Chapter 4. Take Your Parents to Work
Employer alert: helicopter parents are whirring into the workplace. They could show up anytime, and they're butting into everything from job interviews to performance evaluations. Some are even accompanying their children to the office after they're hired.
That's what happened when Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide in New York City invited employees' parents to spend a day at the office to get to know the firm and see just what their kids do all day to earn their paychecks. For starters, parents received a primer on PR techniques because many people mistakenly believe advertising and PR are one and the same. They also learned more about Ogilvy's own business and clients, participated in a brainstorming session, and attended a cocktail reception.
"A lot of the folks here are millennials, and we've been doing a lot of things to try to keep them happy," says Kate Cronin, managing director of Ogilvy's New York office. "We realized that they're proud of their parents and want to share their accomplishments with them." To her surprise, more than 30 employees brought their parents to the office. "When I was their age," Cronin says, "I didn't want my parents anywhere near my job. If someone had asked me about having a parents day, I would have said, 'Are you kidding? So my father can embarrass me?'"
That certainly wasn't how Sarah Pfeiffer, an Ogilvy account supervisor, reacted. She jumped at the chance to invite her mother to come to Manhattan from Maryland and participate in Bring Your Parents to Work Day. "Overall, I thought it was really a fun way to show my mom what I do every day," she says. "PR is a field that is often confusing, so it was nice to showcase what we do here and how much fun we have doing it." It also meant a lot to Pfeiffer that Ogilvy was willing to invest the time and money to meet and socialize with parents. "I really miss being close to my family because other than a semester abroad, I have always lived within 45 minutes of home," she says. "Having my mom share a work day with me was really great."
Her mother, Carol Gallay, who works as a teacher, was equally enthusiastic, although at first she thought it was a joke. "I had had this negative image of PR people as spin doctors, but I couldn't believe my daughter would be doing that," she says. So she was eager to learn more about Sarah's job and meet her bosses and colleagues. In addition, she participated in a focus group addressing the problem of educating parents to use antibacterial ointments along with bandages for their kids' cuts and scrapes. Best of all, she ended up staying over the weekend and seeing Mary Poppins on Broadway with her daughter.
Some employers might think Ogilvy was asking for trouble by opening its doors willingly to parents. In fact, Ogilvy executives did feel some trepidation about how parents might behave. For one thing, they worried that parents might ask why their children don't earn more money. "I know that their parents are clearly their advisers and talk to them whenever I'm giving them a review or offering them a promotion," Cronin says. But the parents minded their manners, and Ogilvy even ended up with an ongoing panel of employees' mothers who share their thoughts on osteoporosis. (Ogilvy promotes Merck & Co.'s Fosamax as a treatment for the thinning bones disorder.)
Ogilvy was so pleased that it plans to repeat Bring Your Parents to Work Day and to expand it to offices in other cities. Given Ogilvy's success, perhaps we should establish a national Take Our Parents to Work Day, along with the traditional Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day every April.
Strange as it might seem to older generations, the workplace is becoming a family affair. Companies today aren't just hiring the child; they get the whole family in the bargain, like it or not. Parents are getting involved from the start of their children's careers, bugging recruiters to schedule interviews, then asking to sit in on job interviews, and even trying to negotiate salaries. The bonds are so tight that some corporate recruiters are finding that millennials prefer to work in a location near their family and friends and avoid long-term international assignments.
How pervasive is parental influence in the job search? KPMG, the global auditing firm, surveyed 2,409 U.S. business school students in 2007 and found that 17% rely on parents' guidance a great deal in choosing an employer, and nearly 40% will not accept an offer without at least speaking with their parents.
On the employer side, the Collegiate Employment Research Institute at Michigan State University conducted a survey and found that about one-third of companies with more than 3,700 workers had witnessed parental involvement in the recruiting process and the early career stages of college students. Smaller companies reported less parental activity. Employers seeking students with a business background encountered parents more often, whereas those recruiting people with engineering, computer, and scientific credentials reported the least parental involvement.
The following are the most common types of parental intervention reported in the Michigan State survey: obtaining information about a company, submitting a resume on the child's behalf, promoting the child for a job, attending a career fair, complaining if the child wasn't hired, and making interview arrangements. Some parents go even further after their child has been hired. Survey respondents said parents even complete their child's assignments to avoid missing deadlines, or review the work to improve its quality. And one respondent told of an employee who was reprimanded at work and refused to meet with or respond to the supervisor before talking with Mom and Dad.
Mothers were more likely to gather information and make arrangements for interviews and company visits; fathers were the ones who usually showed up during job and salary negotiations. Fathers also contacted companies when their child didn't land a job and when a supervisor disciplined their child. One survey respondent urged parents to at least inform their children when they have sent their resumes to an employer. "We have called a student from our resume pool," the employer said, "only to find that they did not know anything about our company and were not interested in a position with us."
Whereas Ogilvy asked parents to visit its offices, most are invading the workplace uninvited. L'Oréal's human resource managers in New York City were very surprised when parents called to investigate possible job opportunities for their children with the beauty-products company. It was something the Paris-based company hadn't experienced in its European offices.
Some employers would appreciate it if millennials would try to be more discreet about their helicopter parents. Alison Brod, president and founder of a public relations and marketing agency in New York City, simply wishes millennials wouldn't tell her they have to get Mom and Dad's blessing before taking a job. "I have offered some girls a job, and they say they have to check with their parents first," Brod says. "It's fine if they want to get the advice, but please don't tell me that when you're 21 years old. I always believed that 21 meant I was a grown-up who was expected to make decisions on my own and would have never ever shared that with a prospective employer—even though I too needed to speak to my parents."
Some parents even encourage unethical behavior. The parents of a University of Texas M.B.A. student urged her to renege on a job offer she had already accepted because they thought more highly of another company that also wanted to hire her. "She eventually decided not to do this after talking with our staff," says Stacey Rudnick, director of M.B.A. career services at Texas's McCombs School of Business in Austin. "But she continually asserted that she needed to 'look after her own best interests' when we discussed it. Despite the fact that the second company was not as closely aligned to her long-term career interests as the first one, the weight of its brand name made her parents think she was making a bad decision."
Some frustrated supervisors find that their new hires are so bound to their parents that they consult them about day-to-day work decisions. They might announce that they're on board with a decision because Mom thinks it's a splendid idea or try to wiggle out of a work commitment because the timing isn't good for Mom.
Lorrie Foster, executive director of councils and research working groups at the Conference Board, a business research organization in New York City, was startled when she first encountered parental intervention in a workplace decision. An employee decided that she wasn't going to travel to a business meeting, but hadn't bothered to inform anyone. "When I asked the young woman what was going on, she said she couldn't talk right then but would get back to me," Foster recalls. "When she did a few moments later, she said that her mother says she shouldn't have to travel to the meeting because her family might be doing something the day after she got back from the trip." Unsure she had heard the woman correctly, Foster probed further to determine whether the reasoning for her decision was really coming from her mother. "She said yes, and repeated the response without the least bit of embarrassment," Foster says.
Even performance reviews aren't off-limits. The head of a small advertising agency tells of a friend who was flabbergasted when an employee's father showed up the day of his son's very first performance review. What proved even more amazing was the employee's failure to grasp why the review wouldn't take place with the father in attendance. If performance reviews sound harsh or pay raises seem stingy, employers had better watch out. Just as they complained to teachers and principals about unacceptable grades, some parents are now calling managers to object to the size of pay increases and to performance evaluations that fall short of being rave reviews.
Although there's no question that millennial parents will be a fact of life for employers, companies are taking a wide variety of approaches in dealing with mothers and fathers. Some are very disturbed by what they consider totally inappropriate behavior and would like to banish parents from the workplace. To them, parents represent a growing occupational hazard that must be stopped now.
But if they are too intolerant, they are likely to offend their young prospects and could eventually lose them to another employer. A far better strategy is to devise ways to involve parents without letting them become too intrusive. Whatever approach they take, companies cannot wish these persistent parents away, no matter how much they'd like to. Parents aren't going to suddenly stop working for their children's success after more than two decades of such a close attachment.
"It's going to be a real challenge for companies to define the boundaries in this relationship," says Daphne Atkinson, a consultant on business schools and management education. "But they don't have to take a judgmental position; they can take a more pragmatic approach. Parents are trusted advisers of their children, so companies need to work productively with them, while taking into account that certain employee information is confidential."