Babies in the Workplace

   Nathan Schmidt said that one of the mothers in the program at Schools Financial explained to him that:

   The baby gets up when it's time to go to
   work, and gets fed, changed and
   dressed and goes through the morning
   routine. He comes to work with mom and
   goes to sleep, wakes up around lunchtime,
   is up for a bit, but then goes back to sleep.

   Nathan said that what he's seen is that

   The baby takes on the mother's routine--
   however, a lot of the babies seem to
   sleep all day. After a nap they're alert and
   up for a while, and have their little blanket
   and little toys and are playing--they're not
   fussy, angry or crying.

   Many companies kept employees at their regular pay rate while their babies came to work. Borshoff paid its employees at 80% of their regular rate while they had their babies in the office.

This was to allow parents to take time to focus on their babies when the babies needed attention without the parents feeling guilty about not working during that time. It was also meant to minimize potential feelings of resentment by other employees if a parent was distracted with the baby and not as productive on a given day. Borshoff's employees keep track of their hours and bill clients for their time, which allowed the company to monitor new parents' productivity. If parents ended up billing at higher than 80% of full-time, the company adjusted their pay accordingly.

Companies discovered that the parents who brought in babies worked very hard to ensure that they got work done and that their baby wasn't disruptive to other people. These parents understood how much of a privilege it was to be able to keep their babies with them, and they were all determined to make it work and to ensure that their company would not feel compelled