Navigating Childcare Challenges with Priya Krishnan

With federal funds expiring, the childcare crisis is top of mind for us, so we are lucky to have an expert guide us through this moment.

Priya Krishnan, Chief Digital and Transformation Officer at Bright Horizons, joins us for an eye-opening conversation on the challenges of balancing child care and the crucial role employers play in supporting working parents. 

Prior to this role, she founded KLAY, which has grown to become India’s largest high-quality childcare organization.

As she says, “To help combat this crisis, we believe employers need to become – and continue to be – a source of financial support for working parents’ child care requirements. The most tragic outcome will be the reversal of the women workforce participation we have seen increase over the years.”

Join us for an important conversation on how we can lean on each other, and advocate for better solutions.

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Shownotes:

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

The rehiring and retraining cost for someone who's stepping away from the workforce is what justifies the cost of childcare, so you'd much rather retain an employee. Have someone who's happy to be turning up to work because you're a supportive employer. Then try to rehire and retrain.

Speaker 2: 0:14

Welcome to Working Mom Hour. Aw fuck, Hi everyone. Welcome to Working Mom Hour.

Speaker 3: 0:29

I'm Erica and I'm Madeline, we're Working Moms, Business Partners and Friends with kids at different ages and stages.

Speaker 2: 0:35

We know moms tend to get more done in an hour than the average human, yet are often misunderstood and underappreciated in the workplace.

Speaker 3: 0:43

We are here to shine a light on the Working Mom experience, to help ourselves and others step into and advocate for the superpower. We're not experts. We're two women who have been there and are still there kids, clients and all.

Speaker 2: 0:56

Join us as we cultivate more joy in working motherhood at the corner of calm and chaos.

Speaker 3: 1:16

Welcome back to Working Mom Hour. Today we have the privilege of speaking with Priya Krishnan, a true visionary and trailblazer in the field of childcare and education. Priya is the chief digital and transformation officer for Bright Horizons, a leading provider of employer-sponsored childcare, early education and work-life solutions, and before that she founded India's largest childcare and schooling service provider, clay, with over 150 company-operated centers across the country and a mission to empower women to return to work after having children through high-quality childcare services on site.

Speaker 2: 1:51

Her startup school quickly gained recognition, winning numerous entrepreneurship awards and growing to care for more than 11,000 children. Priya's company has also worked with various workplace models to create innovative solutions for companies and their employees. Priya's entrepreneurial journey began after a successful global career in IT consulting, working with some of the world's leading companies across Singapore, new York and London. Help us welcome Priya Krishnan.

Speaker 3: 2:27

Priya, thank you so much for joining us on Working Mom Hour Welcome.

Speaker 1: 2:31

Thank you so much. It's such a pleasure to be here and thank you for having me on the broadcast.

Speaker 3: 2:35

Yes, we're thrilled to have you, so you have worked with families and employers around the world. What unique childcare challenges do we face here in the United States, and are there any countries getting it right? That's a loaded question.

Speaker 2: 2:52

Right, I'm just going to stop the interview and hit you hard. That's just how it works here. You know, I think there are characteristics of cities that are similar.

Speaker 1: 3:02

It's not necessarily countries, so cities that are built by migration, so people move into those cities to get jobs. When I was working in India, it might have been a city like Bangalore where everyone moved because there were technology roles there, or cities like New York or Boston where most of the new roles are. So childcare becomes more difficult because the support systems don't exist in these cities and that's where families come into a bind and the challenges, especially for women as they're going into the workforce. These cities are expensive, so you need a dual household income. Women are ambitious. They want to stay in their careers, rightly, so. They're equally educated and they don't want to step back.

Speaker 1: 3:41

And then, third is from a skill standpoint. With industries like technology, your skills almost become redundant if you step away from the workforce. So there's also this personal side for needing childcare, which is beyond the fact that you want to remain in the workforce. It could be financial reasons, it could be career aspirations as well. So has any country got it right? I think the countries that have liberal and maternity policies and childcare benefits and we've seen countries where either the government or the employer steps in our countries that are making a serious attempt to solve for it. I would sort of say there isn't a solution. I would say the Nordic countries have cracked it a little bit with their maternity laws, but outside of that I don't think there's one country that's got 100% right and it's a work in progress.

Speaker 2: 4:29

Right, you had mentioned the government getting involved. We know President Biden signed an executive order to improve access to childcare and long-term care for families across the country. Hopefully this points to the fact that our government is working on making it easier for parents to find and afford good childcare. Curious your thoughts on it, and how long do you think something like this would take to realistically implement here?

Speaker 1: 4:58

The timing issue is a really important point, erica. So in the US, actually, employer support has been more prevalent than the government support and President Biden. It's probably the first time that the government's made a meaningful statement around childcare and brought intentionality to it. In the US, a lot of employers do support childcare because they want women returning to the workforce, men returning to the workforce, and that subsidy tends to be from the employer.

Speaker 1: 5:25

When the government gets involved, it is then about talking about building capacity, it is about making sure there's access, and with the pandemic, I think one of the challenges that we saw world over is supply went down, so the childcare industry is fairly fragmented. It's typically one person, a mom and pop type of setup, and a lot of people just said I'm tired, it's high costs, I'm shattering down, and so the government's intervention was timely in the sense that it helped some of these businesses stay afloat. Now, where that trend gets reversed and when do we get additional supply, more affordable supply, is probably a three to five year journey, but it has to be something that we're investing in as a nation, and I'm glad it's beyond childcare, because with the US specifically, we're like a dumbbell right. We have an aging population and we have a young population and our aging population will outstrip the young population. So thinking about caregivers at all life stages is really critical.

Speaker 3: 6:23

So, in your opinion, how should employers be supporting working parents?

Speaker 1: 6:30

Right now I am a glass half full sort of person, so I think of everything as an opportunity. So in my mind, the pandemic served as an inflection point. And COVID all of us realize the benefits of being hybrid, having flex schedules, et cetera. So what employees want and employers want is that a slight dissonance right now, and perhaps getting to a place where you're saying how do we ensure that we're meeting the employees life needs while we're expecting them to be productive, is an opportunity for employers.

Speaker 1: 7:02

If you think about work being designed around life, is there an opportunity for all of us to reimagine that the office hours are eight through five? Why are they eight through five? Why aren't they eight through three? Why can't you go pick up your child from school, from the bus stop, and then start clock back in at six after dinner and put in the remaining two hours? So I think there is a opportunity, there is awareness and I feel there's also a need that is crept in which will allow us to settle. Employers in general have stepped up when the need is dire. So that's the encouraging thing, that's what gets each one of us out of bed is to say how do we help these employers, help their employees. So, through the pandemic, when people had caregiving crises, educational crises, employers really stepped up and said we would like to figure out how to support them. How to do it at scale is something we've all collectively got to figure out.

Speaker 2: 7:58

Right. Right, because I feel like now employers haven't necessarily figured out the connection piece online, so they're now requiring folks to come back into work and there is something to that connection piece, but there's something more to the flexibility piece that you mentioned, I think, for parents.

Speaker 1: 8:18

I think most of us had strong cultures that held us in good stead through three years of the pandemic. That culture had to evolve as we went hybrid and we've not had the opportunity to actually sit down together and co-author that culture as employers and employees. And that requires the interaction. But does it need to be every single day? Can it be one day in the week? Could it be in short bursts of activity? I think that's the discovery process that each employer is going through with their own employees. We are a frontline oriented workforce. We don't have that option for a lot of our teachers and caregivers in the centers. So again, how do you, as an employer, balance your frontline population versus what feels like a home office population and make sure that it feels equitable to both those groups? It's another struggle that as employers I'm saying this as bright horizons as the employer has to figure out.

Speaker 1: 9:10

So if you have staff in the hospitals and then you're administered to, staff at the back office can stay at home, does that feel equitable? Is it the right thing to do, although this is navigation we're going through collectively?

Speaker 2: 9:23

Right and Bright Horizons is the largest provider of employer sponsored childcare in the US.

Speaker 1: 9:29

That's right. What does that mean? In a sense, it means that we work with about 1,400 employers across the country and help their employees, not just in childcare so we're very well known for what we do in the childcare space but really creating supports across all life stages. So it could be childcare at the one end, but also we provide elder care services, we provide tutoring services, we actually provide services for working learners, so for career progression and upscaling, rescaling kind of services. So we have something on offer, sort of pre-birth through gray, and we work with employers to say if you want your employees to be productive at work, they have to be anchored at home, and so what is that surround sound of care and education that you need to provide and how can we be helpful through that Rasa?

Speaker 3: 10:19

Wow, I didn't know all that about Bright Horizons. I feel that Bright Horizons has a good reputation in the cities where I have lived and I've really only known it for childcare, so that's wonderful to know. Out of curiosity, how are employers measuring success and sort of recognizing their return on investment, and what is the return? The?

Speaker 1: 10:42

return is the fact that you have a productive workforce. So say, if you take one of our clients who offers backup care, it was Patriots Day here when the Boston Marathon was on. My kids were off from school but I had to be at work. So it's those days where you're able to actually help an employee turn up to work. That's an instant productivity game for the employer.

Speaker 1: 11:03

But things like childcare, where you're putting out a facility and you're having people use it for three years and it's for a small group of people there is a return there as well Because, if you think about it, there's more women graduating out of schools. They're having children later, so they have more productive years in the workforce. The rehiring and retraining cost for someone who's stepping away from the workforce is what justifies the cost of childcare. So you'd much rather retain an employee, have someone who's happy to be turning up to work because you're a supportive employer, then try to rehire and retrain. This is more exasperated with knowledge workers as compared to frontline, but there is a spectrum there which justifies the investment for employers.

Speaker 3: 11:46

Are these employers paying for a portion of the childcare, or how does that work? Is it the same across the board, or does each one approach it differently?

Speaker 1: 11:55

The reason I said employers have to support it or governments have to support it. If you think of a parent's perspective, it's probably there's a fourth dimension. But the three things that I as a mom would have considered when I was choosing a childcare was it has to be high quality, it has to be accessible, so either it's close to home or close to work or somewhere on the route between the two. And then it was affordable, in that sequence. So the highest quality I would go out of my way, and the highest quality I might pay a little bit more. The affordability part is where the employers and government come in is because they pay a part of that cost, because the higher the quality of childcare, the higher the expense. So the employer actually helps in making it affordable by paying for either the space, so they might give us the space for us to set up the center, or they might say, hey, I will take 20 to 30% of the tuition and the employee can pay 70 to 80%.

Speaker 2: 12:49

Wow, it's amazing. It's really incredible and I have to say it makes an employer highly competitive for top talent, because it is the number one, probably stressor. The second you find out that you're having a baby is where am I going to have this child go while I'm at work? And if you're not in a place where it's high quality first, accessible and affordable, then your option is you have to stay home and you weren't given that choice, and that is. It's really incredible how many right horizons are there.

Speaker 1: 13:23

So we have close to 1,100 sites across the globe and we support close to 10 million employees through our employer clients in terms of things like our backup services or the elder care services.

Speaker 2: 13:36

Congratulations.

Speaker 1: 13:37

Yeah, no, I think, like I said, this is what gets us out of bed. Because you know, I know I'm a senior mom because I work. I would drag my kids off the wall if I wasn't working. So for me to work, I have to be anchored at home and say, okay, this boy is a sort of poor, their education is sort of poor, their care is sort of poor. We talk about mental health and well-being, right, but the root causes in the cognitive load that all of us are going through right now, which is how do we balance it all?

Speaker 2: 14:02

Right, and you founded and ran a school for children for marginalized backgrounds which has grown to become India's largest childcare and schooling service provider. This sounds really personal to you. Why was it important for you to enable women to return to work after having children?

Speaker 1: 14:22

So I did two things I set up a school for marginalized children and I founded a childcare business. So I say one was food for my soul and one was, you know, food for my heart and possibly paid the bills right. But the rationale was this was also deeply personal for me, which is the fact that I worked, kept financial emancipation in the household. I knew I was a better mom to the boys because I was working and I wanted for them to know that there was no difference between their dad and me in terms of those work choices. So Chalke came to my rescue and I said how is it that we can create infrastructure in a country like India which societally has a big expectation of women to really quit on everything they care about, because there are caregiving needs for children or adults, right? So that was the hope. And then the more flippant reason is I think children are much saner. The world of adults is totally overrated. So the notion of hanging around with children was great.

Speaker 2: 15:24

So they need these facilities and solutions to the kiddos. The kiddos shouldn't be at home, yeah, they shouldn't be.

Speaker 1: 15:31

Yeah, most moms will settle grudgingly for something equal to what they can provide at home, and we'll be delighted when it's better than what you can offer at home, and that was the only ambition. We just said. How do we get mom and dad to feel comfortable about the fact that a child was taken care of better than they could at home and grew, and we were very fortunate. It was a new category and we grew to 180 centers and was immensely successful and still remains the largest childcare provider in the country, which is great.

Speaker 2: 15:59

It really is incredible. I imagine it was not an easy process, like what was the top challenge for you to be able to grow something like this there?

Speaker 1: 16:09

I think, with any services business, but more importantly, with something so deeply emotional because you're looking after a family's most prized asset, which is their children, how do you balance scale with quality? I think that is always the conundrum for anyone in the space is how do you make sure that you're maintaining quality as you escape?

Speaker 3: 16:30

So sort of along those lines, at like a really high level perspective. As a parent who has sent my kids to school and daycare for years, does the more expensive daycare necessarily equate to like a better paid worker? Or can you talk a little bit about the spectrum of cost and how employees are paid or what the different types of costs for running the business are? Because I've always been curious. I'm in the process of changing schools from a really expensive one to a more moderate one, but I'm feeling the class sizes are smaller and the more moderate one. I'm trying to just like navigate the why behind some of the costs and also I want the teachers to be paid well, but I don't really have those answers as a consumer. Can you share a little bit? Absolutely.

Speaker 1: 17:15

I think it's a very simple business model per se, right? So you have two variables it's the cost of the caregiver and the cost of the real estate. So the more space you have per child, the more expensive it gets and the lower your ratios. So if you have a one is to one ratio, it's more expensive than when you have a one is to two ratio versus one is to three ratio.

Speaker 1: 17:37

So if you think of it as the cost of the real estate and amount of real estate, cost of the caregiver and the ratio of the caregiver. And then all the other costs are marginal, right. So it's things like electricity and water which are not very big. They have about 10% of your overall cost. So when we talk about affordability why I said when employers give us space that's a big answer for us. And then when we want to pay caregivers really well, and that's one of our biggest beliefs is we have to pay teachers and caregivers, because a happy employee means there's a happy child, which means there's a happy boy and there's a happy employer at the end of the day. So all of that sort of builds in. But those are really the cost levels.

Speaker 3: 18:14

So with your more expensive school, chances are it's definitely on a bigger piece of real estate, they probably rent it rather than own it. I think the new one probably owns their space. It's in the city, so it's smaller. I think they've had it for generations, so maybe that's all coming into play. Right, yeah, okay, can you provide practical tips to our listeners for better work-life integration based on your personal experience and expertise?

Speaker 1: 18:43

I think being there's no notion of work-life balance, which is why I think work-life integration is really critical. So when you're home and you have to take that important call explaining to your family that that is really critical and you're gonna miss dinner and not guilt-tripping yourself on the fact that you're not sitting with the kids on that one day, when you have to take that call is really-.

Speaker 1: 19:02

It's important right For you to be able to say in the moment I need to be 100% here. So if I'm at the PGM and I'm missing a board meeting, I signed up for the PDM and how do I get to a place where I am comfortable with saying this is where I'm meant to be, I'm going to listen to the teachers and whatever I miss at the board meeting is fine. I think that's what most people struggle with is they think they can become two different people or multiply themselves like two and become 100% of work and 100% at home. Something has to give, otherwise something internally will give and you know it impacts health overall. My simple mantra is it's fine, you miss that board meeting, that's okay. You miss the dinner one day in the week, that's fine. So just grace and kindness to yourself, I think is what most women need to do is just to say it's fine and the kids turn out okay in spite of you, not because of you, and sort of giving yourself that grace.

Speaker 3: 19:55

To that point about guilt. In bright horizons like strategy and marketing communications discussions, you're selling and communicating and holding the parents just as much as the kids. Are there any unique approaches to that that you have executed on to make them feel safe or reduce guilt or that? I know that's a little bit of a strange question.

Speaker 1: 20:18

No. So I think you're right because you know parenting is a very lonely journey and especially through, I think, with millennials and Gen Z women specifically, they go out and seek information themselves in terms of you know you're parenting by Google and parenting by your small right neighborhood, as against parenting by instinct. So part of it is just saying be comfortable in your own skin and you know a happy mom is more important than a well functioning like I've got the checklist down to a team mom, right? So there is. I always say that childcare part of it is because we're partners in this journey, we're equal stakeholders. It becomes almost a two-way counseling session.

Speaker 1: 21:01

I think people seek a community and especially after the pandemic where there's been so much of isolation, community would say you're okay, it's fine when your child falls and bumps their head, it's fine if you missed, you know, the two-hour feed, it is okay, she or he are not going to remember it. They need a circle of friends and I think that's what a childcare facility provides. Is you find the community of similar minds with people at a similar life stage? So is it part of our marketing active strategy? No, but is it part of how we engage with parents? Absolutely.

Speaker 3: 21:33

Yeah, it's a great question. I was playing pickleball with a few moms recently. One of them is all her kids are grown and I had dropped my kids at the child care center, at the fitness center, and I was like I think I'm gonna go. It's been almost two hours and she looked at me just like point blank and she was like you feel guilty for dropping your kids at child care? And I was like, oh no, I'm guilty that I'm guilty, that I'm. I need to release this, like her generation, like there was no guilt in this moment in her perspective. So I was like, okay, this is really something I need to let go of.

Speaker 1: 22:05

Yeah, and the fact is, you can't do away with a guilt, right, it's just, it is alleviating the guilt. Interesting perspective yeah, so you don't? You don't get to do away with the guilt, it's it's. I think we just have to endure it.

Speaker 3: 22:20

You know like that.

Speaker 1: 22:21

But how do you sort of compartmentalize it and feel guilty for the right set of things.

Speaker 2: 22:26

I like that I feel guilty for the right set of things.

Speaker 3: 22:32

Yes, how old are your kids, Priya?

Speaker 1: 22:34

Mine are 18 and 15, so all grown up, all right that's awesome.

Speaker 3: 22:39

Those are not probably not easy ages, I would assume, but you've also gotten through the little phase.

Speaker 1: 22:45

My mom gave me very safely advice after they were born that the problems never go away. They change. I just feel like they go with them. So yeah, but they're delusional kids, so I have. So you have different issues. It's, you know, it's not the I got hurt because I got a bump. It is I got hurt because my heart was broken which is very difficult to deal with.

Speaker 2: 23:04

I know it is true. It is true. It is true. The exhaustion changes. You go from like physically exhausted to emotionally and mentally exhausted, trying to get out in front because our parents didn't do it right, we don't have the right answers, we're not doing it right.

Speaker 1: 23:20

Yeah, but we turned out okay. That's what I'm saying, that it's fine. You know, it's just meant it's over. So much fun. Yeah, we miss the fun parts and we think about all the I miss this. I didn't do this with your kids, mad. That sound like they're much younger. But it's delightful, the 200 connections they're making in the day and if you pay attention to that and not the fact that you listen to them at the time for like one minute.

Speaker 3: 23:46

Yeah, yes, and it's like tainting my experience. Yeah, you're so right.

Speaker 2: 23:51

So I've got a question around parents being able to advocate for themselves at work, because I think this is another challenge. I can only speak to moms and I can really speak to my experience when I didn't work for where we all work now. How would you recommend parents advocate for themselves at work when they are experiencing child care challenges or, like you mentioned, another life stage like elder care?

Speaker 1: 24:18

I think asking for support is really important. It's not even about advocacy. I think it's giving yourself permission just to help, right. So our lives have been. You know, our life of work is compartmentalized from our life at home and again through COVID, we all looked into each other's homes. Right now, you know, I'm looking into your homes and that's right. So as a result of that, I think the care conversation became more pertinent, which is why it was all over the news, because suddenly you saw your CEO's child crying in the background or a cat crawling across the screen. The conversation have become easier and I think one is giving yourself permission to say I am ready to ask for help, and the second is then saying hey, you know, I am good at what I do and these supports are critical to me. How can you make a work for me? So the advocacy is second order in my mind. People don't even make the transition to say is it okay for me to ask?

Speaker 2: 25:15

yeah, that's a great point. So you have a podcast, the work life equation. Tell us a little bit about your podcast. That's exciting yeah.

Speaker 1: 25:24

So Christine, michelle Carter, who's became a friend through the advocacy work that we both are doing. All of us are, you know, saying what does it take to bring women into the workplace and retain them in the workplace? We just had this idea of saying what, and we have real life stories, real conversations and a range of topics right. So, from even you know, we had this discussion with Paul Sullivan, who launched, yeah, something called the community of dads, and he was a guest, because this is not just about moms, it is about working parents and about society in general. So I feel like we've just had a great time. She and I will certainly be better mothers because of the fact that we get. It's like okay, you're not lonely in this journey and everyone's going through the shared experience. So it's been a blast and we're hoping, you know, that people actually find as much value in it, as as much fun as we've had.

Speaker 2: 26:18

So yeah, that's great. I feel like we are similar with this project that we're doing. We just get to learn so much from other experts in their fields, but also it has helped us not feel like we've been on an island this whole time right we saw a friend of the show. We saw you were with Eve Rodsky, which is a topic we discussed last year, but it has really infiltrated mainstream media in, I think, a really amazing way, this concept of you had mentioned it.

Speaker 2: 26:50

Yeah, fair play. And what are the? The new roles? New, new roles for women and their partners.

Speaker 1: 26:57

Yeah, and Eve's amazing. Her work is so, so important because it's more than having a voice. She's codified how to make it happen right. So she's taken it down to a process and she said here is how you can actually Self-advocate and divide the work. It's fine, Whatever shape it takes. It's not 50 50. Get to a place where you're comfortable.

Speaker 1: 27:17

So you know, it's more power to her in terms of how she's thinking about it, but all of these voices I feel through our platforms are important for us to say here's how you do it at home, here's how you do it at work. You know, and hopefully you're a happier individual and a happier parent as a result of work. That's the goal. So tell me a bit about the podcast and what you guys are trying to do. I'm not supposed to ask you questions on your podcast.

Speaker 2: 27:40

I Love that you are. Thank you for asking. This podcast started about a year and a half ago and we were actually guests on another podcast and Someone asked how we all got together. And we got together. Marla and I have been working together for quite some time but Mads was furloughed during COVID from her company and we did a lot of crisis communication. We needed some support and she was like I can't give you a full day. I was like I don't need a full day, I need a couple mom hours out of you. I know what you can accomplish in an hour. And so we were telling this story and got the idea for the working mom hour just talking about what we can accomplish in an hour, what still left to be accomplished in general in the working mom's face. But highlight women like you who are just kicking ass and taking names and helping to pave a way for all of us and helping those stories get out so other people know the resources available to them.

Speaker 1: 28:41

Yeah, and I think it's so important. You know each one of us having our respective Audiences, but, more importantly, even if you're helping one additional person, I think it counts for something. So more more power to you guys as it goes through this journey.

Speaker 4: 28:54

Thank you. You touched on about your experience with child care in the workplace and, for listeners who haven't listened to your story yet, if you or Mads Priya wanted to jump in on a moment in your careers when you had to really find creative solutions for child care, where, like Erica, was a total career pivot and then just kind of like little moments when child care made you switch your approach to work and how you were determined to do both.

Speaker 3: 29:20

It's a good question, marla. I remember a moment and I can't remember if I've shared this on the podcast or not, but I was interviewing while in maternity leave and I remember the effort it took to put my child down at the specific it was a newborn, put her down at the specific time, have myself showered and ready person who was gonna sit at my house during the nap was arriving. I told the employer I had exactly one hour and I remember I walk in and like heels in a dress. I don't know how I did that, but he was like, oh you just like bounced back and I just wanted to be like I'm dying inside. I like had. I feel like I had to move mountains to make this child care situation Work for one hour and it just like is a small illustration of the like, extrapolating that out into everyday life actually it's interesting you say that man's because I I was a working, very male, dominated in the industry.

Speaker 1: 30:12

So I had a, I was an engineer and then I did consulting and then I had a sales career. So in general there were much fewer women and I had the same sort of challenges in terms of how do I I would? My son my older one before he turned one traveled with me to India like seven times from the UK. It's like I don't know what to do with you. So you're hopping on a plane and off you go and you're gonna come with me and I'm gonna drop you off at the grand parents. But one of the commitments I made when I started the childcare business was every mom could bring their child Into the interview and we hired a lot of women because of that. So we just said bring your baby along. Baby will get you know Faster round. People will take care of her. So it puts the mom's mind so much at ease and I think there are so many women who joined us just for that one person it's. It's incredible that you mentioned it.

Speaker 2: 31:02

Yeah, I think that's the biggest challenge of all is just putting a mom's mind at ease from an employer perspective and a Childcare perspective. My journey was I quit my job at a big agency that I really loved because I had my second kid. My dad had just been diagnosed with terminal cancer. So talking about like taking care of your family and your kids, I didn't feel like I had an option. My mind wasn't at ease that I. I just felt like I was living in this limbo because we were required to be at the office and any moment I was getting a call that my dad was in the hospital or my kid was sick. So I just I felt like I didn't have a choice and I quit and left to that job but not, luckily, the workforce and we're sort of figuring it out still 10 years later on our own. But flexibility was important and that ease a mother's you know ease of mind is critical to her success.

Speaker 1: 31:53

I think Absolutely.

Speaker 4: 31:55

I love that. I have one more question. Just thinking of the concept of like putting on others minded ease and I know as you all are Figuring out like the best child care options for your children whether it's like a babysitter for one night I am like I was a babysitter throughout my entire high school experience and also interviewing child care places. Is there a specific question you ask or quality you look for when choosing someone for child care? And I'd love to know if there's any like crazy red flags we should look out for.

Speaker 2: 32:24

I'd love to hear Priya's response to this. So what was your interview question for your child care?

Speaker 1: 32:31

Right, you know so much of this is about finding chemistry and who's gonna be that partner?

Speaker 1: 32:37

Yeah, in that journey with you when you're looking at a childcare center, it's actually the soft aspects, like when you walk in other children they're happy, do they feel like they're clean and healthy, and and then, are the teachers happy? Like that's a very good indicator. Like I said, yeah, there's a happy employee, the children are happy. So these are the soft aspects. When you're walking into a childcare center, to say, does the environment feel stressed or does it feel like a calm place which is well run right? And that's very, very critical.

Speaker 1: 33:06

When it's a one-on-one relationship, if it's a nanny or a babysitter, I think a lot of it is down to.

Speaker 1: 33:13

Here are my needs, these are the gaps, these are things I can take care of. But I absolutely need you to over index on the following things, and this is very important to me, like my child being fed and Clean is way more important to me than him learning his phonics, which I can do. Whatever that is, you know you feel you've got some part of it. How do you actually create a partnership with that caregiver or with the babysitter or with the nanny? Background checks I think people forget, they want to ignore outside, but I think the world's changing and just being 100% sure that the person who's Actually entering your home and spending time with a very important part of your life, that you background check that person is critical, which professional childcare providers like us would do, but that's not necessarily true in a one-on-one relationship. I would say those are the things to watch out for, but a happy place like a happy adult in a child's life is magical.

Speaker 3: 34:09

Yes, I don't know, Marla. It's an interesting question. I would say if it smells. I toured a couple of places in Baltimore that just smelled like urine and I was like I can't have my kid in a place that is just not clean. But then a red flag to me is like a lot of rules about entering and exiting. I like to be able to come and go anytime. They don't need to call the room to give them a heads up that I'm coming, like come anytime, and to me that feels safe. They're not hiding anything. There's no time of day that feels so chaotic that they can't have parents coming, and so I would agree it's just a feeling and an openness and a calm. I get very chaotic in my body around kids and multiple kids, and I have multiple kids, but the people who work in childcare tend to not feel that way. So, like calm humans, I think is positive for me.

Speaker 2: 34:59

Yeah, I agree. Priya commented on chemistry and I think I followed a lot of my intuition around people and how they've interacted with my kids when I'm around, and then my kids are old enough where now they can communicate what's working and what's not. So that's been helpful and pretty soon my preteen will become a babysitter. She's looking into taking classes. Yeah, to be a babysitter soon. So it's it's interesting, but I think chemistry is huge. Also, we had a sitter once, a nanny that came to our house and I'd come home. The dishes were done which we didn't ask her to do that or she made me I was on a like paleo kick and she made me like paleo cookies and it was like how are you looking to take care of me too In a sitter? So it was really. It was really. Joe ended up hiring her. We've hired a lot of our nannies and babysitters, like in our companies, because they've been so wonderful to our kids. We've been lucky.

Speaker 1: 35:55

No, that's and it's, it's absolutely. You luck out when you find someone like that. Clearly if she makes cookies for you. She must have been amazing.

Speaker 2: 36:03

It was amazing. Yes, our final question for you, which is what tool or service do you use to make life a little easier? I have a.

Speaker 1: 36:16

I have a WhatsApp group with my whole family and our calendar sits there. So my life's been about scheduling because both my husband and I were entrepreneurs I no longer am one, but he is still one and our rule was that one of us would always be around the children, so if he traveled I would be there, which you can imagine. The nightmare that was to calendar then. So we have a shared family calendar and I think that's been the biggest gift we've given each other. As clinical as it sounds, I think it takes a lot of the mental load of okay, I know you're traveling three weeks from now, so what do I need to do at work? And that's been super helpful.

Speaker 2: 36:55

Yep, yep. We live and die by the calendar. I even schedule like pick up the kids, take the kids to school, in the calendar.

Speaker 1: 37:03

I have my walk scheduled in, so we're down to saying this is, these are my 30 minutes and no invasion on this time.

Speaker 2: 37:10

Yep, yep, that's great, that's great.

Speaker 3: 37:14

Priya, we are so grateful for your time and attention to this important issue. It was a hopeful conversation. If you are open to connecting with listeners further, where can they find you?

Speaker 1: 37:23

I am a social media averse person, so they find me on LinkedIn at Priya Krishnan and listen into our podcast. Christine and I have tons of fun having these conversations. Is there?

Speaker 2: 37:35

a way for folks to contact you and say, hey, I'd like to offer this as an employer benefit or I'd like my employer to look into this. Do you have a way that that can happen?

Speaker 1: 37:46

Yeah, consumers can reach us on the Bright Rises website. If you go to brightrisescom and go to resources, there's tons of parenting content how to have conversations with your children, how to navigate this crazy journey called life. But, as an employer, if you're looking to offer this again, bright to Bright Rises, we're very, very responsive. On our website there's a lead form that they can fill out and more than happy to have people reach out for us to help them through this journey.

Speaker 2: 38:12

Awesome. All right, priya. Thank you again.

Speaker 1: 38:16

Thank you, it was so much fun.

Speaker 4: 38:18

Thank you, I love your questions.

Speaker 2: 38:22

All right Thank you Bye, bye, bye.