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Hiii, Vibes are incredibly high this AM. You may be wondering why… I woke up early and snuck in a workout!! I swear the endorphins really do help. Now, if you need me I’ll be making my way through this Monday with a much brighter outlook. I think I really need to move my workouts to before work because this bump in energy is somewhat better than what coffee can deliver?? But don’t get it mixed up, I will still be sipping on my coffee. Nothing can replace that for me! Here are some things (other than workouts and coffee) that might bring you joy today: 📺 HR Therapy NEXT WEEK is focused on feedback across the ages. Tara Turk-Haynes and Ashlynne Valdez join me to talk about feedback across generations and how to make feedback at your org relevant AND helpful. ✨ SAFE SPACE SUMMIT: 200 HR people, 3 days of fun in the sun, and interesting keynote speakers. Did I mention… free of cost? The deets: Oct 13 - Oct 16 in Huntington Beach. Apply for a spot and if you’re accepted I’ll see you there!! You may wonder, why an application? We’re trying to curate the room with folks experiencing similar challenges so we can actually problem solve and get some inspo from peers. 🎧 This week’s fresh ep: Behind every brilliant HR person is a system… and this week Liz Clarke joins me to discuss how she first thought about setting up systems working in HR and how it’s personally helped her. Now onto today… I was going to write about AI but decided instead to dedicate an entire entire to moms! In honor of mother’s day I’m revisiting one of my most popular newsletters: are working moms okay and updating it for 2026. Sponsored by Betterment Nothing says mid-year like the slow realization that your 401(k) compliance might have some feelings to work through. 😑 As your company scales, so does the complexity, but most plan sponsors find out where the gaps are at the worst possible moment! Download it so you can head into the second half of the year like someone who has their 401(k) together! 😁 SPECIAL EDITION Vol. 2: Are working moms okay?
Three years ago I wrote a newsletter about working moms that got a lot of great feedback. As I was celebrating Mother’s Day I thought about that newsletter and decided to give it an update for 2026. 📚 You can read the OG edition here. Here’s the dealio: I’m not a mom and I would never pretend to know everything about a mom’s experience. What I do know: a lot of women I love and adore are working moms, I came from a mom who I deeply love, and every day I support moms at my company to take leave. And what I've seen, through them, alongside them, and in the data, is that we are STILL failing working moms in many ways. When I first wrote this edition back in 2023, I thought surely in future years we’d be in a different place. I had dreams that maybe paid leave would be federal or that childcare would be more affordable. How optimistic of me!!! Reader… (she takes a deep breath) We are not in a different place. In some ways, we're in a worse one… So let's talk about it. 🎧 And if you’re more of a listener… Erin Grau and I got into this topic on the pod. What the 2026 numbers say:
Here's where we are right now:
That last one truly sent me for a spiral… Still a mess: the leave situation
🤓 Quick history lesson: in 2023, I wrote that the US was one of a small handful of developed countries without paid parental leave at the federal level. Cool cool cool. So in 2026? The United States is STILL without a national paid parental leave policy. Not cool not cool not cool. What HAS changed: paid leave programs in DC and 11 states!!! Roll call: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Washington are fully paying benefits now. Maine starts paying benefits in May 2026 and Maryland in 2028. That's real progress at the state level!! Truly! BUT… If you live in the wrong zip code, you still get nothing federally guaranteed. So whether a new mom in your company gets supported leave depends on:
In other words: it's still mostly on the employers. Which brings me to the part where I get bossy… What’s new??? :) How HR can support working moms in 2026:Body copy
You know I've always got tips!!! Here are 5 things to actually do, updated for the world we're in now!! 1. Make flexibility the standard: 👀 Hi, it's me, again, citing the many, many, many benefits of flexible work. Three years later, this is still what working parents are screaming for!! KPMG's 2025 Working Parents Survey found that flexible work schedules ranked as the #1 most valuable initiative employers can offer — and 53% of working parents reported struggling with ongoing childcare arrangements 2. Document your parental leave AND return-to-work plan: ✍🏽 I said this in 2023 and I'm saying it LOUDER in 2026: a parental leave policy that only covers how to take leave is half a policy. You need:
The transition back is where things can easily go sideways. So, plan for it rather than waiting for your moms to ask for support. 3. Foster community and actually listen when they tell you what's broken: 🤝 A Parent ERG is still a great place to start. But please, for the love of it all, don't make it performative. If your parent ERG tells you that meetings before 9am are killing them, do something about it. If they say your benefits portal is impossible to navigate while holding a newborn, fix it. If you’re going to invest in building this community you have to also take action when they bring you issues. 4. Pay for childcare. Or get close to it. 💰I said this in 2023 when childcare was already brutal. In 2026? The alarms are BLARING. And yes, I realize in a time where a lot of companies are cutting benefits to suggest actually adding another benefit might sound counterintuitive. But, shame on those companies for cutting benefits (cough Deloitte cough) and let’s not use them as an example to follow!!!! Median childcare costs can eat 20%+ of family income in some markets. If you want moms to stay, contribute meaningfully. Options:
If "we can't afford to pay for childcare" is on the table, you can't afford to lose your working moms either… 5. NEW for 2026: Audit your algorithms 🤖 This is the one I probably would not have written three years ago. If you use any tool that monitors activity, scores productivity, or feeds into performance reviews go look at how it treats parents. Automated trackers are now silent gatekeepers, and they're designed to reward unbroken blocks of availability. You know who doesn't have unbroken blocks of availability? Caregivers. Sick people. Anyone with a life!!!! This will, if it hasn’t already, become another equity issue HR will have to address. So, get ahead of it now or wait to clean up messes in the future. Why I won’t STFU about this:
If working moms aren't getting support from their employers, their partners, OR the government… then how can they be successful? The pandemic showed us so much. But the biggest thing I think we all learned is what happens when the system breaks and who gets impacted the most… Women disproportionately exited the workforce in 2020 due to school closures, caregiving demands, and job losses concentrated in female-dominated sectors. The recovery has been somewhat steady but honestly, incomplete. 57.5% in 2026 has not yet recovered to the 1999 peak. We've spent half a decade clawing back ground we already had and we're STILL not back!!! So: if you're an HR leader reading this, you have more power than you think. We write the policies. We set the norms. We can help decide if "flexible" actually means flexible or if it's just a word on a job posting. ❤️ You can make your workplaces better for working moms. Next week I’m back to my regularly scheduled programming: what’s AI doing to the pace the HR job. (HUMAN) RESOURCES
*This one is brought to you by one of my amazing brand partners WORK-LIFE BALANCE
Sponsored by Rippling HR and Finance should want the same things, right? Rippling pulled together a CFO, an in-house HR expert, and a Senior Director of Strategic Finance for a free (virtual) discussion on May 13th! Show up and take notes, so you can finally stop getting "no" for an answer! 💡 SONG OF THE WEEK 🎧 Mary Jane, MUNA
MY FAVE BAND PUT OUT NEW MUSIC!!!!! AND IT’S FIRE!!! It was so hard to pick one song to feature bc there were sooo many standouts like Big Stick, On Call, Eastside Girls, and Girl’s Girl. But Mary Jane has been stuck in my head alllll weekend. I cannot wait to see them live on their tour. If you need me I'll be blasting this album and you should too. I hope you enjoyed this, please let me know what you think and what other topics you'd love for me to cover. I'm allll ears. Reminder: Take care of yourself and know that I support you. |
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Monday, May 11, 2026
📓 are working moms okay?
