Bring in your parents to work day? Go on… you will be humbled!

Whist many parents are proud of their children no matter what they do, they would be even prouder if they better understood our careers.

By Cummins Mellor Recruitment.

The world of work is changing rapidly and many jobs of today didn’t exist even 10 years ago.

Today is “Bring Your Parents to Work Day”, an initiative instigated by LinkedIn, designed to help bridge the gap between parents and their professional children.

We decided to embrace it by inviting the parents of our employees to our offices to learn about what their children do each day.

Home baked cakes and refreshments were available and parents came from across the county to gain an insight into their loved ones workplace and job role. We even had a parent from Zimbabwe who really enjoyed meeting the colleagues his daughter spends her working week with and being able to now picture her at work is a great memory for him to take back home.

Parents practiced their Twitter skills, donned headsets and answered the phone, took a tour around the offices and gained a real insight into their children’s working week and the company they work for.

The results of the day were overwhelmingly positive, the wonderful reactions from parents remarking that they had no idea how valued their son or daughter was at work and how proud they were of them to know what a huge contribution they make and part they play in the company.

It was super meeting our employee’s parents and for them meeting each other. Not only are we helping expand personal bonds, but we’re also expanding the network of parents that will have an enhanced relationship with our company. I would recommend any organisation to take part, I am sure as social media builds, this will hopefully be a great initiative which will build into a national day seeing more and more employers taking part benefiting them, their employees and their families and therefore wider community.

As I write, I have just received this email which was sent from our employee Jodie, her Mum wrote: “I loved it today, if I could drive, I would be the tea lady, ha! What a fab firm you work for and thank you for sharing your workplace.” LinkedIn’s research revealed some interesting insight: 35% of parents we surveyed confessed that they are not completely familiar with what their child does for a living 59% of parents want to know more about what their child does for work 50% of parents say they could be of benefit to their offspring by having a better understanding of their career