Five Mother’s Day Gifts for Your Employees

This year is an important one. We can finally put to work all the things we learned in these last two years. At Momlancers, we would like to share this knowledge with you.

These are five gifts we believe every working mom will really appreciate:

1. Acknowledge her “transferable skills”

When women become mothers, they develop many skills that are useful in their professional roles; however, they might not detect them, and neither do their companies.

What kind of skills am I talking about?

Ability to Learn New Things: Understanding the world through every question your child asks.

Crisis Management: Taking your daughter to the ER and trying to look OK while comforting her.

Project Management: School, lunch, menu, parties, soccer matches, WhatsApp, market, Gmail, husband, grandparents, you name it.

Etcetera…

Only half of moms give themselves credit for bringing their "mom skills" — patience, multitasking, and efficiency, for example —to their jobs (Source: McKiney). 

Your first gift: Acknowledge these transferable skills and applaud them.

2. Open up to new work schemes

The pandemic has already shown us that we can work from home, through objectives and asynchronously.

When we started Momlancers, we ran a survey where we found that for every 10 women who asked their companies for a flexible scheme, seven received a NO as an answer.

Accenture also found that 45 percent of women turned down a job because of the impact on their personal lives. If you become a more flexible company, you will attract the best female talent (and probably also that interesting young talent from new generations).

When workplaces have “family friendly” policies, employees are happier, more productive and more likely to stay. (Source: Lean In). No one should have to choose between being a good employee and a good mother.

Look past the rigid 9-to-5 work schedule and allow mothers to work flexible hours as needed.

Gift No. 2: Make your work schedules more flexible.

3. Eliminate “maternal bias”

Motherhood triggers false assumptions that women are less competent and less committed to their careers. (Source: Lean In)

Do not assume that someone will act in one way or another just because she is a mother.

Avoid decisions made under these statements:

She’s a mom, so….

… she cannot go to that business dinner because she might prefer to be with her children.

… she will not be interested in taking that position because it involves a lot of traveling and she is a mother.

… do not hire her because she has been married for two years and she will surely want to have children soon.

Etcetera…

Educate employees about the powerful biases that working moms face.

When coworkers make assumptions about a woman’s commitment to work based on what’s happening in her personal life, it limits her opportunities — and could cause your company to miss out on a highly committed candidate.

Our gift No. 3: Create recruitment processes and talent conversations where the person is evaluated for their talent and not for any family condition.

4. Help her grow.

Many women just need a "boost" to break that famous "glass ceiling." Help them develop skills such as negotiation, communication and leadership. You can also work on other areas, including ambition management and work-life integration.

Offer mentorship programs to help moms grow or get back into the workforce

Push for candidates to be evaluated on their talent, skills and experience, without taking into account if they are mothers or if they’ve taken time off to care for their children.

Today, only 30 percent of leadership roles are filled by women and they make up just 6 percent of board members. Helping mothers grow will get us closer to closing the gap in leadership and board roles.

After the pandemic and the Great Resignation, companies that shift to support programs for working mothers only stand to benefit.

No. 4: Stop considering it and hire a coaching service or create an internal mentoring program.

5. Challenge her

Give her that position, that vacancy, that project. Let her make the final call. You'll be surprised how well she does the job and the effort she’ll put into it. Parenting is the best training for productivity.

Moms have unique insight into problems that need resolution. The greatest companies are those that find a solution to a real problem. Mothers have unique experience identifying and ideating around these pain points.

No. 5: Give her an interesting challenge.

The pandemic led us to stay at home and it showed us in no uncertain terms the huge responsibility of caring for children. Some of us experienced it intensely with our own family, others experienced it through Zoom screens where suddenly a little intruder appeared wanting to play with his mother. In the end, we got to know each other more as human beings.

May this empathy, this "getting into someone else's shoes," remain even when we return to the office. This will be the best gift you can give your moms.