EP92: What Does Care At Work Look Like?

Interview with Blessing Adesiyan / Workplace Challenger, Founder of MH WorkLife

HOSTED BY PAUL SULLIVAN

Blessing Adesiyan is at the forefront of changing how workplaces think about care for workers. A chemical engineer by training who held senior roles at companies like BASF, Dupont, and Cargill, Blessing shared some thoughts about being a working mother and invited people on social media for coffee. What she thought would be a small gathering of like-minded moms back in 2018 turned into a gathering that overwhelmed a local coffee shop. That was the beginning of a movement that has gained speed during the pandemic. Now with MH WorkLife, she is reimagining the care infrastructure at companies and for employees. Listen to how she's doing it and what you can learn.

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Transcript

00;00;05;20 - 00;00;26;10
Paul Sullivan
Welcome to the Company Dad podcast, where we explore the sweet, silly, strange and sublime aspects of being a dad in a world where men or the go to parent aren't always accepted at work, among their friends, or in the community for what they're doing. I'm your host, Paul Sullivan. Our podcast is just one of the many things we produce each week at the company of Dads.

00;00;26;11 - 00;00;54;24
Paul Sullivan
We have various features, including the lead dad of the week. We have our community both online and also with some in-person events. We have a new resource library for all fathers. The one stop shop for all of this is our newsletter, The Dad. So sign up at the company dads.com backslash the dad. Today. My guest is Blessing Adesiyan, the founder and CEO of MH Work-Life, formerly known as Mother Honestly.

00;00;54;27 - 00;01;25;00
Paul Sullivan
She's also the executive director of two nonprofits. Work Life Equity and Work Life Africa. A mother of four, blessing comes to this work with an engineering background. Having worked at large, established companies like Pepsi, Cargill, DuPont and BASF. In 2018, she started MH. Work life, at first in parallel with her job at BASF. But at the end of 2020, in the midst of Covid, she went full on with this incredible venture.

00;01;25;02 - 00;01;29;08
Paul Sullivan
Welcome, Blessing, to the Company of Dads podcast.

00;01;29;11 - 00;01;34;24
Blessing Adesiyan
Thank you so much for having me. I'm super excited to be here. How did the idea.

00;01;34;26 - 00;01;44;26
Paul Sullivan
Come about for, you know, what was then mother honestly, which is now MH work life. How did come about back in 2018?

00;01;44;28 - 00;02;14;12
Blessing Adesiyan
So probably what we were doing back then. So my career obviously is in is in manufacturing and I was working for the largest chemical company. I was a woman, I was a black woman. I was an immigrant. I was a single mother that had recently, you know, remarried. And I just had my baby, and I finally I finally decided, you know, to really rethink how I show up at work.

00;02;14;14 - 00;02;34;15
Blessing Adesiyan
Because I wasn't up until then, I only had one child, and she was already nine. It was a little bit easier, right? A nine year old can brush your teeth, change their own clothes. But now I had a baby. And my husband also had a very demanding career. And it became very clear that we needed to effectively combine our work and family.

00;02;34;17 - 00;02;52;04
Blessing Adesiyan
And that was how I would I honestly came to be because my idea back then was, how do we do this honestly, right. How do we do our careers? Honestly? How do we manage our homes, honestly, without looking at what other people are doing? Right? Because back then, I don't know if you remember, this was in the beginning on social media.

00;02;52;11 - 00;03;11;14
Blessing Adesiyan
We were all comparing ourselves. You know, on social media there was a lot of comparison and competition. And I wanted to sort of, you know, bring that energy into the workplace and say, hey, we need to stop comparing ourselves. Let's actually just focus on getting our work done and being the best parents that we can be. So that was the idea back then.

00;03;11;14 - 00;03;15;19
Blessing Adesiyan
And extension in so many ways. The idea now, but was there.

00;03;15;19 - 00;03;36;08
Paul Sullivan
But was there a moment? Was there a moment when your second child arrived and you said, okay, I got to figure something out different? Is that in and of itself is remarkable because most people absolutely on without thinking, what's the solution to this process, this problem. But you maybe because you have the engineering mind, you thought, okay, how do I solve this problem?

00;03;36;08 - 00;03;38;09
Paul Sullivan
Was there a moment when.

00;03;38;12 - 00;04;06;02
Blessing Adesiyan
Absolutely. Yeah. So this was this was becoming is now five and a half. So they call me was four months old and I would never forget I was breastfeeding him. And, my husband walks in and requested for his dinner. I said, what, you know, like, go get your own dinner, right? Like I did not go check the fridge.

00;04;06;02 - 00;04;31;12
Blessing Adesiyan
I haven't been able to make anything. And he said, well, you know, because normally. Right, we only we like I said, we had a nine year old. So already by the time he comes home, food is ready. I said wait a minute, is this how it's going to be now? Like he's going to walk in and I'm going to have to have had dinner made also kids in bed, you know, I just started looking at myself and traveling.

00;04;31;12 - 00;04;59;18
Blessing Adesiyan
And back then I was traveling almost every other weekend. And so I started, you know, rethinking how I was going to return to the workplace. And so actually, let me give you a funny story, because while I was breastfeeding, I think by writing on the on a post-it note, it's just right next to me. I said, you know, what will it take for women to effectively combine work and family and for women to be respected at home and in the workplace?

00;04;59;24 - 00;05;20;20
Blessing Adesiyan
Because, you know, quite frankly, I felt disrespected, right? When somebody walks in, I'm breastfeeding and it's like, what is my doing? And I'm like, what is going on? So that was one. And then two. I said, oh, this is literally what cuts across right from the household to the workplace, where women go from that exact position to the workplace where they're equally disrespected.

00;05;20;23 - 00;05;38;13
Blessing Adesiyan
Right. Because a you now you have a baby. Well, now you have two babies. Well, of course you can't. Of course you can't. You know, gone for that promotion anymore. Of course you can do X, Y and Z. So I wrote on a post, you know, what will it take in that post? It just kept getting longer and longer.

00;05;38;16 - 00;06;08;00
Blessing Adesiyan
And I again, the age of Instagram, I just opened a brand new shiny Instagram account. So I posted all of my thoughts on Instagram and I said, if anybody wants to meet up, you know, I'm happy to meet up for coffee tomorrow. I posted the location of the coffee shop next to the house and call. I went to bed that night and my phone kept doing to change, so my husband was like, oh, you know, you've been watching all sort of shows since your your home.

00;06;08;03 - 00;06;30;08
Blessing Adesiyan
You know, I don't know why everyone thinks that when a woman is home, right, you know, breastfeed anybody actually on vacation or chewing. Right. And I, I said, you know, so I put everything back. I placed my phone back on do not disturb. Right. And I fell asleep. Well, by the time I woke up, that little post was already reshared about maybe 500 times.

00;06;30;11 - 00;06;54;00
Blessing Adesiyan
And, this was when there was no algorithm. We have to remember people like things caught on fire very quickly, and by the next day I knew I couldn't retract right where I wanted people to meet. And this was Detroit, Michigan. We were living in one of the suburbs, Beverly Hills, and when I go to the coffee shop, there was no parking.

00;06;54;03 - 00;07;10;10
Blessing Adesiyan
So I thought, oh, I shouldn't have picked this coffee shop right by you. There was no parking walked in, there was no seating. So people were standing around and I as soon as I walked in, everybody pointed at me. That's her. So the, you know, the owner of the coffee shop comes in and said, you know, you should have booked this place.

00;07;10;10 - 00;07;36;19
Blessing Adesiyan
You don't just put this back on your social media. And it just went on and you know, and then later when he does that, I laughed and he said, well, it was thought out on all of our croissants. We've sold out in all of our coffee. You guys can just have the place. And I literally stood there and had a conversation that was literally how we were able to have the largest conference for working mothers in America.

00;07;36;21 - 00;08;01;17
Blessing Adesiyan
Three months later, because over 100 people were in that coffee shop. And the conversation was, how do we get women to return to work with confidence and resilience, and how do we help women survive the crushing body of care? And that was the conversation. And three months later, I will never forget that was a four month old.

00;08;01;17 - 00;08;27;25
Blessing Adesiyan
So that was around me. And by October 2018, we had, oh, we booked the largest conference center in Detroit, and we had over 50 companies send their working mothers to that conference. And I that was the day literally one of the moms is a lawyer. So she came in and she was like, well, this is where you sign for the LLC because I don't think you want to make all of this.

00;08;28;01 - 00;08;54;27
Blessing Adesiyan
Oh yeah, great. With your personal income. So that was how we started. And, you know, it's been MH has grown tremendously ever since. Because I'm not there is how do we reimagine care for today's workforce? Because obviously what we are doing is in working, everyone is being crushed, right, with cooking, cleaning, running errands and trying to place food on the table.

00;08;54;27 - 00;09;17;17
Blessing Adesiyan
Right? You have to work for that money. And it's it's intense and it takes a lot out of all of us. And I always like to a lot, right? That even when we divide the work equally, it's still too much for two people that are working. And and so a lot of time, how do we make sure that the workplace is conducive for those people?

00;09;17;19 - 00;09;22;29
Blessing Adesiyan
And how do we make sure that the home is also conducive for us as parents and caregivers?

00;09;23;01 - 00;09;45;07
Paul Sullivan
Yeah. So clearly in that moment, you know, you took your personal experience, but you tapped into a rich vein, tapped in this vein of how to get 100 people overnight, show up at a coffee shop in suburban Detroit. I mean, that's remarkable. It goes on to the conference. But that's all things that in a way they companies can understand, like, oh, okay, we will send our working moms, to this conference.

00;09;45;08 - 00;10;05;10
Paul Sullivan
We will pay for their, hotel and their airfare, and they will be there. And then, I don't know, to be cynical, but that's pretty much what we'll do. Then in whatever, you know, companies are thinking differently in 2018 and 2019 than they did, than they have since the pandemic. So then we fast forward to the fall.

00;10;05;10 - 00;10;24;00
Paul Sullivan
The team of of 2020, you know, we're six months into the pandemic. Nobody really knows what's going on. We've all kind of figured out that we're going to be working from home for a while. Those of us who can, who are fortunate enough to be able to do that. But what was it in that moment of I mean, that was an in extremis, you know, situation?

00;10;24;00 - 00;10;45;06
Paul Sullivan
Nobody's sending anybody to a conference anymore and nobody's flying around to meet. It's hard to sort of, you know, have a conversation. But you were having a conversation in 2018 about, you know, going to the office, being at home type of balance. Now you're like always in the home. No balance, tremendous stress. Oh, and now I'm an educator, as well.

00;10;45;08 - 00;11;00;24
Paul Sullivan
What was that moment where you said, you know what, I've had a great run, as an engineer, I've been very successful at these manufacturing companies. But I need to take that that leap. I need to leave that behind and put all of my my energy into into MH.

00;11;00;27 - 00;11;06;09
Blessing Adesiyan
Absolutely. I don't know if you recall, Paul, but during the pandemic, we were all doing too much PPE like, you.

00;11;06;09 - 00;11;07;27
Paul Sullivan
Know, I recall,

00;11;08;00 - 00;11;09;00
Blessing Adesiyan
We were I definitely.

00;11;09;00 - 00;11;09;26
Paul Sullivan
Recall.

00;11;09;28 - 00;11;31;06
Blessing Adesiyan
We were we were not only taking care of our own homes and making sure that our children obviously, you know, we're fine. And, and a family were fine, but we were also catering to, you know, the community that we built. And so at that time, you know, but what I honestly community really needed when we were having zoom call was every day.

00;11;31;12 - 00;11;51;18
Blessing Adesiyan
So we had what we called, I think it was, lunch hour or something where you know, during lunch time, what are the babies were crying because, remember, people had things in the background, you know, children throwing pots and pans and, you know, husbands, you know, on their laptops. There was so many things in the background and we said, it's okay.

00;11;51;21 - 00;12;12;27
Blessing Adesiyan
Just at 12:00 every day just dialing into the zoom link. And we just we just chat. And if you don't feel like talking, you just want to feel like you can see someone, you can talk to someone about how you're feeling. That's fine. So we do that every day I think like so one straight okay. And we were still holding events.

00;12;12;27 - 00;12;43;09
Blessing Adesiyan
We were still we had events back to back to back. And the, the one one really they pushed me out of the workforce was when George Floyd died and George Floyd had passed away and we were back on zoom. And, you know, I had logged in into my computer and I was dressed, I was pumping, so I had and this was my third child now.

00;12;43;12 - 00;13;04;11
Blessing Adesiyan
And I'm pumping, log into my laptop and we had a walk meeting. I'm usually, you know, because I'm in manufacturing a lot of our work meeting started with a safety, you know, a safety, you know, let's talk about safety. Right. And the safety, you know, I thought we were going to talk about this was the Monday after George Floyd died.

00;13;04;11 - 00;13;23;19
Blessing Adesiyan
So I probably going to at least acknowledge what had happened. And we were going to go, you know, talk about it a little bit before we started the conversation. And, you know, I logged on and right on my screen was dog safety. And, you know, talk about dogs. I love dogs. But I was I felt like that was a little bit, you know, not appropriate.

00;13;23;21 - 00;13;52;28
Blessing Adesiyan
And, you know, I sent an email to, you know, somebody in the workplace saying, hey, you know, you know, I mean, these are, you know, large these are leaders. And I said, we need to rethink how we are approaching this. Let's look at, you know, ways that we can rectify this. Right. And they said, you know, whatever. You know, you you are always supporting parents and caregivers and these and that, and you know, they felt like I, you know, it just fell on the wayside.

00;13;52;28 - 00;14;25;07
Blessing Adesiyan
Yeah. And it's not I don't think it was any I don't think they did anything bad. Right. Because you can't fault a company based on one person or a manager that decided to talk about dog safety. Right. But that somehow kicked me in the behind because I didn't realize that we are basically in a workplace that has not evolved to truly care about people, and to truly care about their humanity, to truly care about.

00;14;25;09 - 00;14;48;17
Blessing Adesiyan
This person has two kids. This person has three kids, this person is divorced. This person is going through separation. They just lost their parent. How can we build infrastructure to support those people? How can we build infrastructure to support the most vulnerable workers like black women, like Latinos, like immigrants. So that little, you know, a whole dog sleep conversation.

00;14;48;17 - 00;15;11;15
Blessing Adesiyan
I just left my laptop. I think I cried because I was not expecting that. I literally was expecting, and so I, I left, I left the meeting, and literally went back to my laptop, and I started typing a resignation letter. And I'll never forget, my husband walks in and says, he looked at me and he looked at the, you know, the screen.

00;15;11;15 - 00;15;39;25
Blessing Adesiyan
And he said, he literally said every time I said he is a sign, we never had a conversation about, oh my God, you're going to, you know, all that money, you know, I mean, I was you know, I was the global supply operations manager for, you know, our largest, steam cracker, hydrocarbon unit. And, you know, it was a, it was a big role that I worked my behind off to get and I, you know, left our role overnight.

00;15;39;27 - 00;16;05;17
Blessing Adesiyan
And so for me, I, it just became very clear that I needed to get out of the system and really take all the learnings and use that to fuel, you know, the next phase of what I honestly. Which is why as soon as we came out of that, we, you know, we pivoted to work, right? And we kept the image because, you know, I really want us to always remember that we were you know what?

00;16;05;17 - 00;16;32;17
Blessing Adesiyan
I honestly, even though we've designed it to now for everyone, it was really built by mothers, was built from the pain and the, the, the cries of mothers in the workplace for a better workplace. And so, you know, we, we sort of pivoted, right, or expanded our mission to ensure that we are not talking to mothers, because what I realized that we were spending a lot of time talking to models.

00;16;32;20 - 00;16;54;12
Blessing Adesiyan
And I said, well, the solution doesn't lie with the moms, the solutions, the lies with the workplace. The solution lies with men. If we can get men to step into care, if we can get the workplace to care more, then we don't even need to say, oh, look at us working moms, because the workplace is already caring for everyone.

00;16;54;14 - 00;17;18;02
Blessing Adesiyan
And so that was one of the reasons why we expanded our mission. And now we are image worklife. And, you know, not so our mission is to build care infrastructure for today's workforce and help us imagine a world where instead of us gunning for or the next C corporation, can we rethink? Can we look all right and draw inspiration from caring cops?

00;17;18;05 - 00;17;32;04
Blessing Adesiyan
Right. Caring corporations that are leading with compassion, and leading with care. So that's what we do now. And I'm just super excited about where we're going, where we're headed. And, you know, the millions of people that we already impact on a daily basis.

00;17;32;07 - 00;18;02;15
Paul Sullivan
You know, you talked about the need to, you know, get out of the system, but you're almost a like, like one of those classic sort of double agents, like somebody who work for MI6 and, you know, the old Soviet Union or something like that, because you know how it works and how have you use that knowledge of how the system was working until Covid, to sort of help companies realize, look, here's some low hanging fruit, you know, don't push back on me.

00;18;02;20 - 00;18;22;24
Paul Sullivan
Don't don't send me to the person in HR who has no power to do this here are some things that your company can do that will set you ahead of your competitors, but also have a positive impact on on caregivers. You know, both moms and dads. We we focus on that, but also caregivers in general. Those people who have a spouse, spouses, people have a sick parent.

00;18;22;28 - 00;18;28;18
Paul Sullivan
What are some of the things that you encourage, you know, companies to do quickly to rectify it?

00;18;28;22 - 00;18;48;17
Blessing Adesiyan
Absolutely. I think one of the things that I learned, especially when I was in corporate America, was that HR has the power. And so now I don't even waste my time going to H.R. Because at the end of the day, care is not an H.R. issue. It is not a nature issue. Care is really a business issue.

00;18;48;19 - 00;19;14;13
Blessing Adesiyan
And so we need to be talking to executives. We need to be talking to marketing. We need to be talking to those people that really understand that if you don't become a caring corporation, you are more than likely not going to be in business in the next 20 years because the upcoming generations are not going to work, sit down and work for ten hours straight without you seen.

00;19;14;16 - 00;19;35;24
Blessing Adesiyan
Whoa! Great job. How can I support you? They are not going to do that. They will rather dance on TikTok and make money. So so so we need so so we need to be very clear. Right. So those are the things that I'm bring even when, when even with my work life we don't go we don't go directly to HR anymore.

00;19;35;27 - 00;19;51;20
Blessing Adesiyan
We go to marketing because first of all marketing has the budgets. When was the last time we saw people give you money? Right? The marketing folks, they are the ones that understand the positioning, the, you know, the company. They want the company to be positioned as a caring company, as a company that does well. So we go to them.

00;19;51;20 - 00;20;21;00
Blessing Adesiyan
They have the budget to help us advance our mission. So that is one. The only one is really looking at because we understand the employee perspective really, really well. Especially because when I was in the four different fortune 100 companies that I worked at, I led and even started multiple employee resource groups. So I knew our employee resource group work, and I knew that employee resource groups are one of the biggest engines for diversity, equity and inclusion.

00;20;21;03 - 00;20;41;27
Blessing Adesiyan
They're also the biggest engine to help a company become a caring company. I'm going to give you an example. We work in a very amazing company called indeed. And when we started working with the caregivers ERG Group, they provided eight weeks of parental leave to men. And I think it's 16 weeks to two women, you know, the birthing parent.

00;20;41;29 - 00;21;13;05
Blessing Adesiyan
And we started working with the employee. We started with parents and caregivers group. And just through conversations, right. Somehow we got the CEO involved in the, the benefits, leader involved and the marketing people involved. And he said, how do we we do this? Yeah. Right. Because, you know, care is not a woman's issue. When we give a woman 16 weeks and we give a dad eight weeks, we're basically sending the message that, you know, that the child is for the mom to figure out and not part of that.

00;21;13;07 - 00;21;35;03
Blessing Adesiyan
And so we said, let's figure this out together. And it took a conversation. We worked very closely with the leader of the ERG group. And, you know, she took it upon herself. We gave her all the ammunition she needed to present a better business case. Right. And now indeed has 26 weeks of gender neutral parental leave for anyone in the workplace.

00;21;35;05 - 00;21;56;09
Blessing Adesiyan
It doesn't matter if it's adoption. It doesn't matter if you had the baby. It does not matter. And so those are the ways that, you know, we have figured out, a way sort of a back end. Right? Because we know that, you know, going through even when companies purchase the benefits package, not everyone has access to those benefits package.

00;21;56;11 - 00;22;14;19
Blessing Adesiyan
So when I see so many people, you know, this is the benefits for this, for that it's going to help parents. Well, not everyone, you believe it or not. And it's one of the reasons why we funded work life equity. When you ask companies like bright or raising Scared or contact them, who in the workplace is using these benefits?

00;22;14;19 - 00;22;36;19
Blessing Adesiyan
And they would tell you mostly white women, black women are not using it. Latina women are not using it. Immigrants are not using even white men are not using those benefits. Right. Because it's it's not clear it's not clear how to even access those benefits. And so we said let's go through the back end. Let's walk through people instead of walking through benefits.

00;22;36;26 - 00;22;58;14
Blessing Adesiyan
We walk through people because the people are the ones that are going through the pain points, and so they're able to sell anything better than any HR person or any benefit provider. And by selling, even if it's a policy change that we provide or even just conversation, like we don't even have a product, sometimes we just talk to companies, we're like, you know what?

00;22;58;14 - 00;23;18;21
Blessing Adesiyan
Let's just understand what you do. Let's just let's just talk and they're tell us, you know, we will provide this for our members. We give them, you know, two days off. And so there was a company that was really excited that, you know, we have unlimited paid leave. And I said, what does that mean? Right. Well, you can just I said, no, no, no, no no no no no no, we're not going to.

00;23;18;22 - 00;23;45;09
Blessing Adesiyan
So we started working through having conversations and they were able to very quickly redefine their paid leave policy to be very clear on, you know, what's the minimum that you have to take and make it mandatory so that, you know, we might not not the only ones taking their parental leave or any other, you know, paid leave available to them, but men are also taking that as well.

00;23;45;11 - 00;23;55;24
Blessing Adesiyan
So those are the little ways that, you know, some of the things that we learned. Well, that I learned while I was in corporate America. And so, you know, okay, how do we use that as a tool to engage with the workplace?

00;23;55;26 - 00;24;13;15
Paul Sullivan
When you think about that, that example with indeed, I can imagine that at the time they thought, well, eight weeks for fathers to take time off. That's probably pretty good. And and compared to, some of their peers, it is, pretty good.

00;24;13;15 - 00;24;16;04
Blessing Adesiyan
Amazing. It's still an amazing package today.

00;24;16;07 - 00;24;36;16
Paul Sullivan
Right. But it's it's one of those things that we talk a lot about this at the company dads at the companies. I don't believe companies want to do the wrong thing by their employers, by their employees. They often just don't know what they're doing it. So once you explain it to them, once you say like, okay, well, here's this dynamic, you know, why does the father have 50% less time off than the mother?

00;24;36;19 - 00;24;56;12
Paul Sullivan
Oh, I don't know. Well, what if you want them to be equal, how are you going to do this? And once you sort of explain it, it's it's powerful. I mean, another thing we talk about, you know, when you talk about bringing, you know, fathers in and, you know, I think you're you're obviously spot on, like unlimited paid leave is the worst policy ever because people don't take it.

00;24;56;12 - 00;25;22;25
Paul Sullivan
And then you have macho people like, well, I haven't taken anything or I've, how come you've taken three days this year? I haven't taken any. And so one of the things we advocate for is, getting dads to, to parent publicly or parent loudly is another way to put it to make sure they put in their calendars not just oh oh, oh, oh, the office they put in, I'm going to, you know, do X with my daughter, X with my son, X with my, you know, spouse or partner.

00;25;22;25 - 00;25;59;10
Paul Sullivan
We've a lot of examples where when senior people do this, it has a remarkable impact on the more junior employers, employees, we can y because as more junior employees can now see, that people who have had some level of success, you know, within that company are, you know, are taking leave and therefore they're modeling. Once we when you think about, you know, the things that, you know, from your conversations that, you know, employees, whatever level they may be, that employees want from their companies but are afraid to ask for.

00;25;59;10 - 00;26;19;21
Paul Sullivan
They're afraid to ask for these things because it may make them look not like the model worker. It may make them look not sufficiently committed or dedicated to their job. What are some of those things you know, for the companies that are listening? What are some of those things that those employees are afraid to ask for? But they should ask for them and companies should should listen?

00;26;19;23 - 00;26;42;14
Blessing Adesiyan
Absolutely. I think that a lot of times, what employees are actually asking for has nothing to do with money. It has nothing to do with benefits. It has. I mean, think about it. Even in your marriage, right? In your relationship, the things that your partner probably values the most is not anything materialistic. It's not the new shiny thing you buy, right?

00;26;42;15 - 00;27;20;09
Blessing Adesiyan
It is. It is that you acknowledge them, that you say thank you, that you say please, that you reward and recognize them from time to you know, and it doesn't have to be anything huge, you know. And and so for me, I think that if there's one thing that I think of a lot of employees and it is honestly reassurance, it is care, it is you just showing that you care and and to break it down even further, I think it's having leaders that care.

00;27;20;11 - 00;27;42;18
Blessing Adesiyan
So one of the we have a summit coming out, coming up in New York, and one of the conversations that we're going to be having, is leading with care, the new rules of work, which is the same way call you and I. When we got on this call, we did not jump straight into the podcast. We've been talking about, person that we've been talking about, not pain.

00;27;42;19 - 00;28;05;05
Blessing Adesiyan
We've been I mean, but, you know, before we even went into the podcast, can you imagine if we just like and let's just go to the podcast. And that is exactly what companies do you go into a meeting and the next thing, okay, the report that's going to be drawn all right, bring up the spreadsheets. No one is even taking the time to say, how are you doing?

00;28;05;08 - 00;28;30;09
Blessing Adesiyan
And it only takes five minutes. People don't. People are really good at Patrick. I think we need to be clear on that. People already get a paycheck. They're not looking for companies to continue throwing, you know, various, you know, kind of benefits of them. But they're looking for compassionate leadership. They're looking for a leader that is able to tell, you know, show that they care about them.

00;28;30;11 - 00;28;59;27
Blessing Adesiyan
They're looking for a workplace that shows that they are really that they are considerate of their employees. So, for example, this is back to school season. I mean, this is all it takes. How is everyone doing? Well, all back to school I understand it might be a, you know, a choppy week. Some people might need to, you know, break their working hours, you know, into, into, mornings and evenings, whatever you need to do, let me know if you need more time.

00;28;59;29 - 00;29;28;03
Blessing Adesiyan
Let me know. Please share any updates that you have. Just really checking in for five minutes. And you will be so surprised that even by incorporating something as simple as that, we would have knocked out a lot of the stress, a lot of the bad energy, because that's what I call it. And you know what I'm talking about when you go into the you go into a conference room and it's just everybody just like, whatever, we're going in there again, we're going to go to, you know, we're going to go get hammered.

00;29;28;06 - 00;29;52;27
Blessing Adesiyan
But if we lead with care and we leave compassion, then we would have at least, you know, broken down all the negative energy, all the bad energy. And people know that you're coming even when you demand more of them. They know you're coming from a place of compassion. They know that you respect the work and that you value the work in addition to caring for them.

00;29;52;27 - 00;30;09;26
Blessing Adesiyan
The work still needs to be done. You know, it's not a pass. Just because I asked you how you're doing does not mean I'm going to say, oh, or by the way, talk about the reports to not be done. When we agreed that it should be done, because the same way I am sending compassion to you as my employee is the same way.

00;30;09;26 - 00;30;38;16
Blessing Adesiyan
You need to extend compassion to me as the manager who has you know, whatever metrics, right? You are responsible for something, you know, and so you need to meet your own timelines. But if we can just lead with care, I think that we can start to really get ahead of all of this bad energy. I don't know if you've seen the latest reports by ADP that says that American workers, the most unmotivated right now, they're not as motivated as they used to be.

00;30;38;18 - 00;30;57;14
Blessing Adesiyan
And I and I think, you know, I want to guess that part of it is because we just don't care anymore. And a lot of us, you just said it. A lot of us are working remotely. Right. And so what happens when you're working remotely? You're lonely, you're isolated. You know, and now nobody even cares. Nobody's even asking you how you're doing.

00;30;57;14 - 00;31;15;08
Blessing Adesiyan
So you're kind of like, okay, I guess I'm a robot, right? You know? Yeah. And, and and that leads to that leads to stress, and it leads to burnout. And he leads to, you know, feelings of anxiety and depression and so on and so forth. And so for me, I think the one thing you can do is to lead with care.

00;31;15;10 - 00;31;23;06
Blessing Adesiyan
Lead with care. It doesn't cost any money, doesn't cost a dime. It can be something as simple as a culture change at work.

00;31;23;08 - 00;31;39;24
Paul Sullivan
You know, one of the things we do with our weekly meeting at the company dads is we spend five minutes at the start and we ask everyone to talk about something personal and something professional, and we leave it at that and it could be something super positive. But we've had some people talked about some stuff that's been a struggle.

00;31;39;26 - 00;32;01;13
Paul Sullivan
And and I thought that was pretty clever until my 11 year old came home from her first day of sixth grade the other day and she reorganized, our nightly dinner conversation. And she said, I want everyone to tell me something negative that happened to them today, and then something positive. And the only rule is you have to, do the negative one first.

00;32;01;13 - 00;32;14;23
Paul Sullivan
So you end on the positive she came up with. I don't know if they talked about in school. I don't know, but this is I think that was really good because we had done this thing for, you know, off and on for a year. You talk about gratitude and sometimes you're not grateful for anything. And that's okay. You know, you have to be grateful every day we'd like to believe in.

00;32;15;00 - 00;32;35;14
Paul Sullivan
But like pairing it that way. So you got what was, you know, on your mind, off your mind, and then you, you force you to also think of something, you know, positive. When you think, you know, you're doing so much and, you know, when this run that your new website will have been, you know, relaunch, you've come up with some really great solutions.

00;32;35;14 - 00;32;49;14
Paul Sullivan
One of them that, I like that fascinates me is, is the work life wallet. Explain how the work life wallet works for both, companies and employees.

00;32;49;16 - 00;33;10;29
Blessing Adesiyan
So the work life wallet is, is it also my favorite part out? And we when we came up with the idea of the wallet, there was you know, there were so many benefits. Like I said, people were throwing, you know, a lot of money at, what we thought was the problem. Right. Let's just, you know, not have benefits, which are all great benefits.

00;33;10;29 - 00;33;36;17
Blessing Adesiyan
But what we realized was that those benefits were an equitable. And I'm going to give you an example. I was, when I was an engineer, Parkersburg, West Virginia, and I had a, I had a benefit which was a backup child childcare. And they said, well, you know, it's going to be $12 copay or I think, no, I think it was $16 copay whenever I traveled because I used to travel for work.

00;33;36;17 - 00;33;53;09
Blessing Adesiyan
They said, it's, you know, the company really paid for 80 hours for me, but it's going to be $16 copay for the president to come into my house and be dedicated to my child, which is, you know, reasonable because, you know, if you're going to hire a full time nanny at that point, you're looking at 40, $50 an hour.

00;33;53;11 - 00;34;12;00
Blessing Adesiyan
So they said that and I said, no, thank you. Like, I'm not going to take that. And the you know, the guy was my manager was looking at me like, are you okay? He said, I don't have the money for that. And he said, well, we pay you really well. I said, well, you pay me really well, but my paycheck is really not my paycheck.

00;34;12;00 - 00;34;32;03
Blessing Adesiyan
I have five siblings back in Nigeria that I put to college. I am a single mother. I, I mean, I'm an immigrant. I'm not like you. I don't even have a credit card because I can't get a credit card because I just, you know, moved to this country five years ago and it's been so hard to get a credit card with, you know.

00;34;32;05 - 00;34;56;12
Blessing Adesiyan
No. Yeah. Interest rate, credit history. Yeah. And so, you know, we just went through so many things and it was like who? We have never thought about this, right? No wonder a lot of black people do not take advantage of this backup childcare. So the company I actually go back and look at the people that were taking advantage of the backup childcare.

00;34;56;12 - 00;35;18;29
Blessing Adesiyan
And lo and behold, not one single black woman and not one single black family. And this is still happening now. In fact, I spoke to the head of inclusion for Women of Color at Google and she said, I have never use that backup childcare. I think it's too expensive, but a lot of other people may not think it's too expensive because it's like, great, this is great quality.

00;35;19;06 - 00;35;36;25
Blessing Adesiyan
I'm going to have a country 60 laws an hour. This is nothing. But to me it was not my thing. Right? So so that was an example of why we decided to go with the look. Call it, because what I call it is very straightforward, right? You get access to X amount of points that your company has provided to you.

00;35;36;25 - 00;36;07;17
Blessing Adesiyan
So just as an example, the company could say we have $1,000 for all of our employees, which means our 500 employees each get $200 per month or $50 per month in their wallet. Now, that fund can be used for anything care related, so it could be used for childcare, auto care, household management, housekeeping. I need to pay for lunch because you know I am working all day from home and the company has provided lunch to those in the office and me.

00;36;07;19 - 00;36;29;27
Blessing Adesiyan
You can use your work life wallet for those things. You can use it for yoga sessions, whatever brings you joy, whatever is accessible to you. But at least you have that cash. Because can you imagine my companies already paying this company X amount of dollars? Anyways for something that I'm not even using yet? And as a parent I really needed that benefits.

00;36;29;27 - 00;37;02;05
Blessing Adesiyan
But I couldn't use it because, well, it was outside my range at the time. So the Rock wallet is a way for companies to essentially meet the unexpected care costs of their employees without having to, you know, figure out ways down the line. And, and I say that because a lot of times when you don't, if you remember when we had Ruby Wade and a lot of companies came out and said, we're going to give you $1,000 if you want to go for abortion care, we're going to give you $1,000.

00;37;02;08 - 00;37;21;23
Blessing Adesiyan
Yeah, well guess what? Now you have to go to your manager and let your money go. I know that I, you know, I, I'm getting an abortion. Yes, well, I'm here, but guess what? If you have to work out. Well, all we need to do is talk to work. Like, what would $1,000, right. And what we've done is automatically link your debit card whenever you go to.

00;37;21;26 - 00;37;44;14
Blessing Adesiyan
When are you go to CBS and you pick up a diaper for your child and you're like, you know what, I thought my child was already potty trained and now I have to buy more diapers. And I didn't budget for that. That can be one of my work life expenses, right? We automatically pull that into our dashboard and we ask you, do you want this reimbursed?

00;37;44;14 - 00;37;52;29
Blessing Adesiyan
And if you say yes automatically, you're reimbursed for that money, and the money comes directly back into your debit card.

00;37;53;01 - 00;37;54;16
Paul Sullivan
That's great.

00;37;54;18 - 00;38;19;07
Blessing Adesiyan
And so we've, you know, we're excited about about about about the work life wallet. I think it's something that a lot of companies are now waking up to because quite frankly, they are trying a lot of money away from companies equity benefits. And only 5.5% of employees are utilizing those benefits. It's a waste and we have huge problems, huge problems.

00;38;19;09 - 00;38;41;11
Paul Sullivan
Blessing ideas. And thank you for being my guest on the Company of Dads podcast. One last, question for you, which I'm going to take when we talked about on the podcast from my daughter Phoebe, if you think about, you know, the five and a half, five and a half years that you've you've run this, this company, you know, what is the biggest problem that is still unsolved?

00;38;41;14 - 00;38;49;27
Paul Sullivan
And what are some of the problems that you've seen a lot of movement on. And you're you're most optimistic about?

00;38;49;29 - 00;39;14;11
Blessing Adesiyan
Absolutely. I think that the biggest problem with these childcare, it's still the it's still the sore thumb that somehow we haven't been able to get right as a nation. And, and I think that it's honestly at this point not a women's issue, but it's an economic problem for all of us because we have to solve for childcare.

00;39;14;14 - 00;39;42;15
Blessing Adesiyan
More and more women are owning degrees in corporate America. There is no rolling back. You know, that progress. And so what we are going to find is that even men are going to take time off to work for us to care for their kids. We're seeing a lot of men stepping to care. We're seeing more and more of men, you know, saying this is an issue for all of us.

00;39;42;15 - 00;40;07;13
Blessing Adesiyan
This isn't about women anymore. We need to fix this. When we don't have childcare. My husband is also he is running as well. I don't, you know, I'm sure it's the same thing in your household. And so for us, I think that, you know, childcare is a big issue that needs to be solved. I think we have a childcare cliff that is, you know, going we're going to go off a cliff.

00;40;07;13 - 00;40;31;21
Blessing Adesiyan
I think it's end of September, because some of the money that the Biden administration has put in place to support the child care centers are going to run out. So we're going to see more and more breakdown in child care. So that is something that I'm looking forward to. And I think in terms of positive, I think I see more companies, actually interested in the conversation now more than ever.

00;40;31;24 - 00;41;02;20
Blessing Adesiyan
They may not have the budget, they may not have be able to fly their people in, but I think they understand now that they if they don't step up, care that they are going to be on the losing end because people are no longer compromising the quality of their lives for their job. Which means I'm not going to, you know, break my back and then get on a laptop and work.

00;41;02;22 - 00;41;21;13
Blessing Adesiyan
So companies will have no other choice than to step up. Karen, we're seeing more and more of that. And I think that that, you know, that gets me excited. We're seeing more well-being programs, more wellness programs within organizations. And I think that that is something that we're going to continue to see more of.

00;41;21;15 - 00;41;30;01
Paul Sullivan
Perfect place to end. Thank you again. Blessing of this. And founder and CEO of MH Work Life.

00;41;30;03 - 00;41;33;00
Blessing Adesiyan
Thank you. Thanks for having me, Paul.

00;41;33;02 - 00;41;58;11
Paul Sullivan
Thank you for listening to the company of that podcast. I also want to thank the people who make this podcast and everything else that we do with the company of that possible, Helder Mira, who is our audio producer, Lindsay Decker, handles all of our social media. Terry Brennan, who's helping us with the news that are an audience acquisition, Emily Servin, who is our web maestro, and of course, Evan Roosevelt, who's working side by side with me.

00;41;58;11 - 00;42;08;12
Paul Sullivan
And many of the things that we do here at The Company of Dads. It's a great team. And we just trying to bring you the best in fatherhood. Remember, the one stop shop.

00;42;08;12 - 00;42;15;01

For everything is our newsletter. The dad. Sign up at the Company of dads.com backslash. The dad.

00;42;15;03 - 00;42;16;01
Paul Sullivan
Thank you again for listening.