EP115: How Not To Get Sidelined on Parental Leave

Interview with Adrienne Prentice / Parent Coach for Companies

HOSTED BY PAUL SULLIVAN

Adrienne Prentice loved being a lawyer and was working her way up within the general counsel's office. She went on parental leave when her first child was born - and returned to find her position had changed. She wasn't invited to certain meetings or assigned to cases that involved travel. The assumptions that were made bothered her deeply. That motivated her to create Keep Company, which works with law firms to put better caregiver policies in place. Listen to what workers can do to help themselves.

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Transcript

00;00;05;20 - 00;00;23;03
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 are 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 on our podcast is just one of the many things we produce each week.

00;00;23;04 - 00;00;43;29
Paul Sullivan
The company that we have various features, including lead dad of the week. We have our monthly meet ups. 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 today at the Company of dads.com. Backslash the dad. Today our guest is Adrienne Prentice, co-founder of Keep Company.

00;00;44;03 - 00;01;07;13
Paul Sullivan
It's a platform that aims to help companies reduce burnout among their employees, i.e. parents and caregivers, and ultimately retain top talent. She came to this after returning from a maternity leave to a company where her role had been changed radically while she was out. It led her to shift and focus more on coaching before she started keep company with her co-founder Claudia Name.

00;01;07;20 - 00;01;16;09
Paul Sullivan
Bert. Adrian has two kids, boy and girl, and lives outside of Washington, D.C.. Welcome Adrian to the Company Dads podcast.

00;01;16;12 - 00;01;18;15
Adrienne Prentice
Thanks, Paul. Happy to be here.

00;01;18;17 - 00;01;31;05
Paul Sullivan
All right a non keep company question for all of our, dad and parent listeners who are talking to the kids. What did you think? Being a lawyer would be like before you actually became a lawyer?

00;01;31;07 - 00;01;56;18
Adrienne Prentice
Probably much like most of my family members think it is. They ask me about parking tickets, and they ask me about divorce. Or they watch too much law and order. You know, so certainly was in the courtroom, and glamorous and really well dressed. It's probably how how I, I imagined it in my early days.

00;01;56;20 - 00;01;58;02
Paul Sullivan
And that's how it was, right?

00;01;58;05 - 00;02;23;19
Adrienne Prentice
Absolutely. 100%. No, no, not at all. I actually became a transactional attorney with a very specific niche in, technology transactions for at the time it was called e-health startups. And that's dating myself because now it's called digital health. So never really have entered the courtroom in my life, except for when I did a couple pro bono matters.

00;02;23;21 - 00;02;28;22
Adrienne Prentice
And I'm not really into fashion, so I was never the well-dressed attorney either.

00;02;28;24 - 00;02;33;23
Paul Sullivan
Do you do this? Have, like, the soundtrack from Law and Order as your ringtone? Bum bum bum.

00;02;33;23 - 00;02;35;03
Adrienne Prentice
Bum. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

00;02;35;06 - 00;02;37;18
Paul Sullivan
Has everything.

00;02;37;20 - 00;02;42;17
Adrienne Prentice
So to me, it's my alarm. Actually, it's what I wake up to every day.

00;02;42;19 - 00;03;04;10
Paul Sullivan
I'm ready to go lawyer today. All right, let's shift into. Seriously. So, you know, I keep coming. We're gonna spend most of our time talking about that and what it does for employees, what it does for employers, how it kind of is helping change the conversation. But tell the story first. You know what happened when you turned from that maternity leave to the company where you're working?

00;03;04;10 - 00;03;07;08
Paul Sullivan
What do you what did you find when he got back there on on day one?

00;03;07;10 - 00;03;32;18
Adrienne Prentice
Yeah, absolutely. So I think you've been going to, to to go before that. I really had very much part of my identity was being an attorney and was being ambitious. I really invested in my career and I loved it. And then I when I got my new job at home, I say when I had and I had Evelyn, my daughter, that's obviously a job I felt like I was failing at because I'd never done it before.

00;03;32;20 - 00;03;51;26
Adrienne Prentice
And then when I went back to work, it was supposed to be kind of my safety place because I knew I was good at this. I've been doing it for a really long time, and I felt that people perceived me to be less capable or committed to my work in the office now that I had become a mom, frankly.

00;03;51;28 - 00;03;54;21
Adrienne Prentice
So that looked like different things to me.

00;03;54;21 - 00;04;01;26
Paul Sullivan
They say, did they say stuff to you or is that your your perception? Or you talk about like, you know, why you were thinking that when you went back?

00;04;01;29 - 00;04;26;23
Adrienne Prentice
Yeah, I think it was the opportunities that were given to me. Right. Whether that be, you know, depending on, on your role or what you practice, like the big deal, the big case matter budget. Who was invited to certain calls. You know, there was a lot of presumptions made about what I would be willing or capable to do, because maybe I didn't want to travel as much.

00;04;26;23 - 00;04;48;15
Adrienne Prentice
You know, there was assumptions made around that which, again, that might be true for some people in that phase of life. But I think the issue is these assumptions. That are made, which are quite frankly, like pretty paternalistic, no pun intended, but didn't necessarily fit what I wanted for myself in my career. And how I wanted to integrate them.

00;04;48;15 - 00;05;00;25
Adrienne Prentice
So I felt like my story was being written for me instead of me having a voice and what that looked like. And especially at a time again, I'm still learning this new job. It was really confusing.

00;05;00;27 - 00;05;21;15
Paul Sullivan
Yeah. And again, you know, for the listeners, you were a lawyer working amongst other lawyers in the corporate law part of this company. So one might assume that, among all those lawyers, somebody might understand employment law or somebody might, you know, think that why this was a bad idea? Did that ever come up in the conversations?

00;05;21;18 - 00;05;47;11
Adrienne Prentice
Did it come up? I mean, it did in a sense. I mean, one thing I will say is that it was at a time when there was a lot of corporate reorganization going on, and so there was a lot of shifts happening anyways. And so I think that, well, I was feeling like being iced out because I became a mom was framed more like, oh, there's just lots of changes happening right now.

00;05;47;18 - 00;05;53;10
Adrienne Prentice
Yeah. So the timing was complicated to say the least.

00;05;53;13 - 00;06;20;07
Paul Sullivan
You know, there's going to be a podcast and our listeners will have heard, ahead of years with a woman named Amy Beacom, doctor Amy Begum. She started the center for Parental Leave Leadership. And one of the things she does is she helps companies in a plan, both the before and the after. In this, you know, and I know we're going to have a lead, but in this situation, was there any planning for the before and the after at this this company?

00;06;20;09 - 00;06;21;12
Paul Sullivan


00;06;21;14 - 00;06;34;05
Adrienne Prentice
No, not really. And at the time, part of the reason could be that all I had or was given was my six weeks short term disability leave. So,

00;06;34;07 - 00;06;37;02
Paul Sullivan
No, wait, wait, you gave birth and you were disabled too. What?

00;06;37;02 - 00;06;40;07
Adrienne Prentice
Yeah, exactly. What? What? Oh, it's a condition.

00;06;40;08 - 00;06;44;02
Paul Sullivan
No, that's not true. That's just the way it gets classified. Okay. All right. Yeah.

00;06;44;07 - 00;07;09;02
Adrienne Prentice
Yeah, exactly. So you would think that. But I think, like, somewhat of a side note, in, you know, and I'm skipping ahead a bit because I went into talent management and I did a lot of exit interviews, and I would get really frustrated because even if it wasn't new parents, but any parents who ended up resigning or leaving an organization, they would say things in the exit interview about why they did it.

00;07;09;02 - 00;07;31;29
Adrienne Prentice
Quality of work, not enough. You know, admin support or resources. But there was often where I worked in, in many other organizations, a different narrative told, which is that they couldn't hack it and they needed work life balance. And so there's kind of like this story as to why people are leaving. They either don't feel supported, they're not getting the work, and that's the core of why they leave.

00;07;32;05 - 00;07;44;13
Adrienne Prentice
But then there's why people tell themselves they leave. And with parents and caregivers, it's often because, again, they just can't hack it. They don't have enough time or energy because now they have all these things they need to do at home.

00;07;44;15 - 00;07;56;22
Paul Sullivan
You know, and for the listeners, your daughter is seven, so this is not like it happened 27 years ago. This is very recently. In your in your exit interview, what did you say when they asked you why you were leaving? What did you tell them?

00;07;56;25 - 00;08;17;09
Adrienne Prentice
Oh, I was very honest. That's one thing about me, Paul. I think in our short time that we've known each other. I'm an open book. People are nice. I was honest in what was I told. I was told a lot of the trite things that women hear every day in the workplace. Why are you getting so emotional about this?

00;08;17;12 - 00;08;18;29
Paul Sullivan


00;08;19;01 - 00;08;30;06
Adrienne Prentice
I was told it that organization, despite being promoted twice over 18 months, you know, that I was difficult and unlikable. So it's truly like you.

00;08;30;06 - 00;08;37;08
Paul Sullivan
Do this in the, in the, in the on your way out or this was in sort of, you know, anonymously other colleagues saying this.

00;08;37;10 - 00;08;58;11
Adrienne Prentice
This was leadership told me within the process. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Is it in the file? Of course not. Do you know. But these were things that were said into your point. My situation is somewhat egregious, but this happens every day. So. Yeah. So I got angry.

00;08;58;13 - 00;09;22;16
Paul Sullivan
As you should know, and get angry. I mean, this is not like, you know, and you get a and you leave, and you do some coaching, you do some other legal work. But tell me the story as to how you, you know, how all of that in a post this corporate, you know, attorney general, how all of that leads to what you're doing now, which is the formation of of keep Company, which is two years old.

00;09;22;16 - 00;09;34;02
Paul Sullivan
We spend the rest of the time talking about that. But how do those yeah, your own life experiences, plus things that you're doing as a coach, this other company, you say, how does that all sort of add up to creating keep company two years ago.

00;09;34;04 - 00;09;55;21
Adrienne Prentice
Yeah, absolutely. I think to go way back. My mom is an entrepreneur and she's a total badass. So I think there there is like, you know, the older I get, the more I'm learning how my parents, in the way I grew up, have really formulated my viewpoints and how I, you know, one show up for my kids and that sort of thing.

00;09;55;21 - 00;10;28;06
Adrienne Prentice
So she was like a problem solver in, in before her time in that regard. So another thing that happened while I was at this company was I had an amazing sponsor, like a true sponsor in every regard who, like week number two, who got me an executive coach. And I was confused because I just started and I thought coaching was remedial and for poor performers, he was based in London where he said, oh no, no, no, if you don't have a coach here, you're not taking your career seriously.

00;10;28;08 - 00;10;51;11
Adrienne Prentice
It's a vehicle where you unlock your potential. And it really did that for me. It helped build my confidence to, you know, climb that corporate ladder, get over imposter syndrome and those sorts of things. So when I was at this turning point where I had this little baby that I didn't know what to do with and a career that felt completely different than the one I had left like six weeks earlier.

00;10;51;13 - 00;11;15;26
Adrienne Prentice
That's why I decided to become a coach myself, because it was so incredibly beneficial to me. So I did that, and then I kind of hung on my own shingle, and I was a coach largely focused on working parents and caregivers. Then I went to a large law firm, and I sat in the talent management department, and as I mentioned, I did exit interviews, but I also did internal coaching there.

00;11;15;28 - 00;11;39;09
Adrienne Prentice
And it was these persistent themes that I think were almost universal and certainly devastating that the parents and caregivers I spoke to, shared. The first was isolation. This is before the pandemic. So not physical isolation, but truly, like, why does everyone else have this figured out except me? What's wrong with me and trying to make this all work?

00;11;39;11 - 00;12;00;04
Adrienne Prentice
The next thing I saw was, they were sacrificing their health and well-being, so they were just responding to demands at work and at home. Forget massages. They weren't sleeping more than five hours a night, or drinking water or getting fresh air, like, truly, really not taking care of themselves. And then the third is a skills gap.

00;12;00;06 - 00;12;29;11
Adrienne Prentice
So at the time I didn't call it that. But looking back, that's what it was. Nobody knew how to draw a boundary, say no, ask for help, had difficult conversations. You know, I have since gone to a few back to school nights, including my daughter's most recent one, where they're teaching social emotional learning and a responsive classroom where they teach kids how to problem solve and mindfully breathe and move their bodies and name their feelings.

00;12;29;14 - 00;12;46;08
Adrienne Prentice
And we weren't taught that. And if we are going to have sustainable careers where we have to integrate all these different parts of who we are, those skills are actually really necessary. Not even in just the parenting, but almost like parenting ourselves. So anyways, it was kind of that personal experience that we just talked about at the top.

00;12;46;08 - 00;12;57;22
Adrienne Prentice
And then this professional observation, as well as hearing lots of similar stories from my, my friends, that led me to quit and eventually start a company to, to solve this issue.

00;12;57;24 - 00;13;15;03
Paul Sullivan
I love this issue because my kids are also in a school where they have their sponsored classroom, and one of the things they do is the whole ruler method. But they talk about the colors and there's, you know, blue, green, red, yellow. Where are you on the color? And it's pretty obvious red is angry. But you and I would love this to be in corporate America.

00;13;15;03 - 00;13;25;06
Paul Sullivan
Imagine if this was in some of the biggest law firms in America. And you're like, okay, miss. Mr.. Mrs.. Senior partner, where are you? What color? Yeah.

00;13;25;08 - 00;13;47;26
Adrienne Prentice
Yeah. No, it's so funny. I mean, I'm sure you recently saw Elmo went viral. And what did he say? He just said, how is everybody out there? Yeah, right. Like, take a pause in checking in with yourself. And that self-awareness is really, really powerful. And I think that's like the cause. How are you today? And then and then where appropriate, share that with others around you.

00;13;47;26 - 00;13;55;07
Adrienne Prentice
So either they can have that context or they can support you and you can develop meaningful connections and relationships. It's super powerful.

00;13;55;10 - 00;14;11;28
Paul Sullivan
You know, one of the things we did, you know, also two years ago when we started the company to dads, is we pulled a lot of working moms, because, you know, coming to dads is about the dads, and the dads are the go to parent where they work full time, part time for about all the time to the families, but in many cases are there supporting their spouses of partners.

00;14;11;28 - 00;14;30;17
Paul Sullivan
And this part was unscientific. But we go around and talk to, you know, senior female executives. And I always remember, you know, this this woman who's quite senior, at a big time law firm, runs one of their practices. And she says, yeah, you know, my husband is a early dad. He's he's there, you know, behind since he has another job.

00;14;30;17 - 00;14;46;16
Paul Sullivan
But he's there and she's. Yeah. And you go when I go around in this partner's meetings with all the female partners, a lot of them either have the dad in their life or they're divorced. And all the male partners are kind of looking at them baffled. Now, this is not a large sample size, but that was left to her to figure out.

00;14;46;16 - 00;15;03;11
Paul Sullivan
And that was left to her and her fellow, you know, partner, colleagues to figure out on their own what does keep company do to help, you know, people not have to figure this out on their own because some of them figure it out and they have a good partner and they make it work, and some of them end up getting divorced, and some of them get get burnt out.

00;15;03;11 - 00;15;10;22
Paul Sullivan
And then we talk a lot about burn as it. What what does keep company do to help so that all the other onus doesn't fall on the individual to figure this out?

00;15;10;24 - 00;15;33;14
Adrienne Prentice
Yeah. Gosh. So many points to to begin with. So the first thing that we do. So we're a group learning platform. We're combating isolation by bringing parents and caregivers who are similarly situated together. We paired them with one of our expert coaches. And a coach leads them through our behavior science based curriculum, which is largely focused on these skills that I just mentioned communication, social, emotional skills.

00;15;33;17 - 00;15;54;12
Adrienne Prentice
So the first thing that we do is we we find their people. So the the gathering is not based on just one slice of who they are. So it wouldn't just be partners at law firms. It might be partners at law firms who are the, you know, in dual income household with school age children also caring for a parent with dementia.

00;15;54;14 - 00;16;20;13
Adrienne Prentice
And when you can get a group of people like that together or any sort of shame, like it's my fault, I guess I just can't figure this out. Lipps. People feel safe. They feel brave. They can be vulnerable. Not only can they share ideas with each other, but they can inspire each other to make changes. So the very first step that I think in doing that is one finding your people, the next is just the space.

00;16;20;16 - 00;16;38;03
Adrienne Prentice
How am I going to do this? I don't know, we don't give our support. Like this is really I'm really, really stressed. What would help? I don't know what would help. And so we literally are giving them the time with other people. And obviously an expert coach to think about what would help and then go ask for it.

00;16;38;05 - 00;17;07;13
Adrienne Prentice
So that that's it's really like unlocking agency and folks, but giving them the skills that are necessary to have those hard conversations and make progress in a way that feels authentic to them. One thing I'll also mention is I was I was the first year associate before I met my husband, probably single in a panel or something at my first law firm, and I heard a similar message from the, women partners to be partner.

00;17;07;13 - 00;17;25;17
Adrienne Prentice
Either you needed yes, you they were either divorced or they had stay at home spouses, or they had basically two living nannies and a lot of people coming up. And I would say it's probably becoming even more prevalent. Look up and they're like, nah, I don't want that. You know, that's not how I want to show up for my family.

00;17;25;17 - 00;17;52;22
Adrienne Prentice
And so they're opting out. But we are trying to do is, as I mentioned, really empower the individual with skills and community. But then we partner with our clients, the employers, and aggregate our data and make suggestions to them. And one of the easiest things we say is spotlight your leaders who have both this big job at home and a big job at work, and have them talk about how they do it and what's hard about it.

00;17;52;24 - 00;18;16;02
Adrienne Prentice
Because we dads are awesome, but not everybody has them, right? And so then how else do they do? They make it work. And so spotlight the lead dads because there might be, you know, a male associate who wants to be a lead dad or spotlight. You know, asking for help in a way that people who are women who grew up saying they're supposed to do it all, feel like they don't have the permission to do so.

00;18;16;02 - 00;18;22;10
Adrienne Prentice
There's just but once you just start opening dialog, it's incredibly, incredibly has this like ripple effect.

00;18;22;13 - 00;18;47;25
Paul Sullivan
I can see where that can be so powerful, but I can also see where that could be, potentially go off the rails. And I say that because, there is this, you know, the myth of the power mom, or the person who has it all. But the reality is nobody ever has it all. And when we're not honest or we don't feel that we can be honest and say, yeah, I had it all because I had x, Y, and Z, you know, to help me out that that's one.

00;18;47;25 - 00;19;05;13
Paul Sullivan
And the second part and I see this a lot with male leaders, particularly post Covid, is they suffer from confirmation bias. Like this is the way I got here. And so therefore you should do something similar. Why don't you all want to be back in the office? I was in the office and I did all this. And they don't realize that the world has has changed.

00;19;05;13 - 00;19;20;20
Paul Sullivan
I mean, when I started, I was telling my my next door neighbors in the late 80s and when he was working at Smith Barney back in the day, they had a telephone installed in his house that they would call because he would take the train home, and that would be the special bat phone that Smith Barney had installed so he could go.

00;19;20;22 - 00;19;54;17
Paul Sullivan
Now imagine today if somebody started to Smith Barney and say, hey, so great to have you here. We're just by the way, part of the onboarding is we're going to install a phone in your house. We're going to call you because we've been doing it that way for, 47 years. Right. This place, how do you when you're working with these leaders and getting them to share their stories, how do you help them shape those stories so that they end up being, inspiring to younger attorneys, younger, whatever the, the workforce may be versus almost hagiographic, whereas, or detrimental because this is how I did it.

00;19;54;17 - 00;20;03;10
Paul Sullivan
And therefore, if you want to be a partner one day, the only way you can do it is doing these, these seven things. How do you make those stories, you know, to the younger workers?

00;20;03;12 - 00;20;09;04
Adrienne Prentice
Yeah, we load the listicle, we load. This is what you need to find.

00;20;09;08 - 00;20;10;24
Paul Sullivan
Ways to achieve happiness.

00;20;10;27 - 00;20;12;11
Adrienne Prentice
Is it an odd number?

00;20;12;14 - 00;20;17;16
Paul Sullivan
Do these seven. I'll do the seven. Yeah, well, I you kill three times a week because of that a listicle.

00;20;17;16 - 00;20;36;22
Adrienne Prentice
Come on. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Check check check check. Good. Right. But that's people do crave that. So I think, like, from the very beginning, we kind of say, like, look like you got to do work. If you want to make this work, then you have to put in the work, which again includes some like a self assessment, awareness, reflection, courage and bravery.

00;20;36;29 - 00;20;58;06
Adrienne Prentice
So that's that's more of an aside. The two things that I think what you're flagging is a real risk. So thank you for bringing it up. The way that we advise to get around it is one emphasizing everyone has their own path. I'm going to share you share with you my story. Your story is going to look different because your, you know, support network at home might look different.

00;20;58;06 - 00;21;22;14
Adrienne Prentice
Your means, your privilege might be different, right? But if in spotlighting stories, you make it that it's a story not everyone's is the same is one way to to at least kind of proactively combat that risk. I think the other and we talk a lot about this is seasons. So I think it was Michelle Obama who said, you can have it all, but just not at the same time.

00;21;22;17 - 00;21;40;18
Adrienne Prentice
And I think what we talk about sometimes is there's going to be seasons in the season, might be a week, it might be a month, it might be a year where you are leaning in to one part of your life. Maybe it is your work, maybe it is your kids. And maybe that's because you've got a kid who struggling at school.

00;21;40;18 - 00;22;16;05
Adrienne Prentice
Or maybe it's because you're up for promotion in 18 months. But just knowing that, like anything you decide to do is not forever and opportunities will be there at the end of that season. And so to like put an example together, we do, as you mentioned, we work. We work mainly in professional services with law firms. So having partners, moms, dads, caregivers share that they went part time for a bit for a period when their children were whatever age, and then they came back to full time and then they ended up making partner eventually.

00;22;16;05 - 00;22;37;12
Adrienne Prentice
But maybe it was a couple years later than if they hadn't gone part time or whatever. That's the story that people on here. I mean, sometimes people in law firms, for lots of different reasons, we are trained to be, you know, very like to, to not have flaws. Right. The billable rates are very high. The attention to detail must be there.

00;22;37;12 - 00;22;59;13
Adrienne Prentice
So showing any kind of vulnerability is difficult. And, and so if you have a partner who is sharing their full story, then that gives hope and there's a path and then you have more. And the more parts you have, the more it gets back to this point that you can can craft your own. You just have to figure out what matters to you.

00;22;59;16 - 00;23;32;03
Paul Sullivan
You know, most people I know, the most parents, moms, dads, you know, they don't think about their will. We're going to keep this in legal terms. They don't think about their will or their estate plan. It is something bad happens until parent dies, until, friends and they had a heart attack. When law firms or professional services companies reach out to you and they want keep company to come in, is there usually a moment that has happened when they've realized, Holy cow, we've we've done this wrong and we need this, or do you come in because you help them see something that perhaps they weren't able to see before?

00;23;32;06 - 00;24;01;06
Adrienne Prentice
Yeah. So there are law firms who have had gender discrimination suits brought against them largely around, pregnancy. So those firms that's kind of like they there's an urgency to it. And that makes them realize, oh man, we need to think more about how we're supporting people and their transition to parenthood. So there is there is that, we work with caregivers in addition to parents.

00;24;01;06 - 00;24;33;11
Adrienne Prentice
So people who might be caring with for an aging parent. And I have found that there are certain companies that are just a bit more forward thinking or people first than others, and those that are are already getting ahead of this caregiver issue because by 2034, we're going to have more people over 65 than kids under 18. That means we're going to have more people in the workforce who are caregivers, more people who are caregivers and parents to the sandwich generation.

00;24;33;14 - 00;24;52;14
Adrienne Prentice
And so those firms and and they're known in their websites, frankly, can all kind of look the same and say the same thing. But the ones who are walking the walk, they're the ones who are like, oh, caregivers, we need to do something for them so they reach out in that way. The other, sort of. So that's the more like proactive bucket.

00;24;52;16 - 00;25;19;29
Adrienne Prentice
The the lawsuits act, obviously an obvious reactive bucket. But another one is they're they're losing top talent women and people of color in particular, are burning out and leaving work at a higher rate because of their caregiving responsibilities at home. And so and in the legal industry, 50% of the first year associates, for instance, are women. And the average equity partners, I think, is 20%.

00;25;20;01 - 00;25;45;25
Adrienne Prentice
And so there's no closing those gaps without figuring out how we can keep, you know, parents and caregivers. And the other way for for attorneys who are people of color, they're three times more likely to be caregivers than white attorneys. And they're leaving because they're taking care of their family at home, whatever that might look like. And so I think that's that's the driver, the people who are paying attention to the attrition and to the themes amongst it.

00;25;45;25 - 00;26;09;26
Adrienne Prentice
And then, of course, to like the multiple of the costs that that is leading and the bottom line are, starting to be more proactive. And then the last thing I'll say, and I really, really hate, like reductive generalizations about generations, right? Like Gen Z this millennials, this boomers are this, you know, I was I was born in 1982.

00;26;09;26 - 00;26;32;16
Adrienne Prentice
I'm a very old millennial, so maybe that's why I hate it. But, Gen Z folks coming up are requiring more. They want to be taken care of not just so that they're better employees, but like, be considered as whole people. And I think a lot of organizations are already feeling that and starting to take a more like, holistic approach to the resources that they offer.

00;26;32;18 - 00;26;36;07
Paul Sullivan
The companies even know how many caregivers they have in their workforce.

00;26;36;09 - 00;26;40;06
Adrienne Prentice
Know, but they will soon when they use our care centers. What is.

00;26;40;06 - 00;26;46;09
Paul Sullivan
It? What is it? What is the care sensitivity? So like, yeah, let's show our hands here. How many caregivers, how to tell me how it works?

00;26;46;16 - 00;27;05;18
Adrienne Prentice
Yeah, absolutely. So it was actually a problem and a product that we stumbled upon because I would be pitching organizations and I would say, you've got way more parents and caregivers than you think. Trust me, there's more than you think. And here's how you should support them with our group learning platform. And we had our CTO started in October and he said, hold up.

00;27;05;21 - 00;27;27;15
Adrienne Prentice
That's a product right there. We can help solve and not only for our purposes, right. So we know who is eligible for for keep company. Excuse me, but so that the organization can make more strategic decisions. So the care center is a stand alone product where employees confidentially tell us about their role at work, their role at home, their challenges.

00;27;27;17 - 00;27;50;13
Adrienne Prentice
They take a well-being assessment. And then we aggregate the data and give it back to the organization. And now the organization can say, oh, 90% of our resources are for new parents, but 80% of our parents have school age children. And a buff, Holy cow, we had no idea how many caregivers we had because, you know, care recipients aren't dependents.

00;27;50;13 - 00;27;55;24
Adrienne Prentice
And, you know, that's interesting. So it's the idea of just like, you can't improve, you don't measure.

00;27;55;26 - 00;28;19;26
Paul Sullivan
Yeah, we totally agree. And that's what we rolled out ideas at the company. Dads like you know, care days and care shifts. And part of it it's like you had quite a very, very short, maternity leave the first time around at six weeks. But companies can at least latch on to something like that. They can say, okay, look, we give six weeks, we give 12 weeks, we give three months, we give it equally to, birthing and non birthing parent.

00;28;19;26 - 00;28;44;07
Paul Sullivan
And they can show it and measure it. But as everybody who is a parent knows, you could give somebody a year's, parental leave. And it's not like on day 366, everything just is smooth sailing and gets easier. I mean, all kinds of things happen on the website being a parent. And of course, you add in, you know, broader caregiving responsibilities.

00;28;44;09 - 00;29;08;20
Paul Sullivan
It's it's it's tough. So when having this data, having this knowledge, being able to show companies just how many caregivers, not only do they have, but at, you know, what stages as caregivers are, come back full circle and tell our listeners, you know, how then does the caregiving platform work? How do you take both that data for the individual company and, you know, the proprietary technology you have around this learning system?

00;29;08;20 - 00;29;20;15
Paul Sullivan
How do you merge the two of them to have a positive outcome for both the employer that requires certain things, and the employee that requires certain things that may or may not always overlap with the employer.

00;29;20;17 - 00;29;51;29
Adrienne Prentice
Yeah, absolutely. So when someone completes the care census, part of that, as I mentioned, is a well-being assessment. What we do on the back end is we aggregate based on those responses, the burnout risk in the attrition risk. So the organization is now getting a pulse of how their parents and caregivers are doing. The other thing now, kind of closing that feedback loop that we do is win at the end of the of the census, based on what people shared about their caregiving responsibilities.

00;29;52;05 - 00;30;17;07
Adrienne Prentice
We do two things. One, we connect them directly with resources that are already available. So their organization might already have bright horizons for backup care. They might have milk stork for breast milk delivery, they might have mental health apps to help them. And so if someone you know looks like based on what they said, they could use one of those, we would say, hey, do you know your firm has a bad click here.

00;30;17;08 - 00;30;23;06
Adrienne Prentice
Go get it right now. Because a big pain point for organizations is they do have a lot of resources, but nobody's using them.

00;30;23;14 - 00;30;23;22
Paul Sullivan
Yeah.

00;30;23;23 - 00;30;46;26
Adrienne Prentice
So while we have the attention, we're going to point them in to that direction. Do some white benefits. Navigation. The example I give a lot of times for a caregiver population is we can say, hey, did you know that four hours of respite from caregiving drastically improves your own mental health? And did you also know Bright Horizons has elder care, not just child care?

00;30;46;28 - 00;31;17;26
Adrienne Prentice
Go get you some help and get a break. And so we're again connecting individual to existing resources. And then what we do is we also have our own resource library available. And so in that is again not listicles but skills tools, frameworks that people can can, you know, use and put into practice. Right. Then, of course, if the client has also, subscribed to make our group learning available, people can opt in to participate in our next cohort right there at the end of the census.

00;31;17;26 - 00;31;51;12
Adrienne Prentice
And then next, I kind of like kicks off their experience. But the idea is not everyone is comfortable talking about their caregiving for good reason. Right? Fear of retribution, fear of being perceived to be less capable, less committed privacy concerns. And so this way we are giving them a safe place, whether it's the census or their group, to share what's going on and then connecting them with resources that firms making available and then allowing them to form relationships and deepen their learning through our curriculum.

00;31;51;14 - 00;32;16;23
Paul Sullivan
That's awesome. Thank you for the bright horizon. Shout out for those listening. We now have, a podcast I'm co-hosting with, Bright Horizons. Chief Digital Transformation Officer Priya Krishna called the Work Life Equation. It's going to run on alternate weeks to the company dads podcast. Adrian, I got to say, I know you don't like listicles, but, you may be on my list of, like, top seven guest ever, so.

00;32;16;23 - 00;32;18;18
Adrienne Prentice
Oh, I love it. I like that.

00;32;18;18 - 00;32;31;04
Paul Sullivan
But I can't say that because you one of those, Adrian Prentice, co-founder of Keep Company. Go check it out. Thank you, Adrian, for joining us on the Company of Dads podcast today.

00;32;31;07 - 00;32;38;05
Adrienne Prentice
Yes. Thank you, Paul, and thank you for your work. And to all the lead that big shout out in this about.

00;32;38;07 - 00;33;07;00
Paul Sullivan
Thank you for listening to the Company of Dads podcast. I also want to thank the people who make this podcast and everything else that we do for the company of dads. Possible. Helder Mira, who is our audio producer, Lindsay Decker hand is all of our social media. Terry Brennan, who's helping us with the newsletter and audience acquisition. Emily Servin, who is our web maestro, and of course, Evan Roosevelt, who is working side by side with me on many of the things that we do here at The Company of Dads.

00;33;07;00 - 00;33;21;08
Paul Sullivan
It's a great team. And we're we're just trying to bring you the best in fatherhood. Remember, the one stop shop for everything is our newsletter, the dad. Sign up at the Company of dads.com backslash. The dad. Thank you again for listening.