From the well-meaning but hapless skateboarding foster dad depicted by British retailer John Lewis in its 2022 Christmas ad to the unconventional moms spotlighted in Johnson’s “The Other Mothers” spot, advertising has come a long way in representing the personal issues of modern families.
For the people making those ads, it’s a different picture behind the scenes though. Many marketers feel employers discriminate against them based on family status.
We’re not just talking about moms and dads either. This affects people caring for varying kinds of dependents, whether that’s a preschooler or an elderly parent or a sick sibling. These caregivers say they are being let down by the brands and ad agencies they work for.
In 2021, 27% of marketing employees said their business didn’t treat everyone equally regardless of family status, according to the World Federation of Advertisers’ (WFA) 2021 Diversity Census. And it’s worse for women. Of the 10,000 marketers studied, 40% felt their family status had “hindered their career.”
Following the peak of Covid-19, talent has been leaving the workforce in droves, and the so-called Great Resignation has been largely fueled by tensions between career ambition and home living.
With 1 in 7 respondents admitting they would leave a business that was lacking on policies to drive diversity and inclusion, the sector is risking a brain drain simply because it cannot accommodate family life. The solution lies not only in better people policies but also in flexible working conditions and tough, honest conversations.
Applying a marketing mindset to people policies
According to an October 2022 report in The Guardian, the number of people who aren’t working in the U.K. because of caring responsibilities has reached its highest peak since 2020. Last year also marked an increase in stay-at-home parents and carers after three decades of decline. There was a gender divide, too, with working women comprising a huge 84% of the 1.75 million people who had given up work to look after their families.
In the U.S., Oregon State University associate professor Kelly Chandler has described the competing demands of work and family roles as “a public health issue that deserves immediate attention.”
Some companies in the marketing space are already putting their best foot forward to work alongside, instead of against, caregivers. Among them is Kraft Heinz, which has an array of progressive HR policies in place that go above and beyond minimum government requirements in its U.K. and Nordic markets.
