Should You Allow Your Employee’s Kids to Come to Work With Them?

Should You Allow Your Employee’s Kids to Come to Work With Them?

Summertime and the livin’ is easy – unless you’re a parent trying to balance kids out of school and work. This time of year can be especially stressful for parents. Child care is expensive but quitting their job for the summer isn’t an option.

As an employer, you might be tempted to make things easier on your team by allowing employees to bring their kids to work with them. Is that a good idea? Let’s take a look.

The Benefits

There are distinct benefits to granting permission for minors to hang out in the workplace throughout the day.

You give your employees flexibility.

Probably the biggest benefit is to your employees. By allowing a working dad to bring his kids to work, you save him the hassle of having to find child care day in and day out. This flexibility is bound to keep your employees happier on the job, which can pay off for you. After all, happy employees are an average of 12% more productive.

Your team is less stressed.

All of your employees will also benefit from allowing kids to come to work with their parents. Instead of a team member calling out regularly over the summer to be with their kids, they’re present in the office. This takes any additional burden off the rest of the team because they aren’t left one man down.

The Risks

Although allowing children to be in the office can offer flexibility, having the little ones running around certainly has its drawbacks.

Kids can be a big distraction.

Kids will be kids. Neither you, your employees or the parents want to stop the children from speaking up when they need something, and it’s not reasonable to assume the kids will be self-sufficient for their parents entire workday.

These distractions can spill over beyond just the parents. Kids might run around to other rooms or play loudly. If they’re distracting an employee trying to work, it can cause friction in the workplace and decrease productivity.

Customers might feel neglected.

For a parent, a child is client number one. Although almost everyone understands that children’s needs come first, many customers will feel neglected. This can ultimately cause some resentment. Your business will lack a professional look and customers will have more incentive to go to one of your competitors.

The Popular Solution

Every office and every team dynamic is a little bit different. Many times, businesses opt to not allow the kids into the workplace. Your business might lay down this blanket rule or you might want to limit how many days a parent can bring his children to work.

There is an alternative that more companies are using to keep employees happy and productive without distracting from other team members or customers’ needs – work from home.

With a scheduling app, such as ScheduleBase, you can allow your working parents to schedule a certain number of days to work from home to be with their kids. Your employees will be thankful for the flexibility and want to do a bang up job so they don’t lose the opportunity, and your other team members will appreciate having a distraction free zone to do their job more efficiently. It’s a win-win.

How does your business accommodate working families? Tell us about your policies!

Author Profile Jon Forknell is the Vice President and General Manager of Atlas Business Solutions, Inc., a software marketing company specializing in employee scheduling software, including ScheduleBase employee scheduling software, and other business software solutions. In the past, Jon has been recognized by the U.S. Small Business Administration as a SBA Young Entrepreneur of the Year. Atlas Business Solutions was named as one of Software Magazine’s Top 500 Software Companies in 2004 through 2007 and again in 2010, 2013 and 2014.