VOICES
Margot Franssen
When women and men must
choose between being a good
parent and being a good employee, it sucks the passion right out
of them. It’s demeaning and
belittling and encourages secondrate work and remorse-filled
parenting. But it doesn’t have to
be that way, and we proved it.
We held the national rights
to a retail company and became
wildly successful selling things
no one really needed. We weren’t
brought up to take that lightly.
Our employees and staff were 95
percent female. They made sure
we flourished financially so we
made sure they had guilt-free
lives that were as seamless
as possible.
Imagine a company that
believed you should practice the
same values from 9 a.m. to 5
p.m. as you do from 5 p.m. to 9
a.m. Imagine a company that had
a daycare center called “The Department of the Future” right in
the middle of the building. Sick
rooms for children who were too
sick to go to school, but not so
sick they needed to stay home.
Breastfeeding rooms, cutting
gardens, vegetable patches and
a cafeteria given over to a mentally-challenged youth group so
THE THIRD METRIC
HUFFINGTON 06.02.13
If you lie to me and tell
me you’re sick and can’t
come to work when it’s really your
child that is sick, I will fire you.”
they could operate a business
selling 125 employees breakfast
and lunches. Imagine being paid
to work in the community during your regular working hours at
safe houses for women who were
escaping violence so you really
understood the issues, being encouraged to take courses paid for
by the company that would fuel
your imagination like cooking,
gardening, flower arranging (all
activities that help a marketing
mind) and getting six months’
paid sabbatical after 10 years of
employment so that you could
become reenergized.
Far from being “extras,” these
simple practices nurtured fearless originality. We didn’t do this
to be generous. We were parents
ourselves and recognized the issues of home and heart not only
affected our employee’s lives, but
had a tremendous impact on our
corporate pride and our bottom