“Work-life balance” is a lie. The reality for most people is a madcap blend of work and life. While this does mean that more life happens at work—where people have been forming ever-stronger relationships—it also means that it’s hard to distinguish between work and life.
Instead, people work at all times of day or night.
This blending means that parents are trying to balance errands and to-dos during the day and taking a little bit (or a lot) of work home in the evenings to the point where there’s no distinction.
And boy, is that draining. A recent open letter from Arianna Huffington to Elon Musk discussed just this: Huffington pointed out that people have limited energy, and with that comes prioritization. The result is that people spread their energy thin every day.
Related: The First Step to Achieving Work-Life Balance? Stop Calling It That
This is especially true for working parents, who are responsible for managing their dependents’ equally full lives. Something has to give, and one of the first things to go is a parent’s mental and emotional health.
The second loss is family well-being. Stress levels skyrocket, anxiety creeps in, and life can suddenly seem overwhelming. People lose connection with themselves and one other, and everyone suffers.
Compounding the time scarcity is “hustle culture,” the pressure to maximize individual potential for adults and their children. The race to Harvard begins on the playground, and children often attend endless activities after school and on weekends.
Parents, too, are aiming high. CNBC has noted that more than half of working Americans have side hustles in addition to their regular jobs. That piles even more weight on the big to-do list, but when these working parents see tasks disappearing, it’s a gift to combat the pressure and discover time they can use to treat themselves.
That said, working parents are likelier to stay in a job than their child-free counterparts, and they are often measurably more productive, according to research from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. If businesses are struggling with high turnover and low engagement, they should focus on making working parents’ lives easier.
The benefit of time
Companies that prioritize family-first benefits that support family responsibilities while emphasizing self-care and healthy living will see a greater return on all employees’ loyalty, morale, productivity, and performance. In a way, the company will also find more time in the day.
Concierge programs are a perk that working parents want because these benefits can genuinely help negotiate the overwhelming blur between the office and home. Segways and ping-pong tables may be fun, but as perks, they have little practical use, especially for people who have to figure out who’ll pick up their kids if they have to work late.
On the other hand, running errands, arranging last-minute babysitters, and providing referrals for services parents need has a far greater impact on their well-being than in-office game tables could ever provide. Parents with this benefit can watch their personal task lists shrink and find more time in the day for both life and work.
Setting up a concierge program.
Offering a concierge program as part of a benefits package is not out of reach for even small companies. If undertaken strategically, employees might quickly relieve their chronic mental burdens. Here are the steps:
1. Designate a champion.
Every new initiative needs someone to lead the charge. Securing an internal company champion who sees the benefits of a concierge program will accelerate the decision-making process. This person can gather information on corporate concierge and errand-running programs.
The source of information might be an executive in another department or company or an HR colleague who provided similar services at a prior organization.
Part of this champion’s research will assess current benefit perks and identify gaps in coverage that a concierge and errand-running service can fill in and integrate.
This person can also get creative about securing a budget for the program, such as by allocating funds from the company’s wellness budget or consolidating and integrating other benefit programs.
2. Ask what people need.
Working parents’ to-do lists are lengthy, but there’s no rule that the parent has to do every single task him- or herself. As long as the ingredients for the kids’ dinner are ready after work, it doesn’t matter who picked them up.
With a concierge service, working parents can look at their to-do lists and start eliminating by delegating. Conducting an employee survey about what kinds of concierge and errand benefits people need will determine the available services.
Harried employees will be more than happy to detail all the mundane, unnecessary hate-to-dos (scheduling doctor appointments, researching family-friendly travel spots, and picking up the dry cleaning, to name a few) they’d like to take off the task list and outsource to someone trustworthy.
Working through these surveys and discussions will also help get a team on board and involved. Employees will see how they can be less distracted, more available, and bring their best selves to the office and home.
3. Align with retention and inclusion efforts.
A concierge program can be seamlessly aligned with another company initiative. For example, if the company is working to improve gender equity and inclusion initiatives, a concierge program can help those efforts. How? The burdens of family care and management fall disproportionately on women, particularly women of color. Taking steps to alleviate that load can differentiate between retaining talented employees and losing them to burnout.
With all the talk about how expensive child care is — and it’s nearly on par with college tuition in some states, according to CNBC — it’s easy to overlook how much time, energy, and money parents spend simply securing care. Then, children don’t go to school until age 5, and the proverbial “village” is gone: Grandparents and neighbors can’t babysit during the day because they probably have full-time jobs, too.
Concierge services can’t make childcare less expensive, but they can streamline finding and securing that care. They handle all the research for babysitters, daycares, tutoring, support groups, and other programs. Parents can have many reliable resources in front of them with little effort.
Day after day, a working parent needs more time—not just time to check off items on the to-do list but time to feel present, enjoy life, and take care of themselves. However, when every day feels like a marathon of Herculean proportions to take care of the basics in life, there is certainly no room for self-care and leisure.
Work-life blending is a reality. It seems like a paradigm that would make working parents’ lives easier, but it doesn’t.
That’s why concierge programs can be a lifesaver. Lelifesaverld takes the time to think of all the challenges working parents face, then imagines that morale and productivity would improve if the workplace helped shrink that to-do list.
Every benefit should be a tool for life empowerment, and the latest concierge and errand-running benefits help give parents the freedom to focus at work and feel more accomplished during the day.