Fort Worth

Fort Worth Summit to Showcase Family-Friendly Workplaces

An initiative that started in Fort Worth makes the case that family-friendly is business-friendly

NBCUniversal, Inc.

It can be a tough balance for employers to support working parents and do it in a way that also supports the bottom line, especially as we come out of the pandemic.

Strategies for how to do that will be front and center among Fortune 500 companies as they meet Thursday and Friday in Fort Worth.

“Working parents, and specifically working women, are leaving the workforce at an astounding rate to care for their families, but this is more than a women’s issue, it is an economic issue," said Sadie Funk, Director of The Best Place for Working Parents. "It’s a critically important time for companies to step up in ways that both empower their employees to be successful and allow their workplaces to thrive. Our goal for the summit is to be a collaborative, open forum for top business leaders to learn and share about innovative family-friendly policies that are helping their workforce and enabling them to attract and retain top talent. By using smart family-friendly and business-friendly strategies, we can set a new standard of support for working parents and lead a widespread movement of productive and engaged workplaces across the country.”

The Best Place for Working Parents, an initiative that started in Fort Worth, is hosting the invitation-only event and showcasing companies proving family-friendly is business truly friendly.

Company leaders from American Airlines, Fossil, Hilti, Match, PMG, Yum! Brands, J.P. Morgan Chase are among the participants.

"And we zeroed in on these companies because each of them are really setting the bar when it comes to family friendly policies and they're doing so in a way that aligns with 10 research-backed policies," Funk said.

Those ten policies include health care, paid time off, parental leave, nursing benefits, onsite child care, child care assistance, backup child care, flexible hours, and remote work. Companies adopting one or more of those policies can earn the Best Place for Working Parents designation.

"We have over 700 companies designated across our national network," said Sara Redington with the Miles Foundation which backs the Best Place initiative. "You've got anecdotal stories like the City of Fort Worth implementing paid parental leave. It was a historic policy that they did not have in place prior to this movement. Sigmapro Engineering put in place onsite childcare. They have a three-shift workforce yet that implemented onsite childcare."

Childcare is a big issue. Best Place cites a 2019 report called Ready Nation that showed employers losing about $13 billion annually due to child care challenges faced by their workforce.

About The Best Place for Working Parents:
The Best Place for Working Parents is a collaborative and growing network of businesses across the U.S. dedicated to providing support for working parents through evidence-based strategies, proving that family-friendly is business-friendly. A public-private partnership, The Best Place for Working Parents offers a competitive designation that recognizes innovation across the top 10 research-backed family-friendly policies that help working parent employees and boost employers’ bottom line. Businesses can qualify to become a Best Place for Working Parents® business designation by taking the first-of-its-kind business online self-assessment.

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