‘That’s just how we work’: How UKG has supported working parents during COVID

For working parents, the pandemic has felt like one very, very long marathon.

David Almeda knows this to be true. As the father of two children and the chief people officer at UKG, a HR technology company with 13,500 employees stretched around the globe, he’s had a front-row seat to the stress placed on families since the COVID-19 crisis began. And nearly two years in, Almeda knows there’s still more support to give.

“For working parents, every factor created by COVID led to additional pressure,” he says. “We’ve really tried to ramp up the programs that we offer to all our employees, parents and non-parents alike — but certainly for parents.”

Before the pandemic, UKG already offered a robust suite of benefits and perks for parent employees, including family-planning support, paid leave for biological and adoptive parents, breastmilk shipping and company-paid healthcare premiums. The people team has continuously searched for new ways to provide additional offerings, soliciting and responding to staff feedback as the pandemic wore on.

Read more: It's not just about family leave: Bridging the gap between managers and working parents

Almeda recently spoke to EBN about how UKG aims to create a supportive environment for its staff, how it has worked overtime to support parents through the pandemic, and where he sees additional opportunities to expand those efforts in 2022.

How did UKG expand the kind of support they gave to parents throughout the pandemic?
We heard a lot from parents who, with kids at home, were now relearning trigonometry and teaching it to their kids while trying to do their day jobs. So we started providing free tutoring, wherever we could, around the world. And then we partnered with a third-party to run virtual summer camps for our employees’ kids — they got sent packages with camp shirts, they were assigned “cabins,” there were activities and skills classes for various age groups.

Was it challenging to create those programs for a workforce stretched across the globe?
Often we do have to segment our approach based on laws or conditions or circumstances of a specific country or region, but in this case, what everyone was experiencing was more similar than different. Everyone, especially parents, was under so much pressure and looking for new forms of support, from mental health to financial. We actually set up a giving foundation that provided direct financial relief to employees in need, whether a spouse lost their job or something else catastrophic happened to a family.

Read more: Think flex work is the key to success? Working parents feel otherwise

Regarding mental health, it’s been reassuring to see some of the stigma around seeking support melt away during the pandemic, especially for women and parents. Do you think that will continue once this is behind us?
We’re working on an accelerator lab to ramp up our abilities there, to work individual groups within the organization that may be dealing with something. And as part of that we’re reaching out to other organizations too, and we are seeing that they’re making decisions to back off a bit [from providing mental health support], and assuming this [stress] is related to the peak of COVID. But I don’t feel that our folks are through this challenge. Our mental health EAP, I recently learned, is utilized at three times the rate that our provider normally sees, so we’re seeing our employees leverage the service. But it’s up to leaders within the company to eliminate that stigma.

To that point, what role do leaders play in creating an environment that truly supports parents?
Permission is the keyword. People have the permission — and the support — to live their lives and deal with personal and family issues as a priority. That’s the message from managers. And that’s the ideology and philosophy that we teach managers.

As a parent, how has that shaped your own experience with the company?
I’ve worked at UKG for more than a decade. My oldest daughter is 23 now, but back when she was 13, she was diagnosed with a chronic disease. And the CEO would still call me two or three times a day — not to check on what the heck I was doing, but just to make sure that I was okay and that my daughter was okay. It was very, “Look, we’ve got this, don’t worry, don’t check your email.” I actually get emotional thinking back to it and talking about it. Because what else is more important than your family?

Read more: Early mornings, late nights: How this working mom juggles business and parenthood

How do you teach someone to manage that way?
We’re very focused on making sure our managers are armed with the right skills to have the right conversations, which can inform how the entire organization responds to something. Especially recently, managers are doing their job in the middle of a pandemic, right? There’s no playbook for that. So we did a people leadership education series that touched on this topic and many others to help our managers get educated on how to deal with some of this stuff over a long period of time. We’re giving them the tools to communicate with their team, and then we can hear from our managers to understand what’s going on with all of our folks.

Now that you’re in a leadership position yourself, how do you send signals to the staff that it’s ok to put family first?
My youngest daughter goes to school in Savannah, Georgia, which is a 24-hour drive. And I know that because I’ve driven it in a U-Haul. Once, I had to go down there on the day of an executive committee meeting, and we had a super important topic on the agenda — so I called in from the front seat of the U-Haul. And I may never live that down, but it wasn’t an issue. There’s a level of trust here that you’ll get your work done, and that’s just how we work.