There is a common misconception that people become less focused on their jobs once they have children. Managers and coworkers often have that impression due to absences for school activities, maternity leave, and other family-related concerns.

If companies are given the choice to hire unmarried persons without kids versus remote workers with families, they tend to pick individuals who will devote the most effort and time towards the business. They don’t want to compete with PTA meetings or recitals for their projects and deadlines.

Working parents are more engaged than we think

A number of studies reveal that employing remote workers with kids helps in boosting staff motivation, minimising workplace stress, attracting new employees, reducing staff turnover rates, and improving the overall productivity and satisfaction of the team. Take a look at the following statistics about remote worker parents:

• Consultancy firm Great Place to Work reports that remote workers with children are more dedicated to their roles and are more likely to stay for the long-term.
• Healthcare startup Maven Clinic found that there were around 35 million working mothers in the US by the end of 2019.
• The US Bureau of Labor Statistics states in their Employment Characteristics of Families Summary that over 78% of families had at least one parent working.
• The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis says in their Economic Research paper that there is increasing evidence of parents being more productive at highly skilled labour.
• The American Sociological Association discovered that working mothers are more capable at multi-tasking and achieving work-life balance than others.

Support remote workers with families

While the world is slowly opening with the waning of the coronavirus pandemic, parents continue to juggle their career with family life. Keeping them from moving on to greener pastures means you have to attend to their specific needs by:

Giving flexibility in their schedules

The management is responsible for allowing employees to set boundaries between their work-life and personal-life. Flexibility isn’t limited to giving them freedom to decide their own working hours but also involves letting them clock out at the end of the day without being on-call.

Giving them resources for their schedules

While remote workers with kids may be free from rigid schedules, you must enable them to perform their tasks whatever their work hours might be. There are plenty of tools that allow for asynchronous operations, such as Teamwork, Trello, Asana, and Slack, so think about what your team requires.

Giving a child-friendly atmosphere at work

Avoid giving the impression that kids aren’t allowed during meetings. Instead, encourage remote workers with children to welcome their youngsters in the room or at their workstations. Maybe they can have their school-age kids do their homework on the table next to them, for instance.

Giving childcare and time off consideration

In most cases, your human resource policies need an update to include the increasing needs of remote worker parents. You might add special leave credits for attending school activities or attending to the concerns of their families. Daycare coverage might be a bonus for top-performing employees with kids too.

Giving the choice to go back to onsite work

Some employees look forward to working in a physical office, regardless how much they love their children. With virtual workers, it’s hard to fly them to wherever your company is based but you may provide options such as co-working spaces in their city or area.

Giving emotional or mental support

There are times when all that a person needs to hear is that there’s someone who has their back in the midst of all the stress. When you’re part of management, make yourself open to them when they need someone to share their woes to. A short message asking them how they’re doing is a great way to start the conversation.

Giving more value to results over processes

Unless your niche requires you to count by the hour, consider paying virtual employees based on their output instead. For instance, rather than force them to login at 2am to respond to emails, why not have them respond to 100 emails within 24 hours or something similar.

Giving clear guidelines about communication

You want to be completely transparent about what you want to happen between you and your online workers. Perhaps you want them to send you a chat message everyday just to report on the progress of their tasks. It might be you need them to sign off on every step of the marketing process, and so on.

Giving opportunities for casual conversations

Just because your team is working from home with family, it doesn’t mean that you can’t organise events for socialising. Try scheduling a short coffee break on Skype once a month where the team may talk about stuff unrelated to their jobs, for instance.

Giving unbiased treatment to remote parents

There will always be a few individuals who feel that mothers should be focused on childcare instead of working. Make sure that you and your employees are not amongst this demographic by educating them about how parents actually work harder than most people.

Hire Filipino remote workers with kids

Working from home with family remains common despite the world opening up again so you want to be sure your remote workers with kids feel included. Apart from the tips we’ve discussed above, it’s a good idea to hire Filipino offshore specialists too.

When you hire Filipino VAs who have children, you get workers who are dedicated to both their jobs and their families compared to their counterparts in the west. We at Remote Workmate can make this process easier for you and your HR department.

Hire Filipino offshore specialists with kids today by giving the button below a click!