Robert Half research finds working moms value flexibility, work-life balance and time off
As all eyes turn to working mothers ahead of Mother’s Day, workplace experts and organizations are weighing in on how employers can best support working moms.
New research from talent solutions firm Robert Half recently explored the factors impacting working mothers the most this year and how their priorities have evolved over the last 5 years.
Flexibility remains the buzzword for many. According to the data, 66 per cent of working moms now say they’ll only consider jobs that offer flexible work options, a significant jump from pre-pandemic attitudes. And 75 per cent are more satisfied in their career because they now have the flexibility they want.
But Tara Parry is quick to stress that the term "flexibility" is deeply personal and varies widely. For her, it means having autonomy over her time even when she’s in the office five days a week. For others, it may mean remote work, reduced hours, or different scheduling entirely.
“As a working mom myself, where I get a lot of flexibility is when I’m in the office, when I come and go, and how I come and go and whether I need to take a kid to the dentist or it’s a professional day so I’ll work from home that day,” explained Parry, director of permanent placement services and workplace expert at Robert Half. “But we do have to caveat that flexibility means different things to different people,” she said.
Other findings found that while 51 per cent of working parents report feeling burned out, more than 7 in 10 working moms are confident they’d be supported by their manager if they approached them with workload concerns.
“It’s good to see that working mothers feel like they’re being given the flexibility that they need to meet their needs at both work and at home,” Parry said. “A big highlight is not only do moms feel supported with flexibility, but they feel like they're being heard and that they can talk to somebody if that balance gets out of whack.”
Still, addressing burnout goes beyond conversations. Parry highlighted the need for structural fixes like increased headcount to better distribute workloads, and encouragement to take time off that’s restorative. And what many employees want, Beth Wanner highlighted, isn’t special treatment, just simply acknowledgement of a busy life. Whether that’s accommodating daycare schedules, allowing for pumping breaks, or easing back into work after a leave, the key is having an open dialogue. These conversations, while personal, are often welcomed.
As for Parry, she argues employers should give women the space to do their jobs effectively, without micromanagement or excessive meetings.
“Working moms are like beasts. They can accomplish so much in such a short period of time when you get rid of a lot of the noise around them,” she said.
Wanner underscored the core of the issue is the fact that the modern workplace still operates in structures that weren’t designed for the current workforce. With over 80 per cent of mothers now working, up from just 40 per cent a generation ago, she believes companies need to rethink those structures. Not necessarily rebuild them from scratch but redesign them with today’s realities in mind.
For Wanner, the solution lies in coverage that feels like support rather than a threat, stressing that when companies invest in structured, respectful leave coverage, the benefits go beyond operational continuity.
That’s where she comes in as CEO and founder of Mother Cover, a fractional and interim agency that specializes in providing coverage for temporary leaves from work, particularly for working women in senior roles. She believes that while Canada has made important strides in providing protected and paid leave for new parents, the real challenge lies in what comes after and how workplaces address the subtler, more systemic barriers that working mothers face.
One of the most persistent issues, she said, is the fear that taking leave could damage a woman’s career.
“A lot of the gaps exist in potentially some of the fear and unconscious bias that happens as people are family planning, particularly once you're in leadership positions,” Wanner said, emphasizing that while the legal and financial frameworks may be in place, they don’t necessarily guard against assumptions that a woman’s ambition has diminished or that her role should be deprioritized after she returns from leave.
This fear, she explained, is often internalized by employees, but also quietly reinforced by organizational cultures that haven’t evolved to fully support career continuity for parents.
“Even if you can take 12 to 18 months of leave, most fear what that means for their career and what those unconscious biases mean in terms of assuming where your ambition is at if parents are going to come back after leave.” she said.
She underscored the need to shift that narrative, both for the benefit of the employee and the business.
One way to do that, she argued, is to stop treating parental leave as a disruption and instead approach it as a predictable, manageable part of business continuity. Building formal, proactive strategies to support all types of life transitions - not just parental leave, but also caregiver responsibilities, mental health breaks, and medical leave.
“We need to think about structured leave as business continuity and a structure instead of a disruption, just how we would plan for succession planning redundancies in our companies,” she said. “Being able to plan around all types of life transitions proactively is shaping where cultures are going, but it's also just a smart business strategy as well.”
Wanner sees a significant opportunity for companies to do better when it comes to how they manage parental leave. Not just for the employee taking leave, but across the entire organization. She argues that too much focus is placed on the person stepping away, and not enough on equipping managers with the tools and training to support that transition effectively. Even simply asking employees what support they need can make a meaningful difference, she said.
