EP97: Why The Best Companies Treat Dads and Moms Equally

Interview with Brad Harrington / Boston College Center for Work and Family

HOSTED BY PAUL SULLIVAN

Many companies still focus on working moms with their outreach and employee resource groups for parents. But research from Boston College's Center for Work and Family shows that doing only that is missing the mark. Not only are fathers taking paternity leave that companies have offered them, both they and working moms are using those benefits as proxies to assess whether they'd even want to work for that company. So why are some companies still acting like it's 1983? Listen to Brad Harrington's insights from over two decades of research in the field.

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Transcript

00;00;05;28 - 00;00;25;18
Paul Sullivan
Welcome to the Company of Dads podcast, where we explore the sweet, silly, strange and sublime aspects of being a dad in a world where men with 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;25;19 - 00;00;52;07
Paul Sullivan
We have various features, including the lead dad of the week. We have our community both online and in person. They have a great new resource library for all fathers. The one stop shop to learn about all of this is our newsletter, The Dad. So sign up today at the Company of dads.com backslash. The dad. Today my guest is Brad Harrington, the executive director of Boston College's Center for Work and Family at the Carroll School of Management.

00;00;52;09 - 00;01;18;20
Paul Sullivan
Brad has had two careers in his life 20 years at HP, in its heyday from 1990 to 2000. And from 2000 to now running the Boston College Center for Work and Family. What was the trigger for the change? Well, in theory, it might seem like getting his PhD from Boston University in 1999, but in practice, in my really had been commuting between Palo Alto, California and Geneva, Switzerland, with two children at home and another on the way.

00;01;18;23 - 00;01;28;14
Paul Sullivan
Experiences like that, however, have informed some of the groundbreaking research that the center has done on working parents. Welcome, Brad, to the Company of Dads podcast.

00;01;28;17 - 00;01;30;04
Brad Harrington
Thanks, Paul. Thanks for having me.

00;01;30;07 - 00;01;37;14
Paul Sullivan
Do you ever miss the frequent flier miles? I mean, Palo Alto to Boston. Boston to Geneva. You must have, you know, had like, Excalibur status or something like that.

00;01;37;20 - 00;01;50;11
Brad Harrington
Yeah. Well, I, I hate to badmouthing United Airlines, but at one point I had, you know, a half a million or some something like that. And then I found out later that at a certain point, they canceled your frequent flier miles.

00;01;50;14 - 00;01;51;06
Paul Sullivan
Oh, no.

00;01;51;07 - 00;01;58;13
Brad Harrington
Yeah. Yeah. So I don't I don't fly United anymore because they cancel by frequent flier miles before I really got to tap into them.

00;01;58;13 - 00;02;24;07
Paul Sullivan
So I remember, you know, when United and Continental merged a lot of the frequent fliers and United, they were up and on what was going to happen to the little ramekin of warm nuts that you got in first? Cause I only got them once. They're pretty good. But I don't understand the outrage. Yeah. You know, we're going to focus on your time at the book center here, and, you know, you start doing research on working fathers back in 2010.

00;02;24;07 - 00;02;36;05
Paul Sullivan
So way before the pandemic changed the way we were thinking about working in the book. What prompted, you know, started doing that research back then in 2010?

00;02;36;07 - 00;02;59;11
Brad Harrington
So I had been in the role here at Boston College since 2000. And one of the things I was struck by is how completely and utterly absent men were from the conversation around work life and work family. We, you know, go to conferences, we present to corporate members, we work with researchers from universities all over the world that that focus on this issue.

00;02;59;11 - 00;03;26;22
Brad Harrington
And I would say 98 times out of 100, the people who were represented, the people who did the research, the people who were the practitioners, the people who, you know, supposedly were taking advantage of all the work, family and work life programs for women. And I totally understood that given the you know, the, the, the large role that women were playing in the homefront, obviously much larger, probably 2 to 3 times as much, as most working fathers.

00;03;26;24 - 00;03;47;02
Brad Harrington
But by the same token, it just seemed to me that them being completely absent from the conversation, them being dads, was really problematic. On one front, from an organizational perspective, you said, gee, you know, men have to be part of this conversation because they are the people who are pulling the strings from an organizational perspective of corporate culture.

00;03;47;09 - 00;04;16;23
Brad Harrington
And they're the ones who are sort of, you know, determining what was appropriate behavior and what was appropriate around, you know, working hours and things like that for all employees and women were going to be the, you know, if you choose a term that victims of that one way or the other, and then on the home front, you got the sense that, you know, that the role of fathers was just so diminished, that, you know, there was this stereotype that, fathers did two things, you know, bring home the bacon and, wait till your father gets home.

00;04;16;23 - 00;04;40;18
Brad Harrington
The the disciplinarian role. Yeah. And I really knew from talking to a lot of dads, that that was just not an accurate depiction. So at that point, we decided, you know, so many organizations, so many research is a focus of women. And maybe, maybe this is a unique opportunity for me, a man leading a work life organization to, you know, to try to see if the focus, could be balanced a bit more.

00;04;40;20 - 00;05;06;10
Paul Sullivan
Yeah. And then the crazy thing here is this is 2010, and nobody had been doing research 2010 this 13 years ago. This is not 1970s, not 19, not even 1990. And so when you started this, this your research, what were some of the early findings and obviously, what were the findings that really stood out to you? But also to people who are reading your research?

00;05;06;12 - 00;05;19;27
Brad Harrington
You know, I think, what we what we studied the first time, Paul, was we looked at, the transition to fatherhood. I was working with a doctoral student who's now a professor, at northeastern, Jamie. Jamie large. And she had done her.

00;05;19;29 - 00;05;23;08
Paul Sullivan
Who has been on our podcast. She's the one of our guys. Jamie. Wonderful. Yeah.

00;05;23;15 - 00;05;46;24
Brad Harrington
He's wonderful. And she's a very prolific, researcher and scholar. She, had studied while she was in the doctoral program here at BC, how young women professionals go through the transition to motherhood. And then how they're assimilate back into the workplace. So to make a long story short, you know, these women first time moms were focused completely on their career.

00;05;46;27 - 00;06;12;03
Brad Harrington
They then had a child and were focused for 3 or 4 months or whatever time they took off on being a full time mother. And then they went back into the workplace and suddenly they had two critical roles that they had to balance. And so what Jamie was trying to look at is what were the identity issues and struggles that women went through as they went through this, this transition from professional to full time mother to professional and mother.

00;06;12;06 - 00;06;36;16
Brad Harrington
And what we decided was what we would try to replicate the research that she had done, but do it with fathers and see whether or not the transitions they went through, were similar or very different than, than working moms. And the first thing that really stuck out to you was that at that time, there was nobody who was offering dads, paid time off, for parental leave.

00;06;36;16 - 00;06;54;09
Brad Harrington
And virtually no fathers were taking time off for parental leave, paid or unpaid. And so, right off the bat, there was a very drastic difference between moms and dads, where on average, I'd say dads were taking 2 or 3 days off following the birth of their their child and moms were taking three or 4 or 5 months off.

00;06;54;09 - 00;07;29;17
Brad Harrington
So right from the word go, you know, the, the roles and the patterns were very well established and, you know, one of the things that struck me is, given that those roles are established, that even by the time the woman goes back to work and even if she's working full time, it's going to be very unlikely that those roles are going to be reversed in some way, because, you know, the mother not only had the biological, you know, responsibilities for the child, especially in the early months, but, also, she had a much better sense of what a, what it was to be a parent and how to respond to your

00;07;29;17 - 00;07;51;26
Brad Harrington
child and what the child's needs were and all that kind of thing. And, you know, men's lack of, time spent in that role really led to, you know, lesser feelings of competence and confidence in terms of their parenting skills. So it struck us right off the bat that that was going to be a huge, indicator of whether or not, you know, men were going to be able to be equal partners in the caregiving process.

00;07;51;28 - 00;08;07;01
Paul Sullivan
Yeah, we talked about equal partners at home. But one of the things we really push at the company of dads is to, you know, encouragement to allow men at work to be the dads, which we that term, we use a lot of the go to parent, whether he worked full time, part time at all, it was time to say.

00;08;07;05 - 00;08;33;07
Paul Sullivan
And the counter to that is an event that any company in America that you leave for a soccer game, graduation, whatever. But we we always say when men become dads, is that good for them? Sure. Of course is good for them, but it's also good for the working moms in the workforce, because suddenly, you know, women are not seen as the only person who's going to have to take on parenting or caregiving responsibilities in theory.

00;08;33;07 - 00;09;00;24
Paul Sullivan
And hopefully it starts to change the perception of of some of the managers of those people saying, okay, we don't just have working moms and they get stigmatized. We have working parents. And if we make a few small changes around how we do these things, we can help a whole, group of people, you know, when you, you know, we're doing the research you talk about in the research you and Jamie lads have done, you talk about the impact that it had on, the home front and establishing patterns.

00;09;00;24 - 00;09;22;01
Paul Sullivan
You're there for five months. You're going to establish certain patterns. But, what was the impact at work? I mean, because you, you know, your center is funded by a whole bunch of companies that, that, that wanted to learn from the research you're doing. What was the impact at work when you started to allow men to have or not just a lot, but encouragement to take, parental leave?

00;09;22;03 - 00;09;47;04
Brad Harrington
Well, you know, the first step was getting on. Organizations understand that that's something that men valued. So in 2013. So this is a way for our third study, we decided to do a study on men's attitudes around parental leave. And at that time, again, it was still that's ten years ago. There still was almost no companies that were offering dads any more than a few days or at most a week for parental leave.

00;09;47;04 - 00;10;06;21
Brad Harrington
But they were, you know, little things bubbling up that started to suggest that some organizations were going to do this. And, and some men had written some pieces that really sort of, talked about what an important experience it was for them to go through this. I think initially, you know, the feedback from men was we would love to have leave.

00;10;06;21 - 00;10;28;15
Brad Harrington
We would want to spend time with our children. There was some data out there that suggested that even though dads are doing far less on the home front, that they were experiencing as much or more work family conflict as their spouse was. And that surprised a lot of people. But fathers felt very kind of conflicted about the fact that they were home less that they were, you know, they were not entitled to any formal leave.

00;10;28;18 - 00;10;57;22
Brad Harrington
And as a result of that, they, I think, felt more detached from families than they wanted to be. And you asked about, you know, or talked about the fact that, you know, how does this impact women? I mean, it's pretty obvious that in those days, you know, not only, did women face a struggle in terms of trying to balance these two important roles, but organizations also had a view, which was the view is, you know, of a woman who has a child is going to be less committed, less dedicated.

00;10;57;25 - 00;11;21;09
Brad Harrington
And there was even a piece of research that said that, organizations viewed women who had children as not only less committed, but also less competent, believe it or not, in terms of their professional roles. And so you say to yourself, I mean, there's there's obviously a huge shadow, on women's careers as a result of the fact that they were taking leave and they were seen as the people who are going to do the lion's share of the caregiving.

00;11;21;09 - 00;11;41;23
Brad Harrington
So organizations, you know, not rightly so, but wrongly so, I think decided, well, you know, when you're a woman, you're going to have to make compromises. And so therefore, you may not have the kind of career opportunities, a career trajectory that a man would have. And so these things were not working, you know, well, for men or women at that point in time.

00;11;41;26 - 00;12;01;20
Brad Harrington
And when we kind of publish that report, organizations were thinking, well, the federal government doesn't seem like they're ever going to do anything on parental paid parental leave. It just seemed like a nonstarter every time it came up. And so I think some of the corporations we work with decide, well, if they're not going to do anything on paid parental leave, we're going to expand the amount of leaves that we offer.

00;12;01;22 - 00;12;16;07
Brad Harrington
And I think our report was influential in getting them to say to themselves, maybe we shouldn't just expand it for women, but we really need to make it gender, gender equitable. And so that's what was happening after the two third 2013 report was published.

00;12;16;09 - 00;12;33;04
Paul Sullivan
Yeah. And and when that happened, you know, how did it happen? What was it? You know, a group of companies that that announces, was it one then the next did that, did certain employees say, hey, look, I'm not going to come work for you. I'm working, over here. And they have, you know, paid leave. And, you know, that was a process for that happening.

00;12;33;06 - 00;12;54;04
Brad Harrington
Well, I mean, our study did surface. You know, men definitely wanted to leave. And one of the questions we asked is, you know, if you're if you were going to have more children, would having parental leave be an influence over the employer you chose? And overwhelmingly they said, yes, it would have an influence. They also overwhelmingly said, If I'm going to take the leave, I want to get paid for it.

00;12;54;10 - 00;13;11;22
Brad Harrington
So men were more, you know, mercenary, if you will, about it. But I think that was a result of the fact that, you know, a lot of their wives were taking leave and being unpaid, and so they couldn't imagine any situation where they would be able to also take unpaid leave. So what happened? Right after that? Members of our roundtable.

00;13;11;22 - 00;13;31;21
Brad Harrington
And it started, I think, with Johnson and Johnson, decided that they were going to expand their paid leave, and they were going to offer it for both men and women. And this was probably around 2014. But, you know, those discussions were had as a result of the report we did. And J&J, I think, gave eight weeks initially, which was seen as a huge step forward for both men and women.

00;13;31;23 - 00;13;48;11
Brad Harrington
So most of the organization we work with was separate, what they call bonding leave from from birth and recovery. So this was the the the eight weeks was in addition to the birth and recovery. And it was for both men and women to take. And then shortly thereafter, I think it was II was the next one. They said, well, we're going to give 12 weeks.

00;13;48;13 - 00;14;11;29
Brad Harrington
And once that snowball started, all of a sudden we saw our, you know, Deloitte do the same American Express, IBM, Intel, all these companies that we work with, one after another started to, expand their paid leave policy for all parents and made the policies gender equitable. I think one of the organizations that did it relatively early on, I said, this is great.

00;14;11;29 - 00;14;26;17
Brad Harrington
I know at that time we were thinking giving it to men is such a rarity, you know? And so how were you able to get that approved with your executives in your executive committee? And the woman said, between you and I, the truth of the matter is they said, yeah, give it to the guys too. They won't take it.

00;14;26;20 - 00;14;52;02
Brad Harrington
And, you know, and I think they you know, that was a common assumption back then that you can offer men leave, but they're not going to take it because they don't want to be, you know, saddled with being seen as, you know, not not a player in the workplace. But quickly, that organization and all the others that often men leave realize that if we offer men leave and we offer to pay them to leave, the majority of them are going to take advantage of it.

00;14;52;05 - 00;15;10;22
Paul Sullivan
You know, I remember it was last year more when I talked to Jamie and she said, you know, some of her research, maybe that you did it together, but how, you know, pre-pandemic, when doing all this research, when men would raise their hand and want to be in a full parent, would want to be the dads at work, they were seen as insofar committed to their job.

00;15;10;22 - 00;15;30;06
Paul Sullivan
Now there's a pile of research saying how women are penalized for each other, but that that that statement always stuck out to me because unless you're running in an organization, and your goal is to hire only sociopaths, you would want, fathers to have you some connection, some desire to be involved with their children, some some affection for their wife.

00;15;30;06 - 00;15;54;15
Paul Sullivan
So they'd want to, be with her, help her out. And it's, it's, you know, it's it's shifted. I would say it's shifted. But we still hear stories that the company dads of guys who are, you know, being shamed for for taking a DNA. Think of some law firms that we've we've talked to where, you know, the senior partners almost brag that, you know, all the things they they missed out on.

00;15;54;15 - 00;16;14;17
Paul Sullivan
And, you know, the more junior place they're struggling. How do you help companies, you know, combat, some of the, some of the, the, you know, detrimental effects of, of seniority, of, of confirmation bias, of having gotten a place in a certain way and realized that, you know, people are living and working in a different way today.

00;16;14;19 - 00;16;35;02
Brad Harrington
I think it's challenging because, you know, and I don't know the most recent stats on this, but, you know, a few years ago, if you looked at the fortune 100, fortune 500 CEOs and really C-suite executives within organizations, it was overwhelmingly men. I mean, ten years ago, I think it was 96% of CEOs were more men and only 4% were women.

00;16;35;02 - 00;16;51;22
Brad Harrington
That number is now about 10% for women. So it there's been some some headway. But you know, and not only were they men, the overwhelming majority of them were married. The overwhelming majority of them had a stay at home wife. And they you know, I remember one study and this is back, you know, more than probably more than ten years.

00;16;51;22 - 00;17;15;15
Brad Harrington
But they said not only did they have a stay at home wife, but they had never personally even experienced a daycare problem or a childcare problem, you know, so there wasn't even an instance where they were confronted with making a choice between work and family. So I think there, you know, when you have those people at the very senior levels, obviously there is a bias there about how they did it and how committed they are and that kind of thing.

00;17;15;15 - 00;17;34;27
Brad Harrington
And that kind of perpetuates what's called the ideal worker norm. Right? Yeah. So I think at that point it was seen like, well, women can't be ideal workers because they also are struggling to be ideal parents. And it's impossible to make those to, you know, kind of mythical stereotypes kind of fit together. But I think that, you know, the idea was.

00;17;34;27 - 00;17;58;17
Brad Harrington
But men, if they have, if they have a wife, they still must be able to do all the things they need to do in order to, you know, to, to to get the work done, no matter how many hours it takes or how much travel it consumes or whatever. I think that though, as younger people have come up through the ranks and organizations do do a lot of, you know, as you know, employee engagement surveys and satisfaction surveys and so forth, the message became louder and louder.

00;17;58;17 - 00;18;23;28
Brad Harrington
I think that men and women have, you know, their expectations aren't so drastically different than it once was. And when we look even back in 2013 at the parental leave study, we asked what their priorities were, and we gave them a whole list of like 16 things that they prioritize most. And and when we looked at the top five items on the list, moms and dads prioritize the same five items as being the most important things for them.

00;18;24;00 - 00;18;43;00
Brad Harrington
You know, and it was things around workplace flexibility and and time off with, you know, kids and things like that. The rank order of the specific five were a little bit different. But generally speaking, the experience of working moms and working dads are more similar today than you might think. Just one example from our most recent study on parental leave.

00;18;43;02 - 00;19;02;23
Brad Harrington
We asked, the folks who took the study. We said, if you didn't take the full amount to leave, or if you considered not taking the full amount of leave that the company made available to you, why was that the case? And 45% of the men said, I was afraid that if I took the full amount of leave, it would have a negative effect on my career advancement.

00;19;02;25 - 00;19;20;15
Brad Harrington
So that's, you know, significant and not. And it's, you know, it's all but the same question. 55% of the women said the same thing. So more women than men said I was afraid it was going to impact my career advancement. Now, that said, women were much more likely than men to take absolutely all the leave that was available to them.

00;19;20;17 - 00;19;39;24
Brad Harrington
But I think the fears and the expectations are not that different between women. And then these days, and I think eventually the people in more senior roles, you know, had either had working spouses or were paying attention to their employee surveys and they realized, you know, the needs of men and women are becoming more similar rather than different.

00;19;39;24 - 00;19;42;26
Brad Harrington
And men want leave and men want flexibility.

00;19;42;29 - 00;20;20;00
Paul Sullivan
Yeah. We spent some time with some really interesting leaders, who have had, I would say, success, tremendous success earlier in the careers. And when they became dads, they were, you know, far ahead of the average, you know, person in his late 30s or early 40s. And the as we've talked to, you know, they've parented, you know, publicly and they've taken the leave and it's had a, transformative effect on their organizations because, you know, not only are, you know, more moms, more comfortable technically, but but more, more dads are comfortable taking a leave because they can see, you know, the model and the importance of of modeling there.

00;20;20;03 - 00;20;20;15
Paul Sullivan
Yeah.

00;20;20;15 - 00;20;40;00
Brad Harrington
And I mean, people sometimes will say like, why is it that in your study so much, such a higher percentage of men took leave than was the case? Like when you see states that have leave policies, you know, a smaller percentage of men typically take the leave than what we found in our study. And, you know, we're very clear that the study we did was in for major corporations.

00;20;40;00 - 00;21;06;18
Brad Harrington
It wasn't a, you know, a study that you could apply to everybody in any circumstance. But I'd say there's two reasons why there's a difference. The first reason is they know they have organizational endorsement to do it. So these are organizations that have said publicly and in their in their written, you know, you know, policies, HR policies and so forth, they've said this is something we champion, we support, and this is a benefit to the successful to you.

00;21;06;20 - 00;21;25;00
Brad Harrington
And that's it's more powerful to have your CEO saying that than it is to have, you know, Gavin Newsom saying it. If you work in the state of California, that you know what I mean, that it's nice that Gavin Newsom might say that, but it doesn't necessarily make you feel comfortable that your employer is going to be just as comfortable as, as the, as, as, you know, as others might be.

00;21;25;08 - 00;21;44;28
Brad Harrington
The second reason was that most of the state policies tend to offer a certain percentage of salary up to a cap, right? So they might say we'd offer 50% of salary or 70% of salary for X number of weeks, but it's up to a cap. And the cap is typically much lower than, than than, people in the organizations we studied are used to.

00;21;45;00 - 00;22;01;28
Brad Harrington
And one of the things we knew from talking to men is if I could get 90 or 100% elite of pay, I'll take it. If I can only get 50 or 60%, I probably won't. So I think those are two very powerful motivators. As one, my boss, my CEO, is saying they that this is something they endorse and support.

00;22;02;00 - 00;22;22;19
Brad Harrington
And the study we did on parental leave where we asked dads, did you get a high level of support from management and from the senior leadership? The answer was yes, I did. I got very hot with the support. And then the second is that they they got the full pay, which is still a rarity, that, you know, the people who work in organizations would get full replacement pay for 812, 16 weeks.

00;22;22;21 - 00;22;50;28
Paul Sullivan
You know, I know from previous conversations that, you know, the cadence of the annual studies is sort of stopped around 2020. You've been doing other work, but, you know, you're immersed in this so anecdotal, you know, when you're talking to companies and you know how, Covid, how hybrid work, how work from home, how it's changed. What they're asking of workers and what workers are willing to provide, you know, what are some of the things that that stick out to you?

00;22;51;00 - 00;22;56;03
Paul Sullivan
Among the changes between that employer employee dynamic post-Covid?

00;22;56;06 - 00;23;25;05
Brad Harrington
Well, certainly a year or two ago, you would have said the biggest change is the fact that employees felt and were, I guess, much more empowered to, you know, to, you know, push their influence about, you know, work about salary and about the way they wanted to work. And, and so you saw that there was a big shift for, you know, organizations that would say, you know, whether this is right or wrong, we demand that you're in the office five days a week, and that's the way it's going to be to now.

00;23;25;05 - 00;23;54;13
Brad Harrington
We're in a situation where some employers are having to really cajole and encourage and send people to come back into the, into work. So I think we're in a situation now where I don't think the pendulum has finished swinging quite yet. But I do think it seems like especially amongst knowledge workers, you know, you can't say this for people who are in, you know, jobs that require manual labor or direct customer interface or even doctors or plumbers, I mean, they have to show up and be there in order to get their job done.

00;23;54;13 - 00;24;11;08
Brad Harrington
But in the knowledge industries, I think what we find is that we've probably reached the sweet spot, which is most organizations are going to continue to, allow or encourage however you want to put it, you know, people to work, 2 to 3 days a week at home and 2 to 3 days a week in the office.

00;24;11;08 - 00;24;34;01
Brad Harrington
They have different ways of doing this. And I think that continue, the pendulum has swung more back toward we want more people back in the office, obviously, since since Covid has had that. But I don't think it's going to swing back to what it what it was. We still are seeing, you know, most employers are saying, well, when we when they say we want people back in the office, they need three days a week, they don't mean five days a week.

00;24;34;01 - 00;24;45;22
Brad Harrington
And I think that at least in the knowledge worker space and in jobs where people can easily do them remotely, I think, you know, we're finding that that's that's pretty much where things are landing these days.

00;24;45;24 - 00;25;14;12
Paul Sullivan
When you talk to companies and they are, they're, completely flexible and allow people to work in a hybrid. And if they need to come in for me and they come in and on the other extreme companies and these are all knowledge companies, companies that are completely inflexible, and they're demanding five days a week, even if, you know, employees aren't coming, what's often motivating, you know, I guess leniency and on one end or trust might be a better word and, you know, strictness and distrust.

00;25;14;15 - 00;25;16;25
Paul Sullivan
On the other, what what motivates that.

00;25;16;28 - 00;25;34;19
Brad Harrington
Often it's the bias the CEO and the senior executives. You know, I can think of one, you know, very, very well known investment bank who said, you know, come hell or high water, you're going to be back here. I guess it was March was March 2020, and mid-March was around when everybody was sent home pretty much across the board.

00;25;34;22 - 00;26;04;02
Brad Harrington
And, you know, a CEO of one investment bank, we we know, said March 20th, 21. Everybody is back in the office full time, you know, and that's that's it. And, you know, he just had and others in that same industry had a strong bias that that's not our culture to have people working remotely. And I don't know if it was a trust issue, but, obviously there was a culture there not only of show up in the office, but also working long hours was part of the culture, and people in that industry get well rewarded for that.

00;26;04;02 - 00;26;23;27
Brad Harrington
But at the end of the day, you know, they are sort of giving their pound of flesh in order to, get the work done and meet the meet the requirements of their bosses. Others, I think, you know, just saw either the logic of saying, gee, we could save a lot of money by not having people necessarily return to office, and maybe we could consolidate our commercial real estate space.

00;26;23;29 - 00;26;58;27
Brad Harrington
I would think that was probably particularly popular in places like Boston, New York, Palo Alto, San Francisco. And, you know, San Francisco is always the one that's pointed to as having the lowest kind of return rate amongst all the major cities when it comes to, people back in the office full time. San Francisco has really been, not an outlier, but sort of like the one or the one, excuse me, metropolitan area where people say people just aren't coming back to the office and it's really having a negative knock on effect on sort of the you know, the, companies that that rely on people being in the city every day.

00;26;58;29 - 00;27;25;21
Brad Harrington
But I think a lot of it really did come down to some combination of the logic and the expense of allowing people to work where and when they thought was best, versus the bias of some senior executives who just felt you know, either a, this is a show up and work culture, or B, they legitimately believe that creativity was spawned and stimulated much more by face to face interactions than it was on zoom.

00;27;25;23 - 00;27;26;22
Brad Harrington
You know.

00;27;26;25 - 00;27;40;28
Paul Sullivan
You know, I'm smiling because I have a I don't know if we're talking about the same investment bank, but I have a friend who's a managing director at a bank where the CEOs required everybody back in the office five days a week. And when he wants to work from home, because he just has calls and stuff to do.

00;27;41;00 - 00;28;00;26
Paul Sullivan
He's a super smart guy. He will schedule a zoom call, early in the morning, and instead of being dressed casually like you and I are, he will be in a suit. Like he'll be more dressed up than you would be if he went into the office. I said, why do you do that? Because I like to strike a little fear into their hearts and make them think that I'm applying for jobs that day.

00;28;00;28 - 00;28;26;20
Paul Sullivan
And it's it's quite clever and it's very funny, but it points to a bigger issue that, you know, some of these firms, many of these firms that have acquired people, you take in kind of an attendant type approach as opposed to an outcomes, approach to their work, have really, seen their morale. Suffer. At what point does that become a factor into how people are going to work going forward?

00;28;26;20 - 00;28;39;16
Paul Sullivan
As you said? You know, companies are always pulling their workers as to what you want. And if the morale stinks and your senior people are going to other jobs, what does it take for them to say, okay, maybe there's a sweet spot, for working and being at home?

00;28;39;19 - 00;28;57;08
Brad Harrington
Yeah, that's hard for me to know because I don't really get close enough to companies that I have insights about. You know, what? What are their morale studies telling them? You know, I get a lot of anecdotal evidence. We work a lot with the HR department. We get a lot of anecdotal evidence from those, especially those where they've had a reversal in terms of the work from home thing.

00;28;57;14 - 00;29;14;09
Brad Harrington
You know, some companies kind of went whole hog and said, we don't see ourselves coming back at all. And so employees took that literally and decided, well, maybe I'll move to a new location that's not quite as cost prohibitive and, and so forth. And then a couple, you know, some of those very high visibility companies said, well, hey, wait a minute, we've had such a second thought.

00;29;14;11 - 00;29;36;11
Brad Harrington
Yeah. And, we want you back in the air, you know, and if you move 200 miles away, that's not our problem. It's yours kind of a thing. So I don't know enough about what are the statistics on employee engagement and satisfaction? But anecdotally, you definitely hear from people in the human resource function that people are when they were forced to go back, they're going back, but they're not happy about it.

00;29;36;14 - 00;29;52;11
Brad Harrington
And, you know, I mean, I think that's going to be one of the criteria that people are going to use, especially young people, to look and say, is this the employer I want to stay with? Or if there's a competitor down the road and they are willing to allow me to work remotely, you know, I'm happy to do that.

00;29;52;14 - 00;30;08;10
Brad Harrington
I think, you know, it's not, you know, it's easy to come down on the side of saying people shouldn't be allowed to do whatever they want. And maybe it because of my age, I, you know, I worked for 20 years at HP and I, I did work remotely the last couple of years. You mentioned that I was living in Boston, working in Palo Alto and so forth.

00;30;08;10 - 00;30;27;04
Brad Harrington
And so I did spend, you know, part of my time in Palo Alto and part of my time working out of my home. And so I was on that bandwagon pretty early, but I, I always recognized for myself that not being in an office and not being able to interact with colleagues on a regular basis was was a loss.

00;30;27;04 - 00;30;46;18
Brad Harrington
I mean, I felt the sense of loss from that. We had a panel discussion or a meeting we held the other day where we had four young people and they said, yeah, I understand that. And, you know, a lot of young people find, you know, especially if they move to a new location, they find a sense of social connections through go into the office, because that's where the new peer group, is.

00;30;46;20 - 00;31;04;16
Brad Harrington
But but they were pretty darn happy with hybrid, I can tell you that. And when I asked them about, you know, mentoring or networking or things like that, these young people you know, they acknowledged it might be a little bit more difficult, but it was clear to me that these were not people who were begging to get back in the office five days a week.

00;31;04;18 - 00;31;04;26
Brad Harrington
So.

00;31;04;26 - 00;31;25;03
Paul Sullivan
Well, you know, you're you're in Boston right now and, and, you know, a good friend of mine works at a law firm, Galston stores, a big law firm, in, in Boston, senior, very senior guy. And what they did quite early on was a instituted, anchoring days. And so you'd have a, you know, 1 or 2 days a week, you know, you know, Monday, Thursday never going to be Friday, but, you know, Monday or whatever.

00;31;25;08 - 00;31;50;22
Paul Sullivan
And, and people on that team, whatever that team was, you know, HR of litigation, they would be in the office and they would have that intentional work. And then when you think about it, you know, if you're a knowledge worker, some portion, a large portion of what you're doing is sending emails, responding to emails, putting together presentations. And that seemed to be, you know, a sweet spot, for them.

00;31;50;25 - 00;31;51;24
Paul Sullivan
But,

00;31;51;26 - 00;32;09;22
Brad Harrington
Yeah, that's pretty common. I would just say, Paul, the idea of anchoring days is, is that become pretty common where certain days, you know, two days a week or something like that, everybody is going to be in so that there are opportunities for a lot of face to face meetings and interactions. But, what you're saying is absolutely correct.

00;32;09;23 - 00;32;28;03
Paul Sullivan
You know? Yeah. You know, early on in your research, you said, you know, you wanted to dispel, you know, sort of two of the myths around, you know, what what what fathers were there was sort of the Mr.. Mom, idea of sort of an emasculating, version of of a man, but also kind of disparaging to women.

00;32;28;03 - 00;32;50;02
Paul Sullivan
And then there was, the Neanderthal, the the bring them the bacon, the bread, whatever. So something unhealthy that we shouldn't eat that served as a substitute for money. When you think of, you know, the 13 years since you did that first study and you think of fathers and working fathers, how have they how is that image of them, evolved?

00;32;50;02 - 00;32;56;20
Paul Sullivan
Is there, an emerging archetype or a series of archetypes that is neither Mr. Mom nor or the Neanderthal?

00;32;56;20 - 00;33;21;08
Brad Harrington
Yeah. I mean, that's a great question, because I think it's the image of dads that that really suffered. I don't I don't know if we were ever as much Neanderthals as, as we were portrayed to be. But if you looked at mass media or, you know, television programs or, advertisements or things like that, they really tended to be to paint an image of fathers, which was extremely unattractive.

00;33;21;08 - 00;33;40;23
Brad Harrington
When you say Neanderthals, it was like these people wouldn't know which end of a diaper to put on a child. And then the only thing they know how to do is bring their kids to fast food restaurants and things like that. And so the image, you know, that that was constructed and was common in the media was, you know, dads are just incompetent parents, period.

00;33;40;26 - 00;33;55;18
Brad Harrington
And, you know, we we did a study for a consumer goods company, a very, very large and very famous one. And they said, what, you know, what do you think the images are? You know, because we're trying to understand they were they had a brand and they were really trying to promote kind of today's that kind of an image.

00;33;55;25 - 00;34;17;16
Brad Harrington
And they said, what do you think? You know, when people think of these things, what, what, what are the images? And it was like, and I hate to bring up, you know, bad, bad news, but it was like one of the questions we asked is like, name of father, you know, portrayed in television that you think was a good dad or, you know, and literally the top two vote getters were Andy Griffith.

00;34;17;19 - 00;34;20;21
Brad Harrington
Okay. And you and I may be old enough to remember Andy Christmas.

00;34;20;23 - 00;34;21;06
Paul Sullivan
But yeah.

00;34;21;08 - 00;34;27;11
Brad Harrington
Most of your listeners will say, who is that? Right. And, and the other one was Bill Cosby.

00;34;27;13 - 00;34;27;28
Paul Sullivan
Right.

00;34;28;00 - 00;34;30;26
Brad Harrington
Bill Cosby and what was that in the 90s or 80s?

00;34;31;01 - 00;34;31;17
Paul Sullivan
Yeah.

00;34;31;21 - 00;35;00;12
Brad Harrington
You know, Doctor Huxtable kind of a thing. And you think to yourself, these are the two names that come to mind. I mean, that tells you how, you know, few positive images there were in terms of father's caregiver and what was interesting, a few years ago when we were doing, we did a, a video with one of the big, advertising agencies in Boston, and they said that at one time, the stock images that were selected whenever people wanted stock images.

00;35;00;12 - 00;35;30;10
Brad Harrington
Getty stock Images is that this does it was dad playing football with the kids that was the number one image. And then in a couple of year period, right around 2015, the number one image was dad holding their child. Right. And so there was there was something going on then. And I think one of the things that made our fatherhood studies very popular at that time was we sort of caught that wave of when not nothing seemed to be, you know, very accurate in terms of depicting dad and caregiver role to something that was much more nuanced.

00;35;30;18 - 00;35;50;02
Brad Harrington
And suddenly you saw a athlete and, and, other kinds of, role models and, you know, the macho man not being portrayed as insensitive to their child care needs, but being portrayed is you know, sensitive and touch and caring fathers, which was a great transition where that happened over that 13 year period.

00;35;50;05 - 00;36;02;02
Paul Sullivan
Fantastic spot to end. Brad Harrington, executive director of the Boston College Center for Work and Family, thank you for joining me today and sharing your insights.

00;36;02;05 - 00;36;05;19
Brad Harrington
Thanks. It's it was fun.

00;36;05;22 - 00;36;23;15
Paul Sullivan
Thank you for listening to another episode of the Company Dads podcast. I really appreciate you tuning in week after week, trying to use this moment here to thank the people who make it possible. Number one, of course, held a mirror who is our podcast editor. We also have Skip Terry home to many of you know for the lead diaries.

00;36;23;15 - 00;36;46;17
Paul Sullivan
He's taken over our social media. Terry Brennan is helping us with our audience development. And Emily Serban is there, each and every day helping with the web development and can't do any of this without, an amazing board, of advisors. So I just want to say thank you to all of you who help. And I want to say thank you to everyone who listens.

00;36;46;22 - 00;36;49;12
Paul Sullivan
And, hopefully you tune in again next week.

00;36;49;12 - 00;36;50;00

Thanks so much.