Bring in Your Parents Day: an inclusive alternative to boost employee engagement

Research by Dr Alexandra Beauregard from the Department of Organizational Psychology explores the impact of LinkedIn’s employee engagement initiative.

A child walking with her parents.

Employee-sponsored family-friendly events are designed to boost engagement and encourage retention by building family members’ identification with the organization. However, longstanding traditions such as ‘Bring Your Children to Work’ days inadvertently exclude employees without caregiving responsibilities for children.

That’s where ‘Bring in Your Parents’ (BIYP) comes in. Launched by LinkedIn in 2013, the initiative targets a segment of the workforce not usually included in family-friendly initiatives: employees from the ‘Generation Y’, ‘Millennial’ or ‘Generation Z’ generations, born after 1981. After internal conversations at LinkedIn revealed that employees struggled to explain the nature of their work to parents who were not familiar with social media, LinkedIn introduced BIYP as a means of improving older parents’ understanding of their children’s jobs.

Together with Dr Karin King at LSE, I conducted a study to evaluate the impact of BIYP on the attitudes and behavioural intentions of employees and their parents. We surveyed participating employees and their parents in six organisations in six countries, followed by in-person interviews with participating employees and phone interviews with HR managers.

Following participation in BIYP, there were statistically significant increases in employee engagement and perceived problem-solving ability. By bringing parents to the workplace and having them learn about the nature of one’s job responsibilities, employees’ enthusiasm and sense of vitality on the job were renewed. Employees also felt that their employer appreciated them and their contribution to the organization’s goals.

BIYP also improved parental understanding of their child’s job. While the new, non-traditional jobs performed by their children seemed intangible to many parents prior to participating in BIYP, they now make more sense. Employees reported that having their parents better understand their work responsibilities and pace of work enabled parents to offer more frequent and appropriate support. This was especially important for young employees who, due to the high cost of housing in some metropolitan areas, still live with their parents and see them every day after work.

Furthermore, following parents’ participation in BIYP, there were significant increases in identification with their children’s organizations and of willingness to promote their children’s organization to outsiders. Parents became brand advocates among their own peer groups and even encouraged their children to stay with the firm for longer.

By incorporating events such as BIYP into existing family-friendly events, organizations can express their support for the work-family balance of all employees, rather than just those with caregiving responsibilities for children. Participation was shown to benefit all involved: employees, their parents or other family guests, and the organization for whom they work. The development of further initiatives that support employers in demonstrating inclusion, deepening employee engagement and widening organizational engagement with a range of stakeholders beyond the employee would be a welcome next step.

The citation for this study is: Beauregard, T. A., & King, K. A. (2019). “Bring in Your Parents Day”: Building inclusion and engagement through a cross-generational family-friendly workplace initiative. Strategic HR Review, (19)1, 15-21.

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