Intentional parenting leads to more well-adjusted children and more fulfilled parents.
The biggest obstacle to intentional parenting, in many cases, is the conflict between work life and home life.
If you provide for a family, and your family depends on your income from your job, your incentive is to generate as much value from that job as possible. Many times, that means working long hours, going above and beyond expectations, and generally committing yourself to your work.
Enter Netflix, with its recently announced unlimited paid leave policy for parents who have had a child in the past year.
In a world where talent is the key factor in an organization’s performance, is there a better way to use the organization’s resources? Netflix has essentially taken away the choice between being an intentional parent to a newborn and doing good work.
While I would love to say they’ve recognized the importance of parenting to society, the reality is that happy parents make for happier, more engaged employees. Those kinds of employees tend to quit their jobs less often. Paying for paternity/maternity leave is a good bet on reducing employee turnover…. which makes for a good investment since employee turnover is expensive.
As a business owner, this means the bar has been raised. The same people who might come to work for you now know they could go to work for a company that offers unlimited maternity/paternity leave.
And as an employee, the list of companies working to create supportive work environments continues to grow. That means there is less and less of an excuse for staying where you are because you ‘have to.’
The world’s changing. Are you keeping up?