Babies in the Workplace

   Some of the companies did note a minor impact on employee productivity during the first few days when a new baby came to work. Susan Matthews at Borshoff said that when a new baby comes in, there is a little extra down time as people meet the new person. She said this lasts for only about two days, however, and then, as she put it, other employees, "still ooh and ahh, but while they're working."

   Nathan Schmidt said that:

   When a mother first comes back to work,
   people are excited to talk. It's a normal
   human reaction--there's more interest right
   when the baby arrives. That's the only time
   the mother gets less done, because the
   staff is always around the baby.

   Nathan also added:

   It was more exciting when the first couple of
   babies arrived, but now it's commonplace--

   you just see babies. The baby becomes
   part of our day-to-day life.

   Deann Tiede explained that she was a "skeptic" of the baby program when she began working at the Kansas Insurance Department:

   Our Insurance Commissioner, Sandy
   Praeger, was very supportive of the program,
   so I needed to keep an open mind. But to
   myself I kept thinking, "No work will get done
   while there's a baby in the office." But as it
   turned out, that's simply not the case. Yes,
   people stop to visit the baby from time to
   time, but overall it has little or no impact on
   our employees' overall productivity.
   That's probably the thing that surprised me
   the most. It only takes a short amount of
   time and the baby becomes a fixture of the
   environment--it's not a big thing.