Babies in the Workplace

room" or "family room" for employees who did not have their own offices. These are useful in situations in which a baby is unhappy for more than a few seconds, but it is not an absolute requirement for a successful program. If parents are highly responsive to their babies and follow the guidelines in the Raising Happy Babies section of this website, issues with screaming babies should be minimal, and parents in these programs tend to be extremely resourceful at finding places to take their babies so as not to disturb their coworkers.

The only ongoing expense for a business with a baby program is the time spent discussing arrangements with new parents so that they are as effective as possible when their baby starts coming to work. Many companies said it was crucial to discuss ahead of time the nature of projects that parents would be involved in while their babies were in the office,

parents' contingency plans if the baby
wasn't content at work, and who would help watch the babies for a few minutes in the event that a parent had an urgent situation come up or had to attend a meeting to which they couldn't take the baby. However, if an employee was going to be out of the office for three months on maternity leave, time would have to be spent discussing who was going to take over projects and transitioning work, so the net time a company spends figuring out details when a new baby is born is probably the same regardless of the presence of a baby program.

Considering the low implementation costs of a baby program, the benefits of these programs for businesses are even more compelling.