(Excerpted from the above article with permission)
The crew at Tilde started 2017 by allowing new parents (mothers or fathers) to bring their immobile infants to work with them. Your new little one was (is!) welcome to tag along to work until six months, or until they start crawling. The first baby started hanging around the office in February, and we’ve been happily off to the races ever since.
Having babies around has made the office just plain feel better, and having more in common with each other makes us feel more connected.
We’ve made offering paid parental leave a priority at Tilde, but we’re also a small, fledgling business, with very real overhead and not a ton of wiggle room. Our paid parental leave perks are better than most companies our size (and something we have plans to improve as the business gets older and more successful), but still woefully less than ideal.
We encourage new parents to take unpaid leave for additional time, beyond what we can afford in paid leave, and beyond using up any available PTO. But for anyone who can’t afford to take us up on that, or just doesn’t want to take a career break that long, being able to bring the baby back to work with you makes things a lot easier.
It means that at least right away, your financial success and parental success are not at odds with each other. You can do both, if you want to do both. (And if you don’t, well that’s of course fine too.)
You can come back to work when you feel like you’re ready to physically and emotionally, whether or not you have a longer term childcare plan sorted. You can come back to work while still breastfeeding without needing to go the pumping route. And you can come back to work when you want to, without feeling guilty about leaving your new little one.
It’s an obvious win in terms of employee happiness, and an obvious win in terms of employee retention. The babies think it’s pretty nifty too.
Our Infants-at-Work program has been a smashing success so far. Here’s to yours!
