Please check out our IndieGoGo project and share it with your friends.  Make a contribution to help us reach our goal, or simply Like the project to follow our updates.  As more people follow us, we are more likely to be featured by IndieGoGo or obtain other media coverage to expand our work:

Bring Babies to Work Project on IndieGoGo

More than 150 companies have discovered that enforced separation of parents from their newborns when they return to work is no longer necessary.  These organizations have hosted an astonishing 1,800 babies over the years and have seen consistent benefits from allowing babies at work, including skyrocketing morale, increased teamwork, higher retention rates, and extremely loyal employees and clients.

Sharlon and Skyler at Schools Financial Credit Union (photo by Kent Lacin)

PIWI has been locating and researching baby-inclusive organizations for the past five years. We have assisted more than 20 organizations to start successful babies-at-work programs, including Hot Studio, an experience design company; HometownQuotes, which provides insurance quotes, and W.S. Badger Company, a manufacturer of organic body care products.

Babies love the social environment of the workplace and love having their parent nearby to quickly meet their needs, resulting in very happy and quiet babies.  Coworkers in baby-inclusive companies find that being around babies at work lowers their own stress levels, and they frequently bond with the babies and use their own break time to play with, talk to, or hold the babies.  This creates a community of support for parents and babies.  Parents are extremely grateful for the opportunity to keep their babies with them, and they work hard to ensure that they get their work done effectively and keep their babies happy at the same time.  The formal structure of these programs anticipates and prevents potential complications.  Many people in baby-inclusive organizations are often highly skeptical before the programs are implemented, but once they see how well formal programs work in practice, they generally become enthusiastic supporters.

The integration of career and family isn’t in the distant future.  It’s already here, in cubicles, offices, and retail spaces; in tiny companies and organizations with 3,000 employees; and in more than 30 different industries.  Structured babies-at-work programs have proven themselves in numerous organizations, including law firms, credit unions, public relations firms, software companies, consulting firms, stores, government agencies, and schools.  Even manufacturing companies have implemented successful programs by temporarily moving new parents from factory jobs to an office setting so that they can bring their babies to work.

Please help us to create a world in which no more parents must choose between raising their children and supporting them:

Bring Babies to Work Project on IndieGoGo

PIWI has already helped nearly 25 organizations to set up successful and sustainable babies-at-work programs.  We have documented successful baby-inclusive programs in law firms, consulting firms, retail stores, credit unions, government agencies, schools, and even in the offices of manufacturing companies, as well as many other kinds of organizations.  We know that well-structured baby programs work in companies as small as three employees and as large as three thousand.

We are prepared to enable a dramatic expansion of this world in which babies come to work every day with their mothers or fathers and in which parents can lovingly care for their children while also getting their jobs done:

• A world in which bank tellers and grocery store employees cuddle their babies while helping clients, and customers come to the businesses more often specifically to visit the babies
• A world in which coworkers and managers start out skeptical about starting a babies-at-work program, but then find themselves bonding with the babies and wanting them to continue coming to work
• A world in which parents can stay with their babies and work to support their families at the same time
• A world in which both men and women in the workplace provide a social network for these new families and volunteer to help care for the babies
• A world in which the business benefits of these programs are so significant that executives rave about how integral a baby program has been in the success of their business

We are building a team to ensure that we can provide the best possible resources and assistance to expand babies-at-work programs (and, eventually, sustainable parenting-at-work programs for children of all ages).  We are working with high-quality child development researchers and advocates to provide resources and information to parents about how to keep babies happy and healthy, and we will be providing comprehensive lactation support for mothers who want to nurse.  We are going to start gathering survey information in baby-inclusive companies so that we have reliable data to combine with the tremendous anecdotal evidence of the benefits of babies-at-work programs for businesses and families.  Every day, we will be updating our tally of baby-inclusive companies and babies hosted in the workplace.

But we need your help.  Here’s how you can get involved–we cannot do this without you:

1.   Join the PIWI Member Network. Become part of the only parenting-at-work network in the world.  Be eligible to apply to become a Certified PIWI Consultant and earn money by bringing babies-at-work programs to more organizations.

2.   Tell Companies About Our Bridge Project.  Spread the word to current baby-inclusive companies that might be interested in joining the Bridge Project—the first wave of our plans to celebrate and expand babies in the workplace.  Companies who join the Bridge Between Career and Family will have their baby program permanently featured on our website and will receive free initial baby-inclusive certification services and a discount on services to enhance the effectiveness of their baby program, outreach avenues for sharing their products and services with Institute supporters, an outlet for finding skilled employees among PIWI supporters, and priority for being included in future media pieces.

3.   Follow PIWI on Facebook and Twitter. Join our Facebook community and Twitter page; we will be communicating frequently in the upcoming days with our supporters there as well as on PIWI Place, our private community for PIWI Supporters.

4.   Grow Our Baby-Inclusive Database.  Tell us if you know of companies anywhere in the world that have allowed an employee to bring a baby to work (even informally) so that we can contact them and add them to our list.  Share with us your suggestions of companies that might be willing to work with us to set up a formal babies-at-work pilot program (at no charge for the Institute’s services).

5.   Expand Our Outreach.  Write and talk about parenting in the workplace–show the world that this is being done successfully in many different environments.  Send us your pictures and videos of bringing your babies to work.  Spread the word about our effort to bring parenting at work to the mainstream, and share your own experiences and thoughts about this concept.  Let us know when you post your work and we’ll do our best to share your thoughts with other supporters of parenting in the workplace.

Babies-at-work programs and PIWI have been discussed in dozens of major media pieces in recent years, including the New York Times, National Public Radio’s Morning Edition, Time Magazine, People Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, NBC Nightly News, the Today Show, the Boston Globe, USA Today, Workforce Management, Redbook, and Inc. Magazine, among many others.  As we show that we can successfully implement babies-at-work programs in large and small organizations of nearly every type, we expect that the publicity (and public awareness of the viability and benefits of babies at work) will expand dramatically.

We welcome your ideas on how we can more effectively expand our efforts, and we look forward to sharing this journey with you.

Carla Moquin
Founder and President
Parenting in the Workplace Institute