to not get into legal trouble or have high turnover if only the “culture” would change — ie. non-parents would just accept it.

    9. Grumpy Elder Millennial*

      Yeah, my biggest concern was whether the LW is being given the tools and authority needed to be successful at doing this. Senior leadership may talk a good game, but what really matters is how they behave. My assumption is that the LW is the head of a group who will put together a set of new policies and a change management plan, which senior leadership will endorse or not. Be alert to the possibility that senior leadership will try to water things down during the process, potentially to the point of not being able to achieve their stated objective. Or they let the changes go through, but refuse to hold anyone accountable for breaking the new policies. I hope that doesn’t happen, just be aware that it might.

    10. LL*

      yes, exactly, I dont understand why they had to create a new role for this. Also, is OP also part of upper management? Because it doesn’t sound like it to me and that’s going to affect how well this works.

    11. Oregonbird*

      This was a simple fix to *current* legal standards. By throwing big money and multiple bodies at a basic policy change, I’m seeing this as a short term smokescreen. This new department might be set up to catalog a cage fight everyone will lose, with perks vanishing into profits. Blame will fall on OP etc. the ‘new culture’ will follow expected, upcoming new federal guidelines – women shouldn’t work, I imagine – and that’s a lot of hard work by good people that could be turned against them. Admittedly, I’m really not trusting anything these days that involves name-dropping ‘culture’ as the issue and the solution both.

  4. I should really pick a name*

    Make it clear to employees that if their time off is cancelled in favour of time off for a parent, they can come to your team without facing retaliation (and make sure that’s true).

    1. Annony*

      Make sure that their is a formal, trackable system for time off requests and approvals. That way you can review if time off is being denied to non-parents more than parents and spot check any time off cancellations. It should be rare and a big deal to cancel someone’s approved time off unless the employee is the one who requested it be cancelled.

      1. Pastor Petty Labelle*

        this. there needs to be a system that can be reviewed. because some managers are still going to give preferential treatment to parents. Make sure you have an ability to fix this, not only with regards to fixing the leave, but holding the managers accountable, up to and including training, progressive discipline and even firing.

      2. Sloanicota*

        Yeah in my opinion everytime a manager cancels or declines a time off request, that should trigger a quick HR scan. Is it happening disproportionally to some teams / individuals and why?

        1. Anonym*

          Really good point. There needs to be a policy change, and there need to be systems to enforce it. Tracking is vital to enforcement.

        2. Not Crazy Cat Lady*

          Yes! And while I don’t normally favor the idea that someone needs to be fired over everything, this would be the situation for a landmark firing.

      3. Grumpy Elder Millennial*

        Great point. Having a formal, trackable system means you can look at when people’s time off is denied or cancelled. Sure, the managers could try to get around this system, but it’s still better than if there’s no system at all.

      4. e271828*

        This!

        I would add, ALL time off needs to be formally tracked, so that the request from an employee with children who wants to leave early to go to a school or kids’ sports event is on record, right beside the employee without children who has a doctor’s appointment.

          1. Not Crazy Cat Lady*

            Except that by now, it’s known among managers who has kids and who doesn’t. And parents might ask for time off for non-kid reasons, like their own doctor appointments. So I think for a while, context will matter, unless you go 100% first come, first served.

      5. Distracted Librarian*

        Exactly. In fact, OP should help put systems in place for all areas affected by the previous practice: how time off is requested and granted, whether and how and how much remote work is allowed, how salaries and raises are determined, etc. There should be clear processes and criteria for all of these, publicized throughout the organization and followed to the letter.

    2. Observer*

      That’s an excellent point.

      LW, there is a reason why so many people have left on bad terms, some even without something lined up. And there is a reason why so many people refused to do exit interviews.

      Retaliation is almost certainly at least part of the reason.

      1. Retaliation is Real*

        In so many instances, people are told to have a conversation and of course things will change for the better! No bad things will happen to those who “complain”.

        I am almost glad it was pointed out that people just left rather than discuss. Real life is often not a neat and consequence-free as the movies, advice columns or television shows.

  5. Cafe au Lait*

    Just in case this helps you OP, I work in a library, specifically in circulation. There’s not a lot of work you can do at home.

    That being said, management decided in the past year that Circulation staff can work from home one day a month. And we can ask for additional WFH if we’re on an interviewing committee and want to take hiring meetings in a private space; if we’re facilitating meetings; if we’re taking a professional development webinar.

    It’s not as much WFH time as librarians are granted but it’s helped move the needle towards “equal” when it was firmly tipped at “unequal” before.

    1. MusicWithRocksIn*

      It’s a lot easier to just take the perks like WFH away from everyone, but you are going to make people a lot happier and the culture shift smoother if you make the extra effort to make sure everyone can use a little of the perks instead of just saying ‘no more work from home’.

    2. AF Vet*

      That is incredibly wise! I would also add a small addition, coming from an environment with snow days. Have a stack or pile of professional development / rules and regs / other justifiable work-related reading available at home. We did this using the Air Force’s professional development reading list (issued every year, available via the library and store). A snow squall or multi-day blizzard came through that wasn’t enough to close the base, but folks living in the other side of the mountain pass couldn’t get out. Military got the time off paid, but were expected to do SOMETHING productive. Our civil service folks could study that material and log it as professional time, rather than burning leave for safety reasons.

      1. Distracted Librarian*

        Yes! Right before we were all sent home for COVID, the leadership team worked with staff (in an academic library) to make sure they had work they could do remotely. We compiled a list of webinars and other professional development opportunities, suggested people complete courses on LinkedIn Learning, and identified work for other departments that people who had public-facing positions could do.

    3. megaboo*

      Please don’t take this as snarky from a fellow librarian, but how does a circulation staff work from home?

      1. Cafe au Lait*

        There’s always projects you have going but never enough time to work on them. Our WFH day is to work on those back burner projects. My last WFH day I rewrote a few pages in the training manual I’ve been meaning to update, facilitated a meeting, and spent a solid hour cleaning out email/rewriting my to-do list.

        Sure, I could do those tasks at work. But being at home I was able to focus and get more done in a smaller amount of time because I wasn’t getting up and addressing questions student employees had.

      2. Distracted Librarian*

        Running reports, generating bills via email, cleaning up the patron database, cleaning up item records, drafting policies and procedures, creating slide decks for staff training, reviewing student assistant resumes…

        1. Reluctant Mezzo*

          Selecting books for weeding, making sure classics are ‘checked out’ enough to avoid the axe…

          1. Cthulhu’s Librarian*

            Meh. Most classics are just dead white men’s abandoned crap and aren’t worth that effort. Also, if you start futzing with your stats to preserve parts of your collection, you might as well just make collection maintenance decisions based on your personal feelings and discard the veneer of your statistical reasons for your choices – at least then you’re being honest about what you’re doing.

            Either you believe in the empirical information about your collection and how it serves your community, or you don’t. If no one wants to read “The Great Gatsby,” maybe your community has realized it’s as overrated as Atlas Shrugged.

  6. DE*

    I feel like we’re drawing a distinction where one is unecassary. What is a companies “culture” besides its policies and practices?

    1. Pizza Rat*

      How the employees behave and act under those policies and practices. For example, there may be parents who feel they are entitled to this practice of more flexibility and non-parents aren’t.

      1. DE*

        How people “feel” about stuff isn’t really culture, in my view, since no one can actually know how someone feels. What they do about those feelings in practice is what matters but, again, that falls within “policies and practice”.

        1. Annony*

          Culture is the informal part. The unwritten rules and how things are viewed. Take the letter from this morning about using titles. There aren’t official rules about whether to use first names or titles but most workplaces have a culture that is formal or informal and asking to be called more of less formally than the norm is going to affect how people view you even though no policies are being violated.

        2. Pretty as a Princess too tired for mediocre men*

          I was singing when Alison talked policy and practice!

          The “feelings” part is *climate* – which is of course important, but that is driven by culture:

          The shared understanding of “how we do business” is culture.

          I have mentioned this here before but one of my favorite new(er to me) things is the Competing Values Framework. Not about “values” like “flexible family support” but about “how do I understand how I create value for my organization”. Policies, practice, and measurement are crucial to aligning “how I create value” with “the kind of culture we want to create.” I think that understanding how people believe they are adding value (why they are doing what they are doing) is important to correcting the situation.

          Because if people here “We value being a family-friendly workplace” and the prior practices have caused them to internalize that to mean “We have to prioritize the needs of parents over non-parents to be family-friendly” then therein lies the rub.

          Policy and practices need to align at many levels but also need to be aligned with the overall strategic goal: being a fair and equitable workplace where there is no illegal discrimination in our work practices based on family status OR other statuses. And so whatever policies and practices and measurement and tracking systems are put in place – while the near term goal clearly is righting this discriminatory treatment based on family status, what you want is policy, practice, and system alignment on how those metrics/tracking mechanisms enable the bigger goals while you are using them to problem-solve this specific issue. It sounds like the OP is building a great team and has good support – and I’d encourage them to view their charter as the fair and equitable workplace one, in which addressing the discrimination based on family status is a near term objective under a larger roadmap. Build policies and practices to enable the right kind of workplace and use surveillance mechanisms, training, etc to identify, monitor, and rectify the gaps.

    2. Lisa B*

      Policies and practices are official. Culture is individuals’ attitudes and behaviors. They intertwine, but in order to force a change to the latter here the LW’s company will have to create AND enforce the former.

      2. Sloanicota*

        Right. I could see a “cultural” approach (that wouldn’t work) to this problem that was about cheering on non-parent employees, giving more appreciation, having a “child free celebration day” or other nonsense. This change is not about hearts and minds, it’s about policies.

        1. MusicWithRocksIn*

          It’s a little about hearts and minds. If the company just goes ‘Ok, no more work from home, we’ve had people complaining about others working from home’ then the parents who had previously been using WFH are going to be upset, they might start blaming the non-parents for taking away the good things, grouping around Sarah’s desk to bitch about Greg from accounting and how he’s always ruining something. The non-parents are going to sense the friction and then the cold war between parents and non-parents gets worse.

          If the company says, ‘Ok, a lot of people would like WFH, but it doesn’t work easily, so each person can be approved for a work from home day if X and Y’ and they apply that evenly, then you are making a lot of people happy with a new perk they now have, and keep the parents happy because they still get that perk sometimes, and they maybe relax a little knowing it is an official perk now and not something their manager does under the radar.

          There is a clearly an us and them situation happening in the office, and the best way to bring people together is to make an effort to give everyone good things instead of just taking good things away.

    3. required*

      I tend to think of culture as unofficial- it may not be a documented policy that people are at their desks *exactly* at 8am, but the culture of some offices is that they are and some are more comfortable with employees trickling in over some time. Are people taking time to have a casual lunch together in the shared kitchen or eating at their desks because that’s just the vibe, etc.

      1. Antilles*

        Exactly. The actual enforcement of policies is dictated by the company culture and that often doesn’t necessarily match the written policies.
        In fact, I would bet that the written policy in their Employee Handbook (or equivalent) *already* has a lawyer-written statement that “The company does not discriminate on the basis of age, race, gender, marital status, or family status”. That’s an extremely common boilerplate statement to have because of various discrimination laws. But the culture has been that they don’t really pay attention to what the written policy says and they’ve been directly violating their own policy by preferring parents.

        1. Feral Humanist*

          Yes, this. I think dress code is a good illustration of the policy vs. culture distinction.

          Two organizations both have “business casual dress” listed in their employee handbooks as the standard.

          One of them has a bunch more unwritten rules: no pants with pockets on the behind, no t-shirts, no athletic shoes of any kind, and tattoos have to be covered. Furthermore, if you’re caught in violation, you’re sent home to change (this sounds insane but is based on a place where I worked).

          The other place doesn’t care about where your pockets are or whether the tattoo on your wrist is showing; they would prefer that your t-shirt not have a graphic on it or be covered with a cardigan if it does, but they’re not going to send anyone home over it, or even say much unless it’s consistently out of step with a reasonable person’s understanding of “business casual.”

          Both have the same official policy but you’d better believe that they’re going to have very different cultures. And if someone came in wanting one of them to be more like the other, it would take a lot of work (and if you tried to take the second place and make it more like the first, you’d probably lose employees over it).

          1. Court worker*

            Right. I work in a courthouse. In theory, my workplace has a strict “business casual” dress code. In practice, many people in my role dress very casually except when circumstances require it. If I’m helping a client, I’ll dress in business casual; if I’m running a case management conference, business formal; if I’m in a court hearing, I’m in formal court attire (which requires a uniform of sorts; think British barristers but without the wigs). If I’m just at my desk doing paperwork and taking calls, I may well wear jeans and sneakers.

    4. Girasol*

      Culture would include attitudes that are ingrained. A manager gives Bob a raise and doesn’t give Sally one because Bob is a better employee. That would fit whatever new improved policy might be enacted. But what exactly makes Bob a better employee? Well, Bob’s wife just had a new baby and everybody knows that fathers are responsible and single women are not. A manager could actually believe that Bob is better without even stopping to consider where they got that impression. That sort of reasoning could be hiding inside the culture, especially a very old culture, and could bypass well intentioned policies.

    5. Richard Hershberger*

      To the contrary, I find the distinction extremely useful. Culture to me is more about informal group dynamics, not top-down policies. If the team goes out to happy hour every Friday because they want to, that is culture. If they go because their manager goes and will hold it against anyone who does not, that is policy (even if unofficially so).

    6. Ope Sorry*

      Many workplaces do not have a written policy regarding where office-based employees must eat their lunch – but many offices have an unwritten culture that all employees eat in the breakroom, or at their desks, or eat in cliques in certain conference rooms. That’s the difference between policy and culture – and for many of the letters Alison answers, the problem is the conflict between policy and culture, or the inflexibility of culture in the face of new hires

    7. Nesprin*

      Culture is the execution of its policies and practices- what rules are absolutely followed, how are policies implemented and who gets to determine how to implement policies, the interpretation of practices that aren’t written up or have some flexibility, and most importantly, who gets slack when and why.

    8. Not Tom, Just Petty*

      I think the term culture is what used to be called morale. I understand people are defining it differently, but my argument is based on what Alison writes:
      “The imperative here is less about changing the culture and more about changing policy and practice.”
      The C level realizes people are unhappy or dissatisfied with the company, not the work.OP is coming in to rebuild morale and make people like working there and feel satisfied working there. This will come once OP changes the procedures and policies.
      When people ask Alison “how do I ask about company culture in an interview” I think, bottom line is, “how do I know people are happy with the work, satisfied with management and their peers?”

    9. Kella*

      If you have a company that has a culture of being very informal and casual about everything (addressing each other by first name only, wearing jeans and a T-shirt, joking around a lot) and then you have a new top manager who comes in and changes all of the policies to require a higher level of formality and professionalism, you have policies that are going to clash with the existing culture. Anyone who is there in part *because* of the casual culture is going to resent and resist the new policies, and may even be motivated to leave over it.

      Policies can definitely inform culture when they’ve existed for long enough but they are definitely separate from it.

  7. Tradd*

    I’m going to add one thing I didn’t see mentioned: if someone, parent or not, takes off early, they have to make up the hours, either by working later or covering the time with PTO. I’ve worked multiple places over the years that allowed parents to take off early for ANYTHING kid related (not just doctor/school appts, but things like kids’ sports) and didn’t require the parents to make up the time. If childless employees took off early for appointments, etc., they DID have to make up the time. This is the one thing that has really peeved me off over the years.

    1. Cj*

      Depending on the workload, I don’t think people always need to make up the time or take PTO. They key is that you have to treat everybody the same.

      1. Ruby*

        100% this. A few weeks ago I submitted a PTO request for 2 hrs. My boss was like, nope, you are not using PTO, just take the time you need. I’ve been busting my butt for the last few months, so it makes sense to handle it like that. There was no expectation for me to make up the time, either.

        1. Opaline*

          Agreed. This will be dependant on the work, but if you can give everyone the same leeway it will go a long way to improving morale and culture (dentist/doctors appointments, family emergencies, needing to be home for a repair worker aren’t limited to parents!)

          If you don’t want this to be completely informal, you can do it with a manager’s signoff. My workplace lets me start late or leave early on occasion, as long as I let my manager know. No PTO needed to cover an hour here and there.

      2. Tradd*

        Imagine a parent taking off two hours early two days a week for two months for kid sports. They don’t have to make it up. Childless employee needs to take off early for PT appts two days a week for a month. Childless employee has to make up the time. Both did the exact same job. Happened to me 10 years ago. Yes, I’m still pissed off.

        1. Lizzie*

          Oh that would piss me off as well! My last job, was in a law firm, as a paralegal. So my time was billable, and I had goals. The admins didn’t bill, and we had one who had to leave early daily, to pick up her kids. Ok fine, whatever, but I was then expected to finish whatever she hadn’t and she never really made much effort to get stuff done. So I’m stuck there doing NON billable work, as it had to get done, she’s leaving early for her kids, and I’m getting grief for doing non billable work.

          1. Bird names*

            “…and I’m getting grief for doing non billable work.”
            How charming, of course they blamed you as well. Glad to see you left that job.

    2. Fly on The Wall*

      I worked at a place once that was excited about my community involvement when I interviewed. I explained before excepting the job that I would have 1-2 board or committee meetings for such each month that I would need to step out early or during the day for. No problem they said. One long time employee left early a few times a week for his kids sports. However after about 6 months I was told that I couldn’t step out for my meetings (which I always made up my time for, I was gone at most 1 1/2 hours) and instead should take half days of vacation on those days. Yet long-term coworker still left early for sports. This was also a place that only offered 10 days of vacation.

      1. MigraineMonth*

        In contrast, my organization lets all employees use paid time to donate blood (with supervisor approval), and it turns out you can donate platelets every 2 weeks. 9 gallons and counting!

        1. Distracted Librarian*

          Good on you! I was a regular blood and platelet donor for years until I developed some health issues. I wish more employers offered this perk – get some time away from work and save some lives.

    3. NightShiftNurse*

      Yes, that’s the key point. Where I last worked, you only needed to say the magic word (parent) and your leaving early was hand waved. If you did not have children, your desire to leave an hour early was absolutely taken from PTO. This was a salaried, six figure job.

      When I confronted this with my manager and HR, I was told too bad, that’s what we need to do to be family friendly. Like I was unworthy of any consideration as a worker.

      1. Anonymous For Now*

        That means they were unfriendly to employees who didn’t have children.

        I wonder what they would have said if that had been pointed out to them.

        1. I Have RBF*

          s/ unfriendly/ hostile/

          I would have started looking elsewhere after the first time that happened.

          Discrimination against people who don’t have children at home is still discrimination. And people wonder why non-parents resent parents in places like that.

  8. Texan in Exile*

    “Also, if that happens not to be true about the commitment from the top, run! You can’t do this kind of job if they’re not fully bought in.”

    A friend did his dissertation on large-scale software/ERP implementations and why they fail.

    The number one reason was not technical issues or money – it was lack of executive support.

    (A few months after he finished, our employer cancelled the SAP implementation we had been working on for three years. I remembered the VP of our department saying more than once that she didn’t like the project and thought it would never work.)(This was the woman who didn’t believe in forecasting. We sold boxes to strawberry growers and she claimed it was impossible for them to forecast how many boxes they might need the next season. My sister, who is a nurse, said, “Couldn’t you just look at how many boxes they bought last year? And then ask them if they had bought or sold land or planted a variety that has a higher yield?” Yes, Jenny. You could.)

    1. Observer*

      A friend did his dissertation on large-scale software/ERP implementations and why they fail.

      The number one reason was not technical issues or money – it was lack of executive support.

      I was coming to make a similar comment. But this is perfect.

      Yes, LW, if you don’t have complete and explicit backing of the top-most management, backed by the actual authority to make your changes stick, get out of there. Because you are absolutely going to need all of that.

    2. Confused*

      Hello, can you explain why in the world it would take **3 YEARS** for statistical software to be implemented?

      1. Great Frogs of Literature*

        At a guess, this is a big part of it:

        I remembered the VP of our department saying more than once that she didn’t like the project and thought it would never work.

        Though Texan can tell us if there were actual technical blockers of some nature, too.

      2. Antilles*

        I’m not TexanInExile, but I’d assume the explanation is hidden in the very next sentence where the VP thinks it’s a waste of time. There’s tons of ways for senior management to undercut a project such that implementation takes way longer than it should.

        VP insists all vendor purchases require her personal approval. VP takes forever to sign off on necessary approvals to buy the software. VP keeps asking for more justification on the software. VP throws up bureaucratic walls by requiring you to get input from all sorts of people before implementing tasks. VP continually reassigns people from the implementation team elsewhere to tasks she actually cares about. VP demands the right provide input on every step of implementation but is in no hurry to make time for such input. Etc…

        1. Anon in Ohio*

          Definitely not! We use SAP for inventory management, purchasing, and production

      5. The Prettiest Curse*

        Software implementation has nothing on the medical field On average, it takes 15-20 years for new treatment protocols to be fully adopted in medicine. (I’m not a doctor, but had to read a bit on this subject for a previous job.) There are obviously many reasons (some good, some not) why the medical field doesn’t do major changes quickly, but I was still astonished when I read that number for the first time.

        2. Boof*

          Not sure what you are talking about here? Am a doctor, an oncologist, we can get something rolling extremely fast if needed. Maybe something like TIL cellular therapy can take years depending on available resources and need etc (for reference, something that probably costs over a million dollars overall per patient and involves several disciplines; surgery, medonc, transplant group). 15-20 years is maybe new drug development from first being screened/tested in mice, to human testing, to becoming a standard of care?? Hot drugs honestly much faster.

      6. Any Given Fergus*

        The slow moving machine of corporate bureaucracy; lack of support from the top leading to lack of funding or staffing; lack of vision; miserly obstinance getting in the way of progress. For the company I was just laid off from, 3 years would be an incredibly ambitious timeline. I started there almost 14 years ago when they had just started deploying SAP. They are still in the process of rolling it out to all regions. 14 years later.

      7. Djs*

        SAP person here who has been on projects this size. It’s not just statistical software- it’s inventory, managing production, purchasing, scheduling, finance, etc. There are a lot of moving parts. I’ve been on projects where there are 100+ key stakeholders on multiple continents, due to the scope of the project. The data involved can be immense, and can involve 1000-2000 people who need to be trained when done.

        2. AF Vet*

          Sounds like the reason the US Social Security Administration still runs programs on DOS. It’s literally too much data to move to 21st century technology, tied into too many other old legacy systems.

          1. Mockingjay*

            Off topic: SSA’s systems run on COBOL, Oracle on Unix servers, and the index system is MADAM – Master Data Access Method.

            While COBOL and MADAM are “old” systems, these were designed and built to handle very large data sets. The truth is, these systems work just fine. People have the assumption that software and systems must be updated frequently, but that’s the influence of Bill Gates’s licensing model. Remember when you could buy a copy of MS Word and it never needed updating? But Microsoft only makes money once with that purchase model. Re COBOL, there are fewer programmers these days who can handle it, but there are still enough around to keep it running.

          2. Djs*

            I’m sure it’s possible, but no one wants to pay for a project that for sure will take a decade or more to finish. And also be willing to accept the political fallout if something is wrong at the end.

            1. Wayward Sun*

              Having worked at a place that replaced a 1970s-era payroll system, the hard part is figuring out all the rules about who gets paid what that aren’t written down anywhere, just embedded in the code. By the time you replace a system like that everyone has forgotten all the assumptions built into it.

        3. MigraineMonth*

          I haven’t worked with SAP, but my experience with large highly configurable software is that it’s completely useless without a ton of configuration. If you manufacture doors, it needs to be configured with your specific manufacturing plants, an inventory set up for all the parts of every single possible doorknob, acceptable loss levels for each part, etc. etc. etc. Much of which has never been previously defined, it’s just based on “the way we’ve always done it” or “old Joe’s gut instinct.”

          Three years to interview the right people, collect all the critical data, enter the data, configure the system, test it, re-configure the system differently, train hundred or thousands people to use it… yeah, 3 years is pretty reasonable.

          1. Djs*

            This- half of the job seems like it’s asking people “ok- this is what the procedure says you do. How do you really do it?” The other half is fixing spreadsheets with 30-40k rows on them.

      8. Ferret*

        Are you getting SAP confused with something else? It can encompass an organisations entire payments and purchasing system and beyond which can be an enormous exercise to implement and require a lot of policy updates and training as well

      9. Dancing Otter*

        Probably because they were implementing the full accounting suite, purchase-to-pay, general ledger, fixed assets, inventory, sales-to-cash, financial reporting, budgeting, and the kitchen sink.

        I once spent a year on a 50+ person team doing CLEAN-UP on a botched AP conversion. The outstanding payables balance was so bad (both size and delinquency) the auditors were getting nasty, not to mention the vendors.

        So three years is very believable.

    3. Lady in STEM*

      This. All of this.

      I was hired to make changes, and it’s taken me several years and being the Biggest Pain Ever to get anything done. My current and former bosses were theoretically supportive but lacked teeth, so I’ve found myself going to our executive director… who is verbally supportive in private but not in public. It is an exhausting, perpetually uphill battle, and while I’m extremely effective, it’s in spite of leadership, not because of it.

      Leadership needs to
      A.) stand by OP
      B.) clearly acknowledge that they caused the problems
      C.) demonstrate their willingness to change via action. Otherwise, the cycle will continue.

    4. Fly on The Wall*

      This!!!

      I develop and implement such things and currently have one manager who will not enforce or support anything. It’s becoming a disaster.

  9. Coffeemate is searching the globe*

    I’m a little confused about the structure here. LW is managing one team in the organization but is expected to implement change throughout the company?

    Alot of this will have to do with how high up LW is in the organization overall…Hate to be cynical but there’s a reason that the higher ups aren’t just doing this themselves

    1. Just Thinkin' Here*

      I thought it was interesting that management was hiring an entire team to deal with what amounts to a policy change that is a one-off. What does the team do after they fix this issue? It’s a quarterly report in the HR system and monitoring complaints.

      1. Cj*

        I wondered that too, but in a company that this blatantly violates the law in this area, I bet there is a lot more than this just issue that needs fixing.

      2. Annony*

        I assumed the team had a broader goal than making this one change. Something like employee retention or legal compliance or some combination thereof.

        1. I'm just here for the cats!!*

          Yeah that’s what I was thinking. That the team will be for legal compliance or maybe some sort of branch off of HR.

      3. But Of Course*

        It says nowhere that this is a newly hired team, only a newly created team, with the LW as the only confirmed new hire. What if this is a restructuring of HR, under a new manager on board with, you know, not discriminating, and it’s composed of people who’ve been with the company in an HR or Legal capacity now being housed under one manager? I used to work at a company with a design department that also had designers attached to individual departments – this could be the equivalent of bringing all those designers under a single manager.

        Presumably they would then have jobs to do beyond “ensure compliance”, but discussing that only 20% of their job for the first year (or whatever) is dedicated to the culture shift is not relevant to the question of how to enforce the needed changes.

        1. But Of Course*

          I just reread and saw that a diverse group of employees will be hired, presumably externally. I still think the question of what the team is doing with the rest of their time isn’t really relevant; for all we know, it’ll be a continuing unit in a larger department, it’ll be reduced in size as the goals are achieved, it’ll be tasked with other aspects of change-making, or they’re all on one-year contracts – it doesn’t change the advice.

        2. WellRed*

          “There will be a diverse group hired to the team.” At any rate, I was also wondering about the longevity of a team hired to do this.

    2. Cacofonix*

      Actually my thought was more along the lines of… they hired a manager whose primary role was to lead a team whose stated purpose it is to solve at least one pervasive policy turned cultural problem and who lacks the fundamental skills and experience in doing so. The response and follow up comments are really sound and gracious though, and I applaud the OP in seeking help at least.

      1. Coffeemate is searching the globe*

        As long as management has OP’s back, absoultely… That’s the concern

    3. Nola*

      Given that two of the co-leads under OP are lawyers I thought they might be either creating or restructuring an in-house legal department. That‘s a department that can be pretty high up the food chain – often right under the CEO and may be on par with other top execs. Can have a lot of power to bring about policy and structural changes but still have lots to do once those policies have been put in place and the focus is no longer focusing on the internal issues.

  10. Observer*

    LW, in addition to what has been said, be prepared to lose staff. As Alison noted, some people are going to see that changes being made as “taking away” from them. And some people are going to either be angry enough to quit over it or have a hard enough time adapting to the new normal that they will have to be let go.

    If your top management is both committed and able to take the longer term view, that’s a very justifiable price. But if not….

    1. CTT*

      Because of that, I think it needs to be made clear that the changes are being made in part because it was a legal violation and that the changes have to be made.

    2. Annony*

      Yes. And it might be helpful to acknowledge that it is in fact taking away a benefit from some employees. It isn’t just perception, it is reality. But it is being taken away because it is and aways was wrong and they were benefiting at the expense of others. People quitting over it is ok and also doesn’t necessarily mean that they are bad people who want to exploit their childless coworkers. They may simply not be able to make the job work without the added flexibility.

    3. Zona the Great*

      yes and you need to stay the course. Do not get discouraged by attrition. These will be growing pains but you must stick to it.

    4. Distracted Librarian*

      Where you can, try to extend benefits to people without children rather than taking them away from people with children. If the company could allow parents to WFH, it can allow non-parents to WFH. If parents could have flexible schedules, non-parents can. There may be a few changes that will take something away from parents, but if you start with the mindset of extending rather than pulling back, you may avoid a lot of fallout.

    5. JSPA*

      for the price of a multi-person specialized team, strikes me they could hire quite a few low-level wed-and-friday-afternoon temps or part-timers, such that they’d be able to plan on offering flexibility on those days.

      And maybe either close for the short week after memorial day, and three days before memorial day weekend, or use those days as times when people can flex work to those dates, from other weeks. You can have black-out dates both overall and for specific projects where (except for a true emergency) people can’t flex.

      Or give people the choice to work 8 to 3:30, five days a week, or 9 to 6:30, four days a week (or however the numbers pan out with any required lunches and breaks and weekly schedule).

  12. flagontheplay*

    “My understanding is that there have been some changes at the top that allowed this to happen.” Changes at the top are what allowed the problem to happen to begin with, or changes at the top are now going to support the correction effort moving forward? It seems weird to me that this issue wasn’t discussed in much greater detail during the interview process. If this is core to the job, why wasn’t the interview process centered on how you, in the job, would address these issues and how much support leadership could or would provide regarding that approach? (Not that there’s a problem asking Alison for advice.)

  13. r..*

    Yeah, that one will need to come from the very top, ideally the CEO. They need to go out and tell the company. If they’re not willing to give their face and personal backing to this change, it will fail before it starts.

    Then every suborg head will need to go out, restate the policy, and explain what it’ll mean for their suborg specifically. This is necessary to a) show that the entire senior to upper-mid management stands behind it, and b) to discover potential rogue actors that think this is a thing they can play silly buggers with.

    Additionally, when your suborg heads go out, they need to be able to provide answers to forseeable questions. The way your company has preferred parents over non-parents is not equitable, but that isn’t the same as your parents not having legitimate asks of the company. If someone has a kiddo with a difficult school schedule on some days, they may ask how this will work out for them in the future, and whoever is managing them will need to have an answer for this. This in turn means you must give yourself the tools to create the answers to the most common questions *before* you announce the change in policy.

    Most reasonable people will have understanding that somewhat special circumstances may require some time to have an answer to; many fewer will have the same understanding for questions that should have been expected a priori.

    1. betsyohs*

      This in turn means you must give yourself the tools to create the answers to the most common questions *before* you announce the change in policy.

      This is a really good point. At my company, people would freak out if a big policy change like this were announced. They would have 10 million questions, and they would not be able/willing to extrapolate the answer from someone else’s similar question to their own situation. Before you announce the change, you need the answers to all the questions you can think of.

      Additionally, you need all senior management to be on the same page about how to communicate the changes. If the same question is asked to two different managers, they need to be giving the same answer.

      Related, the message about the new policy needs to be repeated over and over. Alison said, “To start, anyone with management responsibilities in the company needs to hear — clearly, firmly, and immediately — that the company’s policies and practices around family status have changed and that going forward parents and non-parents must be treated without distinction from each other. ” That message – appropriately changed for the audience – needs to be repeated by top management in as many ways as possible, and by all of layers of management to their staff over and over again. People don’t retain info the first time they hear it!

      Side note: we have one employee who consistently has the biggest negative reaction to any policy change. Over the last few years we have started going to her before rolling out new policies and other changes. We listen to her reaction, hear what her concerns and questions are, and we take her feedback into account as we plan messaging. I think this makes our messaging stronger, and it also circumvents at least some of her negative response before she can talk about it with other people in the office and color their responses. We’re a very small company, so YMMV, but organizing feedback sessions from selected staff or similar could get you the same information.

      1. Pretty as a Princess too tired for mediocre men*

        I have a rule about learning who the “thermostats” are and who the “thermometers” are and trying to keep abreast of perspectives from both when I am trying to figure out a major change. (And any time I am leading a new team, I work hard to figure out who the thermostats and thermometers are – because those are often not people with the big formal Management or Leadership Roles. Their influence/power/observation comes from lots of informal sources.)

        “Thermometers” are people who are good at reflecting conditions in the group.

        “Thermostats” are people who tend to *set* conditions in the group.

        Hearing feedback from both kinds of people and engaging them as you’ve said definitely makes for stronger messaging and can keep you from falling into pits with pointy sticks at the bottom!

        1. Plate of Wings*

          Love this framework, thank you. I must have a thermostat vibe because I have been asked several times to help people feel supported and improve “team culture” during times of change, but I’m not a manager or leader. I’m in a technical individual contributor role.

          My two most brilliant peer coworkers are definitely thermometers. They let other people set the tone and they are really good at adapting. They are actually better positioned to be promoted than me, and they would absolutely deserve it, so I don’t think thermometer types are better or worse than thermostat types.

          Very interesting to think of how a mix of both makes for a strong team. Our manager is definitely a thermostat, and we also have a few “insulated double walled thermoses” (people who do not adapt to or drive change unless it’s an serious upheaval lmao).

          Thank you!

        2. Zahra*

          Interesting! I just had a 1:1 with my manager and we talked about how my attitude can influence my colleagues and be perceived by management. I tought I was a thermometer, but if people see me as a thermostat, I need to reevaluate and adjust how I react to changes,

      2. Mad Scientist*

        What an interesting way to use a negative attitude for good! Did the employee know that their feedback was used that way and why?

        I always find it fascinating how some folks react super negatively to any announcement about this sort of thing, even if it ultimately benefits them or doesn’t affect them at all.

        1. Plate of Wings*

          I was thinking the same thing! A really negative pattern could be prevented.

          For real sticks in the mud that have big reactions to change (remember the letter about the speed dial changing on office phones? I will never forget that), this could help prevent some of the indignation and drama. Or they might foresee issues that no one else thought of. People who strongly and loudly resist change have the gift of anticipating real problems, it could prevent a disaster.

    2. Amaya*

      This is key. I think most parents don’t want to make their non-parent coworkers suffer on purpose. You can talk all you like about how the privileged will fight for their privileges and whatnot, but if you’re trying to make things equitable and humane and if you take away all flexibility abruptly, without good communication that will create the same issues with morale on the other side.

      1. Guacamole Bob*

        I think most parents don’t want to make their non-parent coworkers suffer on purpose, but some (not all!) do have blind spots about it. They think that their single or child free coworker isn’t inconvenienced by timing their vacation so it’s not during spring break when the parent needs to travel, or by staying a bit late one day, or whatever. Being a parent is one of the most common reasons that someone’s schedule is rigid and complicated, and some people can be kind of oblivious about the fact that plenty of non-parents also have strong reasons for their work scheduling needs.

        1. quill*

          This and it is hard for people benefiting from a pattern to see the pattern. If you leave work earlier every second friday because of kid events, you don’t notice that Valentina has not been allowed to take time off on any of those fridays. You don’t realize how much slack or coverage has had to be picked up. And if you never get the email about someone has to stay late, you don’t realize how often it goes out.

        2. Boof*

          Yeah there’s two flavors 1) actually thinking they have more need/deserve special things because of reasons vs 2) just trying to juggle it all and want/need any help they can get

        3. GammaGirl1908*

          Agree, and there are parents whose blind spots are aggressive on this issue. Some people do need to be told that their tired / broke / busy / whatever is not +25 points because it was caused by their kids, and, conversely, that people without kids are allowed to be tired / broke / busy / whatever without having it minimized or dismissed or ridiculed or ignored by parents.

          Which is likely how LW’s company got here in the first place. Someone very influential DID believe that kids = +25 and baked it into the culture.

    3. Guacamole Bob*

      +1

      My organization rolled out some return-to-office changes without addressing many of the common questions up front, and it has been pretty frustrating. The ADA program office hadn’t been alerted up front about the policy change to give them time to prep for the very foreseeable deluge of employees and managers asking about work from home as an accommodation, for example. A little foresight goes a long way.

    4. No Tribble At All*

      Yes, absolutely come prepared with common Q&A for the parents. And, you may need to grant people some lead time/adjustment time if they need to coordinate… idk, getting someone else to pick up the kid on Friday instead of leaving early.

      Sample questions might be:
      – can I flex my hours?
      – do I need to use sick time for kid doctor appts?
      – how are we going to block out PTO now?

  14. Pete*

    OP needs to create a method to measure and track individual manager adherence with the new policies and make it part of their performance evaluation.

    1. Anonym*

      THIS. If it ain’t part of performance metrics, they aren’t serious about it. It doesn’t have to stay there forever, just until well after this appears resolved.

      I’ve seen a transition in which employee survey results became part of the executives’ performance evaluations. While there can definitely be pitfalls there, there was suddenly massive support for initiatives responding to pain points people raised, and just way more accountability. And the execs were already pretty keyed in and committed to retention and employee experience, they just have about a million priorities to juggle. This bumped it way up the list. If it matters to the organization, evaluate against it.

    2. Plate of Wings*

      I can’t help but wonder if there are a few managers who are responsible for like 80% of the issue. Of course it could be evenly distributed and a universal pervasive cultural problem, but isn’t it more likely that it’s managers not being managed, like we see so often on this site? I’m with you, this is the way to go.

  15. What the Knights In White sat in*

    “Yes, we approved your vacation request four months ago, but Sally gets priority because she has kids.”

    “My parents also have kids — but they haven’t seen me in THREE YEARS because others keep bumping my pre-approved vacation.”

    1. Hot Flash Gordon*

      Yeah, this is the camp I would be in. I’m an only child and my parents are aging. I’d be calling in sick those days that get canceled and speaking with a labor attorney if I got any guff.

  16. not neurotypical*

    Same-sex marriage has been the law of the land for a while now, and the current anti-gay backlash shows that cultural change doesn’t always follow from policy change. Ditto for the white South Africans who continue to believe themselves to be victims because their apartheid-era privileges were taken from them.

    All of which is to say that I don’t think we can trust that cultural change will follow from policy change.

    Everything Allison said should be done must be done, for sure. But there should also be a recognition that many people at the company have believed, and will continue to believe, that parents are inherently more important than non-parents. Even parents who don’t consciously think of themselves as superior to their childless peers may find, if they dig a bit, that they do, in fact, believe that they have done something inherently admirable by having children and that of course this should be rewarded. It might be amusing to ask leadership to state flatly that people with children are not superior to people without children and discover how much push back there is to stating that simple fact.

    1. Insert Pun Here*

      Public opinion of same-sex marriage has indeed changed enormously in the past two decades, and those driving the very real backlash are absolutely outliers who are out of step with the majority culture. (That doesn’t mean they won’t succeed or that they can safely be ignored.) I’ll post a link in a follow up comment.

    2. Amaya*

      Wow, someone has an axe to grind with the parents out there!
      Pressing people to commit to ideological conformity is very 2020.

      1. Mad Scientist*

        I’m not sure I understand the second sentence in your comment! Could you elaborate?

        1. Peanut Hamper*

          I don’t even understand the first sentence. There are many ways you can contribute to society without adding to overpopulation.

      2. I Have RBF*

        “… an axe to grind with parents…”

        So wanting to have the same rights and privileges as parents in the workplace is “an axe to grind”?? What planet are you from, and can you please go back there?

        Discrimination on family status is illegal. Either direction, pro-parent or anti-parents. You can’t give parents special privileges because they are parents. You can’t give non-parents or empty-nesters special privileges because they don’t have kids at home.

        If I worked for a place like that I would be making a big, big stink, and would probably quit.

    3. Annony*

      I don’t think that policies that unfairly favor parents usually stem from a perception that parents are superior and should be rewarded. I think that it is more often a misguided attempt to help parents because they are often perceived as having extra challenges and often lacking the “village” that parents used to have. It is still wrong and reductive. That thought process ignores the fact that many parents do have help from family and friends or a stay at home spouse and do not actually need extra flexibility while many childless people are balancing care for pets, parents or a sick spouse or they are going back to school and actually do need more flexibility. It also ignores the fact that people without extra challenges still deserve time off and fair compensation.

  17. GenX Cog*

    I work in a research institute that works on changing policies around a specific issue, and YEARS of our research have repeatedly found that the single biggest predictor of organizational change is top management commitment. In particular, having a “champion” with the power to enforce changed policies is really key.

    But Allison is right and policy change comes before uclture change. You don’t just tell people to think different — you train them by writing a policy, explaining the policy, and then consistently enforcing the policy. Eventually this becomes “the way we do things” and that is when CULTURE has changed.

    My question is this: Ideally, offering flexibility that can be used for parenting would have been offered evenly from the start. If it cannot be offered equitably now, is it because you’re not staffed up well enough to support that? Are people without kids having their vacation yoinked because of coverage issues? Can they not take off early because things need to get done and they’re the only ones around to do it?

    The only way this will not be experienced as “taking aware our freedoms” by parents is if you are able to EXTEND it to the childfree. And that requires having the staff to do that.

    (though honestly, letting parents have first pick of vacation time to the point that they get to just take time that has already been approved for non-parents? That was just bad all around. As a parent, I think that’s a crappy policy. If I don’t get my request submitted in time, I shouldn’t be able to tell people my parental status means I get to take their slot.)

  18. Crencestre*

    “Sometimes when benefits are made more equitable, the group that used to get special privilege feels they’re losing something.” Well, yes, they WILL feel that way because they ARE “losing something”! You and I would feel exactly the same way if the perks that WE took for granted were suddenly cancelled. We can’t reason ourselves out of feelings – if we could, this would be a very different world!

    Rather than try to sugarcoat this policy change, I’d suggest presenting it as (A) a fait accompli, not a negotiating starting point and (B) a long-overdue correction to the policies that have dumped unfair burdens on the child-free employees. You WON’T be able to please everyone when you implement these long-overdue changes and you should be prepared for some of the parents to become angry and indignant – that’s just human nature.

    Full disclosure: I am a child-free married woman and can tell you that people like me are sometimes the focus of prejudice for having made that choice. This is a complex issue of itself which I won’t analyze here, but this attitude can inform and pervade a workplace. It’s possible that (consciously or not) the administrators who first created these massively unfair policies were going on the premise that parents are virtuously self-sacrificing while the childfree are all shallowly selfish. Glad to hear that your company has woken up and are moving into 2025 at last!

    1. Chauncy Gardener*

      Hopefully the changes that will be made will just add some benefits to the child free folks, i.e. give them the same leeway the parents have had all along, not necessarily take anything away from the parental units.
      I wish OP the very best luck in this project!

      1. Phony Genius*

        I don’t see how that’s possible when it comes to things like having priority to schedule time off or being held to lower standards.

    2. Phony Genius*

      Sometimes when there is a change like this, the group that is losing some benefits gets angry at the group whose benefits are being increased to match. You have to make sure that this does not happen and make it clear that negative statements and behavior toward childless employees will not be tolerated.

    3. Mesquito*

      I don’t think this is necessarily true. A decent person would not feel good if they knew their vacation was possible because someone else who applied first was denied to accommodate their request! The flex time, sure, it was unfair but not at anyone’s expense, but no decent person is enjoying vacation time that had actually been taken from someone else.

      1. Dancing Otter*

        Well, since LW says non-parents had to pick up work the parents didn’t do, the Flex Time WAS at someone else’s expense.

      2. Dust Bunny*

        in some cases people without children having their time off requests denied or rescinded to accommodate their colleagues who have children

        They literally were enjoying vacation time that had been taken from someone else.

        1. Phony Genius*

          In my experience, nothing erodes decency faster than unjust enrichment. Except maybe taking it away. And I’m not just talking about workplaces.

    4. Debby*

      But I was thinking that they could implement most changes to “Add” some of those benefits instead of taking away; for example, making it a policy that everyone can take 2 hours a month for appointments, etc. without having to use PTO. Of course, some benefits for parents will be lost, such as not putting them first on asking for PTO. Just saying some of the benefits could be added for all rather than all of the benefits being taken away.

    5. Wayward Sun*

      I think the point of that sentence was that even if you implement change just by bringing everyone up to par, without taking anything away from anyone, the previously privileged group will feel like they’ve lost something because they’re no longer special.

      1. Boof*

        Maybe. But I doubt the biggest “offenders” (or perhaps, beneficiaries?) of the privilege here won’t notice some drop – there’s no way that holding everyone to a lower standard, or letting everyone take desired time off at once is going to fly. There’s going to be times when wants/needs will clash and those just used to getting their wants/needs met (at the expense of others) will probably notice the difference, and there’s a chance they won’t be thrilled by it, though hopefully most will be if it’s explained (and shown) that it’s just being distributed more evenly

  19. Coffeemate is searching the globe*

    Maybe this is a letter from the company who wrote in a while back about the “secret” benefits that parents had. They were exposed and are trying to right the ship!

    1. AJ*

      Sorry, no. That was me and I’m not this OP. But I find the discussion fascinating especially where it differs from my child care question.

      1. CTT*

        Or MAYBE they are a new coworker that was recently hired at your company in response to your letter *pulls out conspiracy board*

    2. Margaret Scratcher*

      That was my first thought! I was waiting for Alison to ask “Do they also give extra PTO and retirement benefits to parents?” Especially because OP’s hiring stinks of “leadership knows this is illegal and needs to change, but doesn’t want the backlash from parents losing exclusive benefits, so here’s a convenient scapegoat.”

  20. Lily Potter*

    A hypothetical question. You have a true superstar employee of many years on your staff. Yes, in true Lake Wobegon fashion, everyone thinks that they and/or their team are above average, but I’m talking about someone who is clearly head and shoulders above everyone else. You can’t pay them more, but you can reward them by backing off on the butt-in-seat time – giving them more schedule flexibility and more WFH than other employees. Do you run into problems if this superstar employee happens to be a parent? Or is it just a problem when a company systematically gives preference to parents over non-parents?

    I saw the above happen in one place where I worked. The employee in question was smart enough to underplay her schedule freedom and to not talk about how many kids’ sports activities that she got to attend in the afternoons – but she definitely got privileges that the rest of us did not get. It made sense to me that “output equals rewards” but there was a ton of snarking by others about how it “must be nice to not have to play by the rules…..”

    1. Observer*

      Do you run into problems if this superstar employee happens to be a parent? Or is it just a problem when a company systematically gives preference to parents over non-parents?

      That only makes sense in a truly dysfunctional organization. Which is what it sounds like the LW is describing, so it’s a good example of the “reasonable” way some people are going to challenge the changes.

      Because *nothing* Allison suggested precludes rewarding someone who is *objectively superior* at their job, just because they are a parent. *All* she is suggesting is that you simply *ignore* their parental status in this context.

      So why is anyone asking if it’s ok to reward a star employee if they are a parent? It sounds reasonable till you listen to the question and think about the assumptions underlying it.

      1. Amaya*

        If the confluence of circumstances is such that the high performer is the only one with kids, the enterprise is small enough, or is the most senior (and therefore has kids), there might still be that perception, even if unjustified.

        It is on management in this situation to stand firm and support their good employee and not cave to resentment.

        More generally, if the culture is to view parents as moochers in regular social discourse, that’s super corrosive.

    2. Alianne Secunda*

      I’ve seen this done as an unofficial lateral promotion type thing – “we can’t reward you with more money, but we are rewarding you with flexible schedule”. When this was the reasoning, others (myself included) weren’t upset because it kept open the option that one day I too could have this perk. And sure enough, eventually some of us did!

      But also, this was more of an “as needed” not “every day” kind of thing…

      1. Amaya*

        This is a great point! And more generally, as parenthood gets less common in pockets of society, then concessions to parents specifically no longer feel like “for me some day if I need it” and more like “for others and never for me”, which doesn’t do wonders for solidarity.

        1. NightShiftNurse*

          Yes to this. When you’ve worked for 50 years and “your day” never came, it can feel salty.

  21. Pescadero*

    “Sometimes when benefits are made more equitable, the group that used to get special privilege feels they’re losing something.”

    That is because they demonstrably ARE losing something.

    Making the benefits more equitable is absolutely a necessity for lots and lots of reasons – but it’s also imperative you don’t pretend like you aren’t taking away part of someones compensation. You are. That it is necessary does not change that reality.

    1. What the Knights In White sat in*

      If non-parents’ benefits are raised to the same level as parents’ benefits, then what exactly are the parents “losing”? A feeling of Specialness?

      1. Feral Humanist*

        It depends heavily on how coverage based people’s jobs are. There are offices/teams where a bunch of people could all be out at the same time and it would be fine. There are offices/teams where one person being out means no one else can be. It sounds from what the LW said that there is at least SOME issue of coverage here, so equitable distribution of PTO means that parents will get less of the most coveted PTO real estate (July/early August, Thanksgiving week, holidays, etc.).

      2. Red Reader the Adulting Fairy*

        By definition, if the previous benefit for parents was “if you want PTO that a non-parent already booked, we will revoke theirs and you can have it instead,” then yeah, they’re losing that benefit of being able to “steal” priority on PTO requests. Should they have ever had that benefit? No, absolutely not. But it was a benefit to them (arguably, one that they didn’t ask for even) and they will be losing it through no fault of their own.

        1. JB (not in Houston)*

          This may be splitting hairs, I don’t think it’s part of anyone’s *compensation* that they get to essentially take away another person’s vacation time so that they can take the time instead. If you’re being told you can’t take days off, sure. But you can’t take your day off on X date because someone else has it booked so you have to pick a different day, no.

          I agree that some people are going to be upset about not getting to do that anymore, although if they were ok with that happening in the first place, their being upset about it isn’t really a reasonable feeling that should be accomodated. But of course, the OP should be aware that anyone like that might be very vocal about their unhappiness.

          1. Red Reader the Adulting Fairy*

            Nobody said it was part of their compensation. But it was an advantage they were getting, which they will not be getting anymore, and yes, some people will probably be grumpy about it to some extent, even if they understand the reason for the change.

            I left my manager position for an IC role, so I am no longer eligible for the annual manager bonus. Do I understand why? Sure. Does it suck anyway? Sure, because I was used to getting it for the last four years, but that’s life. Am I actually going to complain about it? Well, no, because I chose to take the role change, but if I hadn’t chosen to make that shift and it had been a surprise to me, then losing out on an advantage might be a dissatisfying factor.

        2. What the Knights In White sat in*

          As soon as Sally has a kid, the parents would instantly lose the privilege of bumping her. I see nothing wrong with expanding that to all non-parents and advancing the timelineq.

      3. Guacamole Bob*

        If they’re able to grant additional flexibility to non-parents, this is true. But it sounds like there have been some times when a parent has been able to put in a last-minute time off request and had it granted because the manager was willing to revoke a time off request that had already been granted to a non-parent in order to ensure coverage. A more equitable system won’t allow that.

        If parents have been held to lower performance standards, they’ll have to either lower the standards for everyone or raise standards for the parents. Not clear what the ideal outcome is there without more info.

      4. ok*

        Right? It feels like we’re playing on a technicality here. They’re losing access to a special feature that non-parents didn’t have before.

    2. Amaya*

      It depends on the material difference. Coverage being one, allowances under limited resources. If there is only so much ability to WFH and parents receive preference for it, and there is less WFH or child concerns are no longer valid.

      If parents could take off and now they can’t and they need to restructure their childcare arrangements to cover what they could before in person, that’s a meaningful expense.

      In a reasonable company yanking PTO should be unconscionable. But sick hours being usable for kid illness but not close friend or pet illness might be a boundary that will remain and I think many people will agree is fair. There might still be more marginal flexibility for the parents that doesn’t egregiously hurt the non-parents, and I think that’s totally reasonable.

    3. Dust Bunny*

      They’re taking compensation that wasn’t available to people doing the same (or more) work in the same relevant capacity. It wasn’t earned compensation since parenthood isn’t relevant to the job (or, if it was, then non-parents were undercompensated).

      1. Pescadero*

        All true.

        …and all irrelevant to the fact that parents will be losing something.

        Taking away something you don’t deserve – still involves taking something away from you.

        1. Head Sheep Counter*

          I mean… if I steal your purse/wallet and get caught… do I deserve to be not-punished because… I now have to return your purse/wallet?

        2. Dust Bunny*

          And they can get their noses out of joint if they want to, but they would still be in the wrong.

    4. Annony*

      Realistically it doesn’t sound like they can make things equitable without taking away some perks from parents. The flexibility and lighter work loads given to parents were only possible by shifting the work to non-parents. Unless the company is planning to hire a lot of additional staff to decrease everyone’s work load and hours (which seems unlikely), parents are going to have to be held to a more rigid schedule and a higher standard than they have been. Objectively, that outcome is fair and the lax standards for parents never should have been a thing. But they are loosing an (unfair) benefit.

  22. Cacofonix*

    You need to start by understanding the problem(s). You have some real data from people who left *and* who were willing to share. But Alison is right, you need to dig into this more. You’re missing a lot from employees who didn’t share but left, are still there, from managers, etc. what other factors are in play. Also the impact of poor retention in real numbers. You can have your team investigate this fairly quickly while also halting the clearly illegal practices. You need to understand the potential impact of changes you make and mitigate for those (eg. disgruntled parents losing some of their perks where it’s not sustainable to extend them to everyone, unintended consequences on other policies, etc)

    Get and validate metrics, plan, implement, re-measure and be transparent about it, with executive support, nay, active involvement from the jump.

  23. Let It Go*

    I just had a second interview at a family run business. They were trying infighting I had children or not (I didn’t disclose whether I did or didn’t ) because “non-parents are not allowed to take time off around holidays or in the summer because parents have priority.”

    I told them that this was illegal in our state, wished them good luck in their hiring process, removed myself from consideration and left the interview.

    I would not have accepted a position with a company that blatantly does something ill and pits one group of employees against another whether I had children or not.

    2. RC*

      Wow, I hope you report them to your relevant labor board. If they’re disclosing that flagrantly in interviews, I can only imagine how bad it actually is.

  24. CommanderBanana*

    One would think that a company would stop doing the thing that’s gotten/getting them into legal hot water, but if we’ve learned anything from AAM, it’s that companies like to do dumb stuff.

  25. SB*

    The way my childless/childfree butt would straight-up quit and burn all my bridges on the way out….

    This is wild to me that this was not only allowed, but actual encouraged policy. And I say this as someone who will accommodate my coworkers who are parents when I’m able to and if I’m asked nicely. (I generally like my coworkers and I would like their children to children to not come to any harm by being unsupervised) But dang…..this is straight-up gross. It would just reenforce to me that my value is tied to my willingness to reproduce. I get enough of that from the current political climate.

  26. Amaya*

    I am a parent and this issue cuts close to my heart, having been more or less the only parent in my extended family and social group for years.

    I think an equitable policy is key to make sure they reasonable people don’t feel taken advantage of and don’t resent parents in society in general. The discourse against parenthood and children at a societal level is corrosive and just bad.

    That said, the policy needs to be realistic, and not merely take it’s time from the most virulently resentful childless – which doesn’t seem like is the case with OP anyway, as a parent herself.

    1. CTT*

      I too would be a “virulently resentful childless [person]” if my company was illegally taking away my compensation and benefits in favor of another group.

    2. Head Sheep Counter*

      Its amazing how being abused for someone else’s gain… makes one… resentful

      1. Dust Bunny*

        Right? I don’t really think this is an unfair response.

        The problem is seeing parents vs. non-parents as the problem when it’s actually both of those groups vs. the employer. The solution to flexibility for parents is not to take it away from non-parents; it’s for employers to have enough staff and have workable policies.

        This letter also says that “almost all job duties can only be done on site”, and if you’re a parent, it’s not the non-parents’ job to make that work for you. You chose a job that inherently didn’t have the kind of flexibility you hoped and now you’re trying to force it to work at someone else’s expense. That’s on you.

        1. Head Sheep Counter*

          Its always weird to me when folks take jobs that have requirements and lo… those requirements are enforced.

          In this case, the company got sideways and didn’t enforce equitably and now need to poopy scoop their mess.

          You would have thought the extreme turn over would have been a flag for the remaining staff to self reflect without this…

  27. Yes And*

    “The imperative here is less about changing the culture and more about changing policy and practice.”

    To me, this statement is so inherently obvious that the company framing it as a “culture” problem gives me pause. I’ll bet you dollars to donuts that OP does not, in fact, find that upper management is behind these changes, and winds up needing to get out.

  28. Coffeemate is searching the globe*

    Maybe the company can do an exercise where the parents and non-parents swap roles for a day so each can see what the other has to deal with on a daily basis. It could be a great way to gain a new perspective

  29. ok*

    I know you mention it in the letter, but I’m shocked the company hasn’t been sued to hell and back by now.

    1. Annony*

      I think they have been and that is probably the only reason they are attempting to change.

  30. Harper*

    OP, just another thought (that you’ve likely considered): if the company has this blatantly and egregiously shown parents preferential treatment, there are likely other areas where biases are unfairly (and/or illegally) showing up.

  31. LL*

    “My understanding is that there have been some changes at the top that allowed this to happen.”

    I’m confused about this line. Does this mean that there were changes at the time like 5 years ago that led to the state we’re in now? Or that there were very recent changes that have led to the creation of the this new role and team?

    Also, why doesn’t upper management and the board just immediately change these policies? I 100% agree with Allison that this has to come from the top, but I don’t understand why it requires a new team that’s apparently being led by a middle manager rather than the executive level just making these changes and then firing people who refuse to treat non-parents the same as parents.

  32. An Australian in London*

    From an organisational change management POV I usually think there needs to be both carrots and sticks. Can there be a (meaningful) prize for the department or manager who does the best job (carefully defined) of fixing this by a deadline?

    For the stick, I sure want to use language like “We are doing this first because it is the right thing to do, but also because it is illegal to continue as we were. We want to be clear that favouring employees with children over those without is illegal, and we will treat it as if you were stealing, destroying company property, or assaulting staff. We think it is reasonable to require all managers to immediately stop breaking the law and we do not have patience for a long phased-in period of compliance. You will lose your job over this, on day one.”

    I’m aware my instincts along these lines are seldom reliable or useful. That’s what I’d want to say. I’d probably have a lawyer draft a legally safe version.

    1. An Australian in London*

      In the US, there is currently little Federal law covering this. Executive Order 13152 (signed in 2000) prohibits negativediscrimination based on “status as a parent” for federal employees. It’s not clear if the courts would agree this also prevents discrimination in favour of status as a parent. In any case, it applies only to federal employees, and it’s far from clear that the current administration would uphold this.

      A clever plaintiff might argue that discrimination against those without children is effectively discrimination on a protected ground, i.e. gender, if the discrimination could be shown to affect a protected class differently. For example, there’s maybe an argument that “women without children” are treated differently from “men without children”, based on an unstated premise that the men’s free time wouldn’t be much different, because they wouldn’t be caring for children all that much anyway”.

      I’d like to see someone test that.

      1. Mad Scientist*

        The LW mentioned that it was illegal in their state, even if it’s not federally illegal.

    2. Coffeemate is searching the globe*

      That’s too much – no, letting Elaine leave early because her kid has a baseball practice is not the same as assaulting an employee

  33. 2 Cents*

    OP, is it possible for some of these benefits to go the other way rather than for them to be taken away? So, you said that no WFH is allowed because the jobs cannot be done from home, yet parents are allowed to do so. Can this exception be extended to everyone regardless of parental status (0bv), since it sounds like the workforce there needs it? (And let’s be honest: in 2025, 99% of us need this). So, everyone can have, say, 2 WFH days a quarter for whatever need, with the understand/structure that whoever is in the office will pick up the slack, because everyone will be taking their turn a different day that quarter?

    I am a parent, and I am aghast at the way this company is handling all of these things to date and would be incensed that my colleagues were not given the same allowances I was for their needs/wants.

    1. Elsa*

      Yes, I came here to say something similar. The company has been giving flexibility to parents, which means that the potential for flexibility exists within the framework of the job you do. It would be unfair to everyone to just take that benefit away. Instead, the flexibility that currently exists should be maintained, but spread more equitably, with everyone getting a certain amount of WFH days and early Fridays.

  34. Csethiro Ceredin*

    “the human cost to non-parents who have families and non-work lives that were being treated as unworthy of concern or support”

    I really appreciate this phrasing because it expresses the problem with this kind of practice perfectly.

    Someone on my team is caregiver for her very sick mum and it’s just as impactful as having a child, and she has (and needs) a lot of flexibility here as a result. We all have life stuff to deal with and a workplace has no business weighing in on what is more important.

    1. I Have RBF*

      Exactly. I don’t have kids, and even if I ever had them, they would be grown and flown by now. But I am a caregiver for my spouse who is on hospice for cancer. Over the past year and a half my employer has given me a great deal of flexibility to take her to appointments. It matters, even if it isn’t a “child” who needs care.

  35. PayRaven*

    A key feature here is going to be emphasizing that, if non-parents are now being treated the same as parents, that means that there will be more overall time taken off/people leaving early/hours missed here or there, AND THAT’S OKAY.

    And then it needs to actually be okay. In an industry that isn’t emergency medicine, it usually is, but managers have to be told and held to that directly.

    The reason parents would fight this change is that they’re going to assume (and not without cause) that since their time off is now being “split” with non-parents, they’re losing some. The only way for this to work is for non-parents to truly be brought up to the level of parents, and that means more overall absence, and that has to be okay.

  36. NightShiftNurse*

    I could write a book about the inequity experienced by non-parents. As a nurse I worked with a 98% female work cohort. Maternity leaves? Double the work, no extra pay. FMLA leaves? Same. Soccer game, kid sick at day care? Same. When I asked about unfairness, the response? “You‘ll get your turn”. In a 50 work year life, my turn never came.

    The trick is to cover all the parental needs without leaning so hard on the non-parents. Float pool, temps, hiring short term staff. The problem is that companies don’t want to pay for that. Until they do, the burden will keep falling on the non-parents.

  37. madhatter360*

    The only time I could see it being relevant to prioritize time off for parents would be around spring break. If a parent and a non-parent ask for a particular week in April off, the parent is likely scheduling for their child’s school vacation, which they have no control over. The non-parent may have more flexibility.
    I don’t think that means bumping non-parents, but it could mean adding something to the process of asking for time off to indicate if there is flexibility to their dates. (Is this vacation time related to an event scheduled by some other party for example, wedding, convention, school break etc)
    Where I work there are certain days, we are restricted from taking off unless you can show it’s for an “unmovable” event. A wedding invitation or ticket stubs to a convention are accepted. “Me and the boys wanted to go to Cabo that weekend” is not.

    1. PayRaven*

      Right, but the non-parent also might NOT have that flexibility, and it’s not actually the company’s business. The whole point is that parents’ lives and needs can’t be treated differently.

      If flexibility is factored into the leave-taking process, cool! But assuming it is the whole problem.

    2. RC*

      In that particular case, the kid’s school breaks are scheduled months if not years in advance. The parents can be on top of their own schedule and put in their vacation requests early rather than last-minute (after someone else has already gotten that week approved). The latter scenario is the problem.

      1. I Have RBF*

        This.

        School schedules are published at the beginning of the school year, IIRC. If parents really want that time off, they need to make the request early. This last minute bumping shit is not good. If I had made reservations and bought tickets and then J Q Parent bumped my vacation and made it so I had to forfeit that money? I’d probably just rage quit and take my vacation.

    3. Mad Scientist*

      Parents are not the only ones who have to schedule things around the school year. My partner was a teacher for several years, so our vacation options were limited by the academic calendar. It would have been incredibly frustrating to hear that I could never take off during the public school breaks so that my partner and I could travel together simply because we don’t have kids.

    4. Persephone*

      Different school systems have different spring breaks. You can’t expect a company to ban childless employees from taking off that many weeks per year because they have children.

    5. Peanut Hamper*

      Yeah, no, this is a slippery slope because suddenly it’s not just spring break, but also spring break and winter break. And then it’s spring break and winter break and some other break. And then it’s yet some other thing (prom, junior prom–good lord, some schools have more days off than they have on, it seems). Just…..no.

      The non-parent may have more flexibility.

      They may and they may not. This is not a good way to set policy because it’s just an assumption.

    6. Observer*

      The only time I could see it being relevant to prioritize time off for parents would be around spring break.

      Nope. Because while it is true *in general* that to some extent parents have a bit less logistical flexibility stuff like spring break is actually the easiest stuff to deal with. Because that’s stuff you know about *months* in advance. It’s the sickness, snow days, and other unexpected or short notice school breaks that tend to be hard to plan around. And keep in mind that even if someone does not have *kids* who are going to be our for spring break, they may very well have family who work on a school schedule, which makes that their best time for a vacation as well.

    7. Ellie*

      I don’t think you should get into the habit of judging what other people use their leave for. If two people want the same week off, then you either find a way to grant them both, or you go with the one who asked first. Stuff like vacation care exists. The only time it gets tricky is if the parent calls out anyway, using sick leave, because they physically can’t leave their child alone and have no other options. But that could happen anyway (people can get sick when others are out). You just have to deal with it. It’s not a good reason for rescinding someone else’s leave.

    8. Dust Bunny*

      School breaks are pretty much set and parents know about them by the beginning of the school year, if not functionally sooner since they’ve been happening every year for generations. They have zero excuse not to have a plan in place that does not involve foisting work onto their coworkers.

  38. Corrupted User Name*

    The company not disclosing the legal issues and being in “hot water” ahead of time feels like a huge deal.

    If someone is brought in to right previous wrongs and change a culture, why would they not be given all the details? Especially if the company is already embroiled in discrimination litigation, that’s significant and seems like they might be beyond bringing on one “change maker”…or they would be strategizing with her on these things from day one.

  39. Hyaline*

    Late to the game, but I wanted to add–yes, this starts with policies and procedures! But along with that, if you want the cultural change to stay positive and foster good rapport and teamwork rather than fuel divisiveness, I think you want to adopt the outlook of expanding benefits rather than restricting access as much as possible. Like it or not, it’s a very natural reaction that, for example, WFH is revoked for *everyone,* those who had it will be resentful, and some who didn’t get the benefit (yet) may also be resentful that it’s gone before they had a chance to use it. However, if thing go the other way–maybe, in that example, everyone has the flexibility to occasionally WFH when something comes up, whether it’s kid-related or not–there’s a sense that the good stuff is getting shared around rather than the good stuff getting taken away. That, IMO, is where fine-tuning the “culture” element of this comes in–do you want a positive or punitive culture? Adjust and adopt implementation from there.

  40. Cv*

    I’m curious if these pro-parent policies were documented (before the lawsuit) in some form, or were they communicated amongst managers in some other fashion.

  41. Safely Retired*

    I assume that those who have not left include a preponderance of parents. Doing everything evenly will be perceived by some of the beneficiaries as taking something away – “But I’ve always…”. “My boss said…”. I would hope that it would be made clear to them, not just their management, that things are going to be more equitable going forward.

    1. Coffeemate is searching the globe*

      Things should be equitable, but if this has been going on for years then some of the parents will have built their schedules around this flexibility. There should at least be an acknowledgement and a little transition time if needed. They didn’t make the rules after all

  42. Can't Take My Vacation*

    I worked for a company that gave LOTS of latitude to parents and those without children were expected to cover for them. I had planned a vacation for nearly a year; the time off had been approved 11 months earlier, tickets purchased, etc.

    Two weeks before the planned vacation, the executive director came to me and told me that Sally wanted to take her kids to Disney on spring break so I couldn’t take my vacation. I told him I would be taking that vacation and I would be submitting my resignation as soon as I had it typed up. I was a MUCH better employee than Sally and he had already told her I would cancel my vacation. I told him what they were doing may not be illegal but it was unethical and others would hear about it.
    I went on that vacation. The executive director was fired for a variety of reasons and the “if you have kids, you get priority” policy ended. Sally resigned a few months later after she had been held accountable to her job description.

  43. spoonfulofsunflower*

    I’m curious about whether there were multiple parents with competing needs for time off – let’s say there’s a team of 5. 3 of the 5 are parents, and 2 are childfree adults. If 2 parents and 1 childfree adult requested the same time (like spring break) off, but really only 1 person could be off because of coverage issues, were both parents approved and the childfree person denied?

    How many paid holidays/office closure days does the company have and does the company need to be open 24/7 or open on major holidays? Maybe there’s a need for more paid holidays where the company is totally closed so there’s less conflict between parents and childfree people wanting the same days off. Or perhaps there’s a need to offer a couple of floating holidays for people who may not celebrate the major holidays such as Christmas, Easter, etc. Also consider incentives for people to volunteer to work on major holidays if coverage is needed – overtime, bonus pay, etc.

    Maybe it would help to have a quarterly review of people’s PTO bank and PTO requests (by managers of teams) – make sure everyone is able to take time off if they want/need to.

    It’ll be tough to make this transition – I hope you have executive and senior level management who will 100% back up all new policies and processes you implement. You’ll definitely need some kind of evaluation-feedback loop to see how things are going and assess if tweaks or changes are needed over time, with data for your analysis. Is there a short-term vision and long-term vision, with goals and performance measures to evaluate against? How will you define success? How will you ensure compliance? Hopefully the executives also understand that change takes time, especially if you want to do change right.

  44. Mad Scientist*

    Some of this is straightforward, like time off requests etc., but I’m curious about the performance element. That seems harder to change with policy alone! If parents have consistently held to lower standards, I’m skeptical that supervisors will suddenly stop cutting them slack overnight. Will they simply lower the standards for non-parents? Is that reasonable from a business perspective?

    I also doubt this aspect was ever an official policy before, so I doubt that a new policy could fix it.

    Maybe comprehensive training to help managers assess performance more objectively? Any other ideas?

  45. Anonymous For Now*

    While not quite as extreme, it sounds as if the parents have been treated as if they were members of the Eloi while the non parents were looked down upon as if they were Morlocks.

    In addition to all employees being advised that the current system is illegal and must be changes ASAP, I think that any parent who complains should be asked point blank why they think it is fair or reasonable that they get to take off for non illness and non emergencies (kids sports, for example) and have their co-worker do their work or for them to get to take their vacation around the holidays every year but their co-worker can never take vacation at that time.

    Let the parents get ticked off and go on interviews where they explain how they feel they are entitled to be treated as special beings because they have reproduced.

  46. What the Knights in White sat in*

    Even without OP’s efforts, parents would lose their Special Privilege every time one of the non-parents became a parent.

    (“The best part of working here was being able to bump Fergus and Jane from their pre-approved vacations whenever I wanted. Now that they’re having kids, I can’t bump them anymore. The company owes me compensation.”)

  47. Nudibranch*

    I too would have left this company and this job as soon as I found out about the inequity and favoritism towards married/parent employees.

    Seriously? It took multiple people quitting and legal action before management realized this was a bad idea?

    1. KC*

      It’s very likely that they also benefitted from treating nonparents poorly, so it wasn’t a situation they had a vested interest in fixing until the legal trouble happened.

      There was a letter a few years ago where the parents absolutely refused to do any holiday coverage, to the point of insubordination and while the middle manager was trying to hold them accountable, they were overruled by the upper management who were also parents. It had gotten so bad they were starting to refuse to work weekends as well.

      https://www.askamanager.org/2018/11/parents-in-my-office-are-sticking-non-parents-with-all-the-holiday-coverage.html

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