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Married to the job no more: Craving flexibility, parents are quitting to get it
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MARRIED TO THE JOB NO MORE: CRAVING FLEXIBILITY, PARENTS ARE QUITTING TO GET IT
December 3, 2021 | Article
By Aaron De Smet, Bonnie Dowling, Marino Mugayar-Baldocchi, and Joachim Talloen
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Working parents are among the record number of employees leaving their jobs or
thinking about doing so. To keep this crucial group, organizations must address
why they’re drawn to other options.
The number of Americans who are up and quitting their jobs has been growing for
months. From low-wage, frontline employees to more affluent workers and
executives, this turnover tsunami is sweeping through the entire workforce.
Parents, who have faced some of the harshest conditions during the COVID-19
pandemic, are joining this exodus with gusto.
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Article (7 pages)
As part of our research on the Great Attrition, we found that parents were more
likely to have left their jobs over the past several months than their nonparent
counterparts. Reasons include exhaustion from the competing pressures of working
from home and juggling childcare responsibilities, struggles with returning to
the office but not finding consistent childcare, and reevaluating their overall
work–life balance. Parents are looking for more flexible work opportunities,
from taking time off and starting their own businesses to turning to gig
roles.1Kathryn Dill and Josh Mitchell, “Workers quit jobs in droves to become
their own bosses,” Wall Street Journal, November 29, 2021.
According to our survey data,2Our survey data on parents and nonparents comes
from a survey of employees in Australia, Canada, Singapore, the United Kingdom,
and the United States in August 2021. The employee survey included 5,774 people
of working age, though for specific exhibits included in this article, only the
relevant data on parents and nonparents were included. While we did not focus on
nonparent caregivers in this survey, many of our recommendations would apply to
that group as well. this trend will continue for the next several months, if not
more, with non-White parents planning to leave at higher rates than their White
counterparts. For instance, fully half of non-White fathers we surveyed said
they were planning to leave their jobs. Non-White mothers are planning to leave
at higher rates than White mothers, at 43 percent to 34 percent (Exhibit 1).
Exhibit 1
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Companies don’t want to lose large numbers of workers of any stripe. But this
trend among non-White parents—as well as the large numbers of women who have
left the workforce since the pandemic started—is compounding the challenges
organizations face as they pursue goals related to diversity, equity, and
inclusion. McKinsey research has shown that inclusive organizations have a
competitive advantage in attracting and retaining talent, among other positive
business factors.
Parents also tend to belong to a crucial category: midtenure employees who play
key managerial and individual-contributor roles.32022 employee experience
trends: The 4 things your people need you to know, Qualtrics, November 2021.
They are leaders or are on the leadership track. Any organization that loses
this cohort can take a big hit to its institutional knowledge, including its
managerial capabilities and mentorship pipeline.
What’s more, managers who are parents, and in particular women, provide much of
the social support in organizations. Our Women in the Workplace 2021 report
revealed that women managers have supported employee well-being throughout the
pandemic at a higher rate than their male counterparts (Exhibit 2). Losing these
women could erode an organization’s social fabric, further intensifying the
cycle of grief and burnout that companies have been grappling with since the
pandemic began.
Exhibit 2
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For all these reasons, it is crucial for organizations to create an environment
that will accommodate and retain parents. But that means they have to understand
why parents are looking for alternatives in the first place.
Exhibit 3
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WHY THEY’RE LEAVING
Our research shows that the problems that all employees are grappling with—not
feeling valued by their organization or manager, not feeling a sense of
belonging, and not having a good work–life balance—affect parents and nonparents
alike. However, there are key factors contributing to why parents are leaving
that are distinct from nonparents. Of more than 20 possible reasons given for
leaving their job in the past six months, parents cited caring for family as a
top five reason, while nonparents cited family near the bottom of the list, at
number 18.
Similarly, workload and the ability to work remotely were among the top ten
reasons that parents left their job but were toward the bottom of the list for
nonparents (Exhibit 3).
These results are consistent with McKinsey research on the future of remote
work, which has shown that employees with young children are more likely to
prefer primarily remote-working models and flexible work locations, with only 8
percent suggesting that they would like to see a fully on-site model in the
future.
WHERE THEY’RE GOING
Our survey shows that parents are significantly more likely to start a new
business compared with their nonparent counterparts. The data suggest that they
will continue to be more likely to do so over the next several months, with 45
percent of parents more likely than their peers without children to leave to
start a new business (Exhibit 4).
Exhibit 4
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Although our survey showed more workers in all categories doing gig work because
they prefer it, parents are 6 percent more likely to take gig jobs than
nonparents. Lower-income individuals are more likely to be driven to gig work
out of necessity, the survey shows, and parents among this group more so than
nonparents (Exhibit 5). One of the reasons, the lower-income respondents said,
is that this type of work affords them more flexibility to care for family.
Exhibit 5
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HOW TO KEEP THEM
It’s abundantly clear that organizations have to move quickly if they want to
retain working parents and others with caregiving responsibilities. Addressing
their needs for increased flexibility is the first place to start. But how?
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Many companies have addressed the attrition problem with blunt instruments,
including pay raises and extra paid time off. While money and time off are
always welcome, more precise tools are needed. McKinsey research throughout the
pandemic has shown that the best companies listen closely to their employees and
craft responses tailored to their needs. In the case of parents, even more than
other groups, this means focusing on work–life balance and health while treating
remote work and schedule flexibility—formerly viewed as perks—as table stakes.
Here are three areas where organizations can be more bold and creative in their
thinking about how to retain parents:
Embrace radical flexibility. This goes beyond giving parents and other
caregivers extra paid time off to take care of family needs. What if an employee
needs every Tuesday afternoon off to care for a child or other family member?
The response might be to give them a free floating day per week that they can
take whenever they need it, no questions asked. Maybe some parents would love
taking off from 3:00 p.m. until after dinner, then logging back in as needed
after the kids are in bed.
Companies might create radically flexible roles, allowing all employees to cut
back to 60 percent workweeks or downshift to a less-demanding role for a time,
with the understanding that they can ramp back up when ready. They could even
break positions into pieces, allowing job sharing, or hiring someone to do 20
percent of a job one day a week, for example. These radically flexible roles
already exist in some more advanced healthcare settings, where nurse staffing
demands are constantly changing. Per diem and part-time nurses are able to pick
up variable-length shifts as needed to cover gaps and meet patient care needs as
well as their personal need for flexibility.
Models of this nature could be considered for other roles in other industries,
establishing new paradigms that provide greater flexibility for workers as
companies increasingly update their focus to evaluating employees on
deliverables rather than time spent at work.
Get more creative with childcare support. Some companies have provided in-house
subsidized childcare or concierge services. These are welcome policies that can
be viewed not as short-term emergency actions but as long-term adjustments.
For example, Patagonia’s on-site childcare drives its nearly perfect retention
of new mothers and reduces overall turnover of parents to 25 percent below the
general employee population, the company says. Patagonia believes parents’
engagement, loyalty, and productivity have also been enhanced by the
benefit.4Talent Blog, “Why Patagonia CHRO Dean Carter sees onsite child care as
a bedrock benefit,” blog entry by Bruce M. Anderson, September 10, 2019.
However, many parents may still be reluctant or unable to return to the office
with their child, essentially rendering those services useless to them.
Companies can go above and beyond these options by offering parents off-site,
including at-home, childcare that is either fully or mostly subsidized. This
will not only show a personalized commitment to employees but it will also help
them maintain the flexibility they desire. Organizations can also expand the use
of parental-leave programs by encouraging all parents to participate in them,
not just mothers. By equalizing and normalizing participation in these programs,
companies can create a more equitable environment for their entire workforce.
Let them go—and make a concerted effort to get them back. Having gone through a
prolonged global pandemic, many employees need a break. This is a normal and
increasingly common response to an abnormal event.
Some companies have already developed processes that allow parents who have
taken leave to adjust to returning to work, recognizing that the childcare and
other responsibilities that prompted their departure likely have not
disappeared. In addition to accommodating their childcare needs, companies can
offer on-ramp programs that help returning parents update their skills to get up
to speed.
Organizations can also conduct a different type of exit interview, asking, “What
would it take to keep you here? If we accommodate your needs, would you be
willing to stay for a pilot program to test how it works?” This approach would
rely in part on training leaders and managers to elicit an honest appraisal from
employees about what led them to this point.
Organizations that think they can wait out this period without responding to
employees’ concerns about flexibility may face a rude awakening as parental
attrition in particular gets worse. They also risk increasing burnout throughout
their entire workforce if more individuals leave and existing employees have to
fill those gaps.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Companies that experiment with how to design jobs that will appeal to
parents—and anyone looking for more flexibility—are acknowledging reality: no
matter how dedicated they may be to their jobs, individuals are more than
employees. Parents need to take care of their children, adult children may need
to take care of aging parents, and we all need to take care of our own health
and well-being. Companies that get creative with solutions are meeting this need
for flexibility with a flexible response—a welcome model for everyone.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)
Aaron De Smet is a senior partner in McKinsey’s New Jersey office, Bonnie
Dowling is an associate partner in the Denver office, Marino Mugayar-Baldocchi
is a research science specialist in the New York office, and Joachim Talloen is
a senior research science analyst in the Waltham, Massachusetts, office.
The authors wish to thank Taiwo Ajayi and Sasha Zolley for their contributions
to this article.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This article was edited by Barbara Tierney, a senior editor in the New York
office.
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