Happy Mother’s Day? It depends
“At work, you think of the children you’ve left at home. At home, you think of the work you’ve left unfinished. Such a struggle is unleashed within yourself, your heart is rent.”
—GOLDA MEIR, PRIME MINISTER OF ISRAEL, 1969-1974
Half a century after Meir left office, work-life balance continues to trouble nearly one-third (32 per cent) of Canadians, who told Statistics Canada in a February report that work interferes with their family life.
For working mothers, balancing time spent at work and on child care can be especially fraught.
The good news is that employers are gradually coming to recognize the distinct needs of the working mothers they employ.
In recent years, enlightened employers have adopted flexible work schedules and have begun offering workers more paid time away from work to deal with emergencies at home.
They have also begun to cover some of the expense of fertility procedures. They provide counselling for mothers transitioning back to the workplace from maternity leave. And some now cover treatment of postpartum depression with mental-health policies separate from general health benefits.
But employers who provide a full suite of assistance to prospective moms and working mothers remain in the minority. And there’s the gender pay gap, which is wider in Canada than in many industrialized countries.
According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Canada’s 17.1per-cent gender pay gap is wider than that of the OECD average (12.1 per cent) and the European Union average (10.8 per cent). The U.S. gap is 17 per cent.
There is less transparency around pay in Canada than in many countries, and that works powerfully against pay equity.
While inadequate compensation is an abiding concern for workers, issues beyond pay are also determining factors in the happiness or lack of it in an employee’s day-today work. And they enhance or inhibit an employer’s ability to attract and retain talent.
Here are three issues by which family-friendly employer cultures can be measured.
Parental leave
Enlightened employers provide significant “top-ups” to government mandated pay for those on maternity leave. And they provide flexibility in extended maternity leaves and generous paternal leaves. At PricewaterhouseCoopers Canada (PwC), the accounting and management consulting firm, there also are three group coaching sessions prior to mat leave to discuss the transition away from the job, and three more sessions after delivery to plan reintegration into work. PwC conducts quarterly training sessions for managers who help employees navigate benefits programs and plan post-pregnancy career paths.
TMX Group, which operates Canada’s biggest stock exchange, has extended its 100-per-cent top-up, previously offered only to birth parents, to include adoption, surrogacy and non-birth parents. TMX is among more than 20 financial employers that have committed to a comprehensive parental policy created by Women in Capital Markets (WCM). Other signatories include Scotiabank, Franklin Templeton and KPMG Canada.
Fertility assistance
In a country where the fertility rate is far below the replacement rate, it’s in Canada’s national interest that employers help with conception. But a 2023 Mercer study shows that only 32 per cent of employers provide fertility benefits, and only 10 per cent help with adoption and surrogacy expenses. And Benefits Canada reports that employers offering fertility assistance usually provide coverage only for fertility medications, which cost about $6,000 per cycle in the in vitro fertilization (IVF) process. They seldom cover IVF procedures, an additional out-of-pocket expense that averages $20,000 per cycle.
The University of Toronto, one of the GTA’s largest employers, launched enhanced fertility benefits in 2022. U of T now pays $15,000 worth of IVF expenses every three months in addition to drug costs.
Mental health
Workers are reporting historically high levels of stress in the postpandemic adjustment. Postpartum depression and anxiety are among the less-well-diagnosed mentalhealth conditions. Health-care experts believe the rate of postpartum illness could be twice as high as reported data. The data shows that about 23 per cent of new mothers experience postpartum symptoms.
Bell Canada provides unlimited mental-health coverage for employees and their families, including licensed psychologists and family therapists who can catch postpartum symptoms often disguised as random stress. Bell also trains its managers to identify mentalhealth issues in employees who might not be candid about, for instance, the grief they are suffering after a miscarriage. Accenture, the leading accounting firm, now provides $2,000 in annual mentalhealth coverage as a stand-alone benefit in addition to other health coverage. And Walmart Canada last year increased its annual mentalhealth benefits per employee to a maximum of $3,500 from $1,000. And with its expanded virtual health-care program, Walmart employees now have access to primary care physicians and 24/7 access to clinicians online.
There are few things more difficult than to be alone with a challenge, including the many issues around child care. The most progressive employers create a culture of empathy for the parents and parents-to-be they employ, and indeed all their employees.
Happy Mother’s Day.