Sarah Brock, the CEO of Sarah Bee Talent, joins Peter McGraw to examine how “family-friendly” workplaces often overlook solo employees. Building on Peter’s recent article in The Conversation, they discuss scheduling, workplace culture, benefits, amatonormativity, and practical ways companies can better support Solos in an era when unmarried adults are reshaping the workforce.
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Listen to Episode #266 here
Singles in the Workplace: How Companies Can Better Support Solo Employees
I’ve been examining and writing about what I call the Solo Economy. A structural rise of singles and how institutions from religious organizations to healthcare systems to the workplace haven’t caught up. Nearly 50% of US adults are unmarried, half of those aren’t even interested in dating, a quarter of Millennials and a third of Gen Z are projected to never marry. Twenty-nine percent of adults live alone. That’s the most common type of household in the United States.
This isn’t a blip. It’s a demographic transformation. I’m curious how are these institutions, government, healthcare, religion, media which are around the assumption, that 1960s assumption, that everyone is going to pair up. How are they going to change? The workplace is huge. One of the biggest. This word for this assumption, I always mess it up. A motto normativity or made of normativity is the idea that a romantic partnership is the default, the ideal, the expected path, or ride the relationship escalator. It’s baked into over 1,000, legal benefits for married people from tax breaks to Social Security. It shows up in the office.
My guest appears in an essay I published in the conversation. Her story and insights helped shape that essay. She’s here to talk about the ways workplaces unconsciously disadvantage unmarried employees, maybe even consciously and what companies can do about it. She’s the Founder of Sarah Bee Talent. Welcome, Sarah Brock.
I’m glad to be here.
It’s so nice to talk to you. We’ve emailed back and forth for a long time now.
A couple of years.
It’s taking a while for me to get this essay published in part I think because of the resistance to making this change.
I agree. It’s not a topic people want to talk about or think of as a problem.
That’s right. Unless you’re on the other end of it and you were. I can’t even remember how I found you. Maybe I was just googling.
I think it’s LinkedIn. It was a viral LinkedIn post that showed up in a lot of places and resonated with a lot of people.
Challenges Of Being Single In The Workplace
What is your story? You stumbled into this topic.
I was sharing a story on LinkedIn. I worked in HR. I share a lot of different content around HR and management on LinkedIn. I had written a very personal story one day. It was early in my career. I started my career as a middle school teacher. Shout out to all the teachers out there. It’s the hardest job. Very hard work. I’ll never forget, teachers do so much more than just the classroom. They’re nurses and counselors. They’re whatever is needed for our students. Most teachers are also doing extra duties like additional classes, clubs, or coaching after school.
That’s how the school economy runs basically. It’s extra work for teachers. I’ll never forget I was in my first or second year of teaching. The principal came to me and asked if I would be the yearbook supervisor that year. Again, these are middle school students, so there’s some independent work. This is basically designing the yearbook and editing because the teacher who had historically done it. She said, “I can’t ask her because she has four boys at home and a husband.” I remember thinking, “I’m being asked not because I might be the best person for it. Not because of any of my teaching abilities necessarily. I’m being asked because I’m single and I allegedly don’t have additional responsibilities at home.”
That hit me. When I posted this story, I said this and I was about 23. I realized being single in the workplace would be a problem and that resonated with a lot of people who shared similar stories of how they were asked to do additional work or how they were treated differently because of their status as being unmarried or not partnered.
Would you recall some of those stories?
It’s a lot of the same stuff such as being asked to stay late or they need to have an “excuse” to leave early. Being asked to be the one to travel or if it’s a global company, being the one asked to take those calls from Asia because of the time difference. A lot of just, “This isn’t fair. I’m taking on more work or I’m being seen as somebody who doesn’t have a life outside of work.”
Of course, I’ll be the one to work late or cover the holidays or to stay late on Halloween. No one’s going to care if I’m still here on Valentine’s Day. Those are the kinds of stories that started popping up by the thousands. It took off and it resonated with so many people. It was evident that it is pretty widespread that folks are experiencing this.
Were there any negative comments or some pushback, like, “Why are you complaining about this, Sarah?”
Of course, it’s social media. There’s always going to be some people. In society, there’s a lot of what-isms, but what about X, Y, and Z? People want to talk about their own personal situation. Folks said, “Try it with kids.” There’s a lot of single moms out there. That’s harder than just being a single person. I don’t know that being partnered is necessarily harder or easier the being single. There’s advantages and disadvantages to both.
I think it’s very difficult for folks in one category to always be able to relate to the other. There’s definitely a lot of folks that were like, “You have no idea the workload I have at home because I have a partner.” I’m thinking, “You have no idea what I have at home because I don’t have a partner.” There was some pushback for sure anytime you’re on social media.
Why Singles Are Always Willing To Help
What I want to do is talk about three areas this shows up in and highlight the problems and we’ll discuss the solution scheduling, culture, and benefits in that order. Before I do that, first of all, I understand the roots of all of this. In 1960, 90% of people would go on to get married and they did so young. The average age of first marriage was like 21. The idea of asking singles to pick up the slack wasn’t that unreasonable. It was like, you helped now, you get the benefit later. It all evens out in that sense.
With this shift and with these numbers, you have people who are not only spending more of their life single, but some of them are remaining single for their entire life. That’s me. That’s many of the readers to this. I think that most singles are happy to help. They have internalized this so much that they feel an obligation. It’s the way things are.
Some of them are happy to help and some of them are resigned to help. It’s like, “This is the way it is.”However, nevertheless, one of the foundational elements of feminism was equal pay for equal work. One of the famous findings in the literature is that men, if they get married or they have kids, they get more raises. I can’t remember. Either of the two.
They have a family to care for. They need the money.
There is no commensurate improvement in their performance. However, it’s not like they work harder because they have kids. First of all, it’s unfair to women who have children but it’s also just unfair to anyone. There’s these two things that are happening at the same time. People want to agree that if two people do the same quality and quantity of work, they should be compensated the same. At the same time, they see the world of greater need for people. Especially with spouses and with children.
One of the places that shows up, it’s like baked into the rules, is the military. If you have a spouse in the military, you get noticeably better benefits. You get to live off base, for example. You get better housing. You get supplemental income. It’s so good that people in the military will fake marriages as an economic arrangement to improve their compensation.
I gave a talk once. A retired Navy pilot came up to me afterwards. He is now married but he was single at the time. He said, “During a desert storm in the Iraq war or whatever. One of those Middle East Wars. His squadron commander had a meeting of all the pilots. On the whiteboard or on the chart or whatever, there was a list of names. He said, ‘I’m looking for volunteers to go fly in the Middle East for this war. If I don’t get any volunteers, here’s who’s going.’” The four pilots at the top of the list, guess what they all have in common.
They were probably single.
They were all single. In some cases, this is a matter of life and death. Their lives mattered less to the squadron commander.
It’s because there was nobody at home.
That’s right.
The perception was nobody at home but there were parents, siblings, and friends. There were people back home but that was the perception.
Singles care for elderly parents at a higher rate than married siblings do, for example.
Yes.
I’ll let you comment on that and then we’ll head into our three levels.
It’s interesting you started that story talking, a bit about how a lot of singles are willing to help. Maybe some are less willing, but they do it anyway. I think about how we always hear, it takes a village to raise a kid. I heard from so many of my friends with children and friends who are partnered about how much work it takes. It feels like we are asking the single folks to be the village. Not the broader society and not everyone else. It’s, “Can you step in and be the village?”
I think almost everyone is going to be someone’s village at some point. It’s just that we want the village to then step in for us when we don’t have that. That’s something that struck me as you were talking about. It’s not that singles are not willing to step in and do coverage. I would hope that in any workplace, if somebody is going through something, regardless of their status. Other folks will step up. The issue is when it’s always the person who is single. It’s always the child-free person. That’s when we start running into problems.
You mentioned travel. Being asked to travel, for example. One of the wonderful things about being single is that you often have autonomy and flexibility. You may be very happy to be the one traveling but it shouldn’t be assumed that that is indeed the case. Even required because that’s the reason for it.
There’s a couple consequences to that as well. Sometimes, those travel assignments are better assignments, which could be an advantage for single folks over folks who are not. There needs to be some criteria for selecting who’s getting what assignment. On the flip side, there’s also nobody back at home to take care of things when you are unpartnered. I have a dog. I love her to death.
When I travel, it’s a big chore. I have to figure out the pet care, where she’s going to go and who’s going to take care of her. It’s an extra expense. It’s built in if you have a partner. That they’ll take care of the house and the dog while you’re traveling. It can hinder as well. It can be an additional burden for singles in a way that it’s not necessarily aborted for partner people.
Scheduling Problems And How To Solve Them
Well said. Let’s talk about scheduling and this is highly related. There’s been some research on this stuff. I cited in the essay. Single employees are more often expected to travel, work longer hours and take less desirable vacation time. Crystal Wilkinson at Manchester Metropolitan University found that child care is seen as a legitimate reason to set boundaries at work, but hobbies, fitness, dating, even dogs, might not be. Not so much. Do you see this playing out in your world?
You just named dating as one of the not “valid excuses.”
You want to get off work to get on a date?
I’m just trying to get the benefits. I’m getting into the partner space so I can enjoy all these benefits. The story I told at the beginning, I remember thinking after I was asked to be the yearbook chair. Which mind you, I was in my first or second year of teaching. I was working so much and I was so terrible at my job that I did not have the capacity to take on extra work. I also remember thinking, “I’ll never have a husband and four boys to go home to if I don’t have a chance to go out in the evenings to meet people too.” It’s never going to happen for me if I don’t get out of here.
It’s a funny dichotomy, I guess. Your question was around whether or not I see some of this out in the wild and for sure. The schedule is just talking to some friends, some single girlfriends. One was talking about how she feels like she has to find an excuse in order to leave work early. To your point, in order to set that boundary. Kids are seen as an excuse but, “I want to get the hell out of here,” is not. It’s tough. Again, when we think about the workload that singles have, I’m the only person who can let the plumber in.
I’m the only person who could be there for pest control. I’m the only person who could be there to care for the dog if she’s sick. It is a weird spot to be in where everyone else is allowed, whether consciously or unconsciously to leave. No one’s going to question it. A lot of single folks either are not or they feel like they’re not. There’s a place there where singles can push back and set boundaries. We’ve internalized that at times in a way that maybe isn’t even reality in our workplaces.
It’s hard to say. How much of this is an irrational choice? How much of it is a rational choice? There’s been this rise of unlimited PTO, which I didn’t know until I started to read about it and think about it. You go, “What a scam.”
You end up taking less.
People end up taking less time than if they have 2 weeks or 4 weeks of vacation because of these unstated expectations. There’s a chart on the wall. “Sarah took 27 days of PTO. Peter took only 14. Who’s a more valuable employee, for example?” Singles might be less likely to use it because they’re worried about being judged for their reasons.
One of the things that is very clear as you move up the ranks, the managerial ranks of an organization, is that people are more likely to be married and have kids. They’re more likely to be traditional minded folks there. There’s some evidence that the space managers don’t value your dog as much as a spouse. Sometimes, there’s even built-in things like what doesn’t count as vacation is like having a wedding. You don’t have to take vacation days at a lot of places because of a wedding. I’ve even had people say, “I’m attending a wedding,” as a way to take extra time. That’s okay because of this notion of the value of the relationship.
I heard of places that give honeymoon time off, which is wild. It’s like an extra week for your honeymoon when you get married.
It sounds like a case for a little self-marriage. Imagine you marry yourself and you want to take a honeymoon afterwards. What if that does not get approved? Are we going to the Supreme Court, Sarah?
I don’t know. I don’t know if I have the bandwidth to do it.
The very simple thing that happens is. For a lot of workplaces, someone has to work on Valentine’s Day. Someone has to work on July 4th, on Christmas, or on New Year’s. For a lot of places, they don’t shut down. The way it tends to work is when a manager makes a decision. People put in their requests and they make a decision. We know which way the decision breaks. How do we fix scheduling? Is there a fair way to fix scheduling?
There’s a few ways. Number one, having clear criteria on how you’re going to schedule whether it’s vacation or shifts. Make sure everyone’s clear on that. That policy needs to be equitable. Some places will do a lottery to start off and whoever drew number one, gets to pick first. Next year, they’re the last choice on the vacation. That’s one way to do it. There’s other ways where everyone is expected. My sister works in healthcare. Everyone’s expected to work either Thanksgiving or Christmas. You put it in and if you don’t get your first choice this year, you’ll get your first-choice next year. Everyone is expected to work one of those two.
In thinking about it, it’s thinking about take-out individual’s personal situations. The criteria need to be based on what is most fair. We see this even outside of singles. When you talk about coverage at Christmas, it falls to non-Christians. That’s the next expectation. Even though folks who have children have their kids home for two weeks, regardless of their religion. It’s not always neat and clean around who gets to celebrate that holiday or who gets to take that time off. There needs to be a fair equitable policy. It needs to be applied fairly across the organization.
That’s well said. You want to remove human decision-making because human decision-making has a bias. Which we talked about from the outset. If you can even create a fair process that allows the singles to ask for what they want, which is that they might want to be off during a high demand time. Part of the problem is it’s very difficult to change these policies in part because if you’re starting a business, HR is not top of your list of problems to solve.
People bring us in too late. You wait till you have a problem, which is, by the way, not the way to do it. Bring us in and we’ll prevent the problem but you’re right.
You hire someone who’s been doing this work or you hire software, service, or some solution to bring in and to be HR. What’s baked into all those processes and people is the 1960s style thinking. There’s not as much innovation happening as there could be if you sat down from a first principles standpoint and said, “How should our HR work?”
It’s just legacy type thinking. For the people who do, I’m curious about how they work in practice. Theoretically, they make a lot of sense. It’s like a market-based system. The two of us work at the same workplace. We get the same amount of vacation time. We get a certain number of points. We bid on our preferred days. We can bid greater or lesser amounts of points. If New Year’s matters, I can bid on a ton of points and be certain I get it.
If it doesn’t matter for me, I can skip it and I’m going to work, then I can take off. I like to zig when everyone else zags. I like to work on the holidays and then take off the week after. That’s me. That’s one of the great benefits of being single and childless. Have you seen these market-based processes work? I love the idea in theory because it solves the problem at least.
It works in places where you do have to be open. It’s the same idea as any other policy with criteria or a draft of sorts. They’re all the same in the sense that you get to put in for the time off and we even it out. We equal it out. To your point, if it’s a marketplace points-based system and maybe we even get to save your points every year to bank it in on something event that you want to attend. I think that they can work, where I push employers.
I work in the nonprofit and education space. We don’t see a lot of issues around time off for holidays because everybody’s off two weeks around Christmas and a week for Thanksgiving. That’s oftentimes less of the issue in that particular space compared to some others. Where I would like to push some players is, if you’re not a retail base, a restaurant, or a hotel hospitality, there’s a lot of places that decide to stay open when quite frankly they don’t need to. How can you also look at your overall time off and say, “Do we need everybody here?” What’s the minimum viable staffing? That’s what it’s going to be. We oftentimes lean too much into this culture that we have in America of work, work, and work.
These other corporate offices that are vendors, are on and nothing’s happening. I’ve had people who work in these spaces who love working the week after Christmas, because they say they do nothing for a whole week because none of the clients are around. None of the other vendors are around. There’s a question there for employers. Not even related to single or partnered. It’s, do you need to be open? Could everybody have off on this day? Whatever this day is.
That’s wise. I agree with you. It makes perfect sense. Part of the reason I like working on holidays is the emails go out and they don’t come back.
It’s easier.
Revamping The Workplace Culture
That’s funny. The next bucket is culture. I want to share my intuition. This is probably where there’s been the most progress but it goes something like this. First of all, we should celebrate the companies who are embracing a family-friendly culture. They’re providing support. I had a single mom and it’s hard. It’s especially hard as you mentioned, but it can unintentionally mean not single friendly as a result. Company picnics, extended invitations to families, for example. There’s stories that everybody has to chip in. The family of four has to pay $20 and a single person is asked to pay $20.
It’s only $20 but it’s the principle of it and how it feels. It’s not okay for me to bring three friends to the company picnic. People would look at that weird. I had an episode of this notion of what’s called exhausted gift givers. Again, wedding showers or baby showers, where if you never get married, you never have a baby. You’re going to all these things. You’re giving the gifts. You’re giving the time and there’s never a party for you.
They’ll never see it back.
Outside of the workplace, if I may go on a quick diatribe. It’s become so bonkers in the world with destination weddings and bachelorette parties. Bachelorette parties are especially bad. Bachelor parties are less bad, but they’re still bad. You’re expected to fly to this place. Pick up a hotel and give a gift to the person. Spend money on dinners and do all these things. Again, if you never married, it never evens out. Do you see any of this stuff still? Places have gotten much better about it.
I do. A couple things are happening. There is still a bit of a stigma. To your point around celebration of milestones. A lot of workplaces celebrate milestones at the workplace. There’s a shower for somebody having a baby. There is a celebration for an engagement or a wedding. A lot of employers pride themselves on having a culture where we celebrate our employee’s milestones. We celebrate their life moments and we recognize that.
That can create excellent culture but it can also create this exact feeling that we see outside of work. Which is, when am I going to be celebrated? When do I get the shower for the new puppy? When do I get recognition because I bought a house or have a milestone birthday? What does it look like? I’d encourage employers who have those sorts of celebrations to think through what it could look like to have a broader celebration or a broader milestone that you’re looking at.
Second, the collection. I hate workplace collections, period. Oftentimes, policies that are great for one demographic are great for multiple demographics. This is one of those cultures where folks are having to give gifts for retirement, showers or this employee that’s in crisis. Whatever the case is. If you’re in a workplace where that is the culture and there is pressure to do that. It’s very hard. It’s hard on singles because, to your point, $20 is very different in my budget than $20 for somebody in a dual income household.
Also, I don’t know the financial well-being of the couple whose wife sits next to me in the cubicle. They might be struggling. Asking anybody at work to give money when we don’t know their financial situations is tough. It’s one of those things where I love cultures that the company is going to pay for the gifts. Everyone’s going to show up. We’re going to provide the cake. We’re going to give one big gift for this wedding shower we’re having at work or this baby shower. We’re not expecting employees to give. That’s great for everybody. That’s not just an advantageous for the singles.
I still see the culture. A bit of a tangent. I’m thinking about what you shared about what’s happening outside of the workplace. I celebrated my birthday, which is a big milestone. I asked a group of girlfriends to go with me on a trip. I told them, “I’ve never been married. I’ve not had a bachelorette party. Nobody’s had to fly to my wedding or to my baby shower. You’ll never have to fly to my baby shower. I can assure you of that.” We went to Puerto Rico.
A good chunk of them were single girls. We have the same stage of life. We traveled together frequently, but a couple of them are married with two or three kids. It meant so much. One of them said, “You have flown to see both of my kids after they were born. You’ve been to my wedding. You’ve been there for every piece of that. I’m going to come for four days to celebrate with you when you’ve come to celebrate with me multiple times.”
It was not a question. That meant so much to me. I wish that for everybody. I wish that everyone can find that community where we’re celebrating each other. Even if it’s not a “traditional milestone.” Even if you are in a traditional partnership. I want you to celebrate your single friends when they’ve got a milestone or something to celebrate.
That makes me so happy. What wonderful friends you have, Sarah.
I know. I pick them well.
That’s great. Also, it’s a testament to your generosity with them. That’s fabulous. I think the solutions to this issue around culture, you already mentioned one, which is the business picks up the tab. Small changes in language, you and your loved ones and a plus one rather than a spouse. Again, this is one of those things where it’s not that big a deal. It’s more the canary in the coal mine. It’s more emblematic of a bigger problem. It’s also the easiest of these to solve to make some changes to language or make some minor changes to policy. We’re not dealing with Michael Scott here. These are reasonable people.
Some places are.
Fair. You probably see the whole thing. One of the things that I think is very cool is the emergency of these ERGs. These employee resource groups are built around identity, race, gender, sexual orientation, veterans, working, parents, etc. Do you know what I have not been able to find, Sarah?
A single ERG.
I have not at all. I’ve asked around. I posted on LinkedIn, “Tell me. Do you have one?” I even have a friend who reads this. He’s an ally. He’s married with kids. He worked at a major bank and was like, “There should be one of these and went to a manager or HR and said, ‘There ought to be an ERG for singles. They have unique challenges.’” He was flat out told, “No. Not going to do it.”
It’s an interesting idea. From an HR perspective, it concerns me. It’s a bit like when folks say the singles group at church becomes a meet market. It becomes a place for people to meet. I don’t want to encourage additional romantic relationships at work. I do think there’s unique needs. I do think it’s a unique idea. I don’t know in practice. I would not want to be the HR person to manage the grip and improves it. It does feel like we could run into additional HR issues from it, but you’re right. It’s not a group that sees as having an identity. It’s just not in the same way that parents are or any other identifiers markers that you just named.
I get it. No one cares about the working parents having affairs but they are afraid of the singles.
They should be.
What Compensation Should Solo Employees Get
The ERG has to build around this idea. This is not about romance. I get it. I can see how it would be fraught. Again, all these ERGs already exist. If you’re going to start to need an ERG program, what do you do? You just google one of the groups and you get your list of seven groups and then you just roll it out. A lot of them static quo thinking. I’ve already talked a little bit about the benefits one when I used the military as an example. This is a big one. I like to talk about compensation. Think about it, you do a job. You get compensated typically through salary and benefits.
The typical benefit is married employees get benefits for two and single employees get benefits for one. It’s very simple math. It’s been a matter of what those benefits are. For example, the easiest argument to make is that you’re married and I’m not. We do the same job. I get health insurance for one person. You get health insurance for two people. That’s an additional benefit that I don’t get to experience. Life insurance may be the case, wellness programs, or tuition assistance. You see this stuff happening.
Benefits are such a tricky one. Employers can look at this a couple different ways. There’s the option to give. In most situations, a lot of people, especially even young adults who are probably more likely to be single don’t realize that their employers are likely contributing a significant portion to their benefits premiums. We think healthcare is expensive now. If you had to pay for both portions, it would be way more expensive.
Employers have a couple options. They could look at, I’m going to contribute a flat dollar amount per employee’s healthcare plan, regardless of how many dependents they put on it and regardless of the plan that they chose. That would be an equal amount that does make it very difficult for families to get great insurance coverage because it’s going to be very expensive. Unfortunately, we’re in a country where benefits are tied to employment. Which in an ideal world, they would not be for all sorts of reasons. It is fraught.
Philosophically, I very much think at this point based on where we are with how insurance is done. I’m okay with employers paying percentages. Even though that means that somebody who is covering a spouse and/or for kids is going to end up receiving “more in dollars” than I would. Part of that is my personal belief that we need to make sure kids have healthcare. As a former teacher, I am not ever going to be in favor of a program where we don’t have a way to make it affordable for kids to be covered on healthcare.
That said, the first option will be a totally equal dollar amount. The second option for employers would be a percentage. It’s not the same because someone’s going to be getting significantly more dollars if they’re covering more people. They’re also paying more themselves. The third option is some opt-out. You can do cash in lieu of benefits. They can be a little bit more complicated, depending on your carriers.
Carriers and cells might have policies against this. Essentially, you could give cash for individuals who opt-out of coverage. Number of compliance requirements to stay in compliance with the Affordable Care Act. Again, depending on your carriers and your plans set up, it might not even be an option for some employers. It does also potentially balance the scales a bit on that front because you can put cash in people’s pockets that they opted to not put additional folks or to put themselves on the health insurance plans of the company.
I get it. It’s complicated. It’s way above my pay grade in terms of understanding these things. I do share your feelings about you don’t want to create a situation where someone’s worse off. Especially when it comes to something as essential as healthcare in a country where you often have to be working up until age 65 in order to have good “good healthcare.” This goes beyond healthcare.
There’s a whole host of benefits that people get that are there. Some of those are tied to us having a spouse or a spouse and children that’s there. Again, equal pay for equal work or equal compensation for equal work. I’m curious about these lifestyle spending accounts. I’m an egghead. I’m an academic. I get to talk about theory and these great ideas, but the implementation of them can be difficult. We talked about having a point-based system for scheduling. I can Imagine a points-based system for benefits.
You’re married and I’m not. We both get 100 points then there’s a menu. If you want your spouse to have healthcare, this is a certain number of points. I want my dog to have pet care, so I can put points to that or I want to put points to a gym membership or professional development activities. We each get the same compensation.
You put a lot of it into healthcare or maybe you don’t. Maybe your spouse has a good job and has good healthcare at that job. Maybe you are on your spouse’s healthcare at their job and you don’t have to put any money towards healthcare. You can have a gym membership, too. I’m curious about this. I assume this doesn’t happen very often. If it does, how is it working?
I’ve not seen it as much. Again, in the non-profit and education space, money is tight. I definitely seen places that offer gym memberships. Especially in the nonprofit and education space. One of the benefits is partnerships. I remember when I was teaching. The YMCA gave free memberships to teachers. That was a benefit. There’s things like that in that space. There’s room for employers to grow in this space. It is super complicated when it comes to compliance and non-discrimination in all of these types of plans and programs and making sure that you’re meeting the needs of the employees and following the law.
I do like the idea of, what is it look like to try to even this miss out? What does it mean, if you decline this, maybe you’re eligible for this. There’s some real weird rules around stuff like that. That’s probably why a lot of employers have not touched this because it’s already so complicated. To add additional complication makes it tough. I think easy places, though, when we think about benefits. We talked about PTO. We didn’t talk as much about leave.
Leave is a benefit. It’s one where it’s very easy for employees to adjust this in a way that is not that challenging in a lot of places anymore. I’m in huge support of more family-friendly policies. Parental leave and paid parental leave at employers is huge. Where I would love to see folks push is that there’d be a family leave or a family caregiving leave. A lot of places have parental leave if you have a baby.
They don’t pay, though, if you need twelve weeks off for your own cancer diagnosis or your mother’s diagnosis. What would it look like if you have a paid leave policy? How could you expand that to cover things that are not having a kid, that are not just caring for a dependent but that might be carrying for someone older that might be caring for a roommate or a close friend who has something? These are the types of things that are easy to expand to adjust the language that’s already in the handbook and to make it happen.
Along the same lines are the bereavement policies. We’ve ingrained in society that what’s acceptable is being married. I’m not going to get 3 days off or 5 days off to attend the funeral of a close friend from high school. That’s not in the policy. Pets aren’t in the policy, which is wild. I’ll be devastated. I have to say if that ever happens.
Those are the types of things that if we could expand the language on what counts as family and what counts as a “good” enough reason to take leave. It would again benefit everyone. Not just singles. It would help singles feel more seen and recognized that our communities, our families look different then maybe some of our colleagues but they’re no less important.
Well said. Amen. I totally agree with this. One of my regrets was when I was caregiving my mother from afar. I was in Colorado and she was in New Jersey. It was a very difficult time professionally for me and personally. I never considered even investigating the family leave policy that my employer offers in part because it didn’t seem as appropriate. As if I had had a spouse who was dealing with the same problems.
Some of this is baked into our beliefs and policy. I don’t know what would have happened. Again, I haven’t done the homework if I had said, “I need to take the semester off. I need to move to New Jersey to take care of my mother,” of what is appropriate and what’s not. I get it. I’m so sensitive about this topic. I had a very difficult time publishing this essay. In part, because I kept bumping up against, let’s say, sympathy for people who especially have children.
I had editors pushing back. Not at the conversation. I just want to be clear about that, but at other periodicals that I was pitching. Even in their process that eventually they just said no, like, “We can’t do this.” I can imagine this is very personal. Life is difficult. To have these singles coming along and being like, “What about us?” Being something that can get people upset about. That said, singles have people they care about. They have personal lives that are important, especially to them. Even if the world doesn’t value it quite as much.
I get it. I think parental leave is incredibly important. You have a child that should be supported. If you don’t have a child, what about you? I’m not being terribly eloquent about it, but there’s these two things happening simultaneously and issue a fairness. Equal pay for equal work and a sense of compassion for the difficulties that people experience, especially with young children, newborns and whatnot.
I think the compassion piece is huge because people are very focused on their own personal situations. You gave an example earlier of a startup CEO who doesn’t have HR, policies or whatever. They may not exist. Where I see policies start to change in organizations is when higher ups start to experience whatever personal thing that is now budding up against the policy. Places don’t have parental leave. As soon as somebody who is a high performer or as soon as somebody who’s in the C-suite has a kid, all of a sudden, they have a parental leave policy.
Bereavement didn’t cover somebody caring for an aunt who was very close or for a roommate. All of a sudden, we’ve changed the definition of bereavement at our company. It’s great that those things have changed. What I would want folks to think about is outside of yourself, what are all the things that could be happening to an employee? Let’s get those baked in from the start. Let’s not wait until somebody “important” at the company experiences it.
When we have folks who are running companies or in the C-suite who are in traditional partnerships or who are married or who have children, it’s often hard for them to place themselves in the other bucket to think about, “What must it be like to be 40 and single in the workplace? What must it be like to be child-free and feeling like I have to work late every night because Susan has to go pick up her kids. I allegedly don’t have to go do anything.”
It’s about having more empathy and about trying to expand perspectives. That’s not just between single and married. It’s all sorts of demographics. Think through what are the different life experiences someone is having and how can we accommodate those as an employer. People are going to shift. What’s interesting about the single demographic is, everyone’s in it at some point.
Maybe you get married young so you don’t understand what it’s like to be 30 years old or 40 years old or 50 years old or 60 years old and single. That’s very different from being 25 and single. However, people can become single. We’ve got a large divorce population. We’ve got who are widows. That also matters. It’s one of the largest populations that people are not talking about.
I like your point about the personal side of things. When married people get behind the Solo Movement, I have found they invite me to give a talk or publish an essay or something like that or whatnot. It’s often because they have someone important in their life who’s single. They have a sister or a daughter or a parent who is a solo and sees the world through their eyes.
Benefits Of Egg Freezing
The marriage with the kid crowd tends to congregate. They live in the same place. They go to the same events. I have married friends with children. Almost every one of their friends and their daily interactions are with other married people with children. It’s not the singlehood is evenly distributed geographically and socially. You made a sharp point that I would never have thought about. For example, if I were a CEO. You mentioned egg freezing. That’s rarely covered.
It’s because it’s expensive. That’s one of those benefits that when employers are negotiating their plans, it is a more pricey one. Especially with healthcare where it’s at. I get why it’s one that is not covered. If you want to show your single employees because lots of people who are single, do want to be partnered one day and/or do want to have children. I would love to find a partner. I do not plan on having children.
I have several single girlfriends who would love to have kids one day. They are at this point in their late 30s or early 40s. We all know that we have a biological clock. One of them, her employer covered her egg harvesting and she does have to cover the freezing. They’ve covered the initial harvesting of the eggs, which is incredible.
It gives her options down the road to be able to do this. I do think something like that is a huge benefit. Things like covering stuff like that and IVF doesn’t just benefit single people. There are married folks who struggle with fertility. With that stuff covered, it also supports them. It’s one of those things where oftentimes it might be good or brought on by one specific demographic but has benefits beyond everybody.
Sarah, talking to you has highlighted a lot of things that I hadn’t thought about as an egg head. For example, the regulatory and legal considerations. Also, we have to be clear. You mentioned the non-profits. There is no money. Not every company is NVIDIA just having record profits. These are organizations that deal with profit and loss. Salary and benefits are on one side of the ledger. If you don’t have enough on the other side of the ledger, you’ve got to do unpleasant things like laying people off or closing doors.
Know Your Solo Employees And Listen To Them
It’s not like there’s an unlimited pool of money. That’s where it creates a lot of conflict. The saying in academia, “The fights are so big because the stakes are so small.” In this case, the stakes are really large. When it comes to thinking about an overarching heuristic, one of the things I said in the article is simply this. Would an employee who gets divorced be unfairly impacted by a policy? You’re married. You get Christmas off. You get extra benefits and extra leave or whatever it might be.
When you get divorce, you lose those things even though nothing else about your job has changed.It’s a reasonable standard for someone in HR and management to consider as their formulating or evaluating a policy. Do you have any of these heuristics? Is there a small test or something that you have or use or suggest?
One of the things that I always suggest is to pull your employees. The more data you can gather about what’s going on in their life. Typically, a lot of employee engagement surveys and a lot of, how do you like your benefits? There’s all these surveys. We often ask things like race and gender. More places are asking whether someone’s a parent or not. A lot of folks are asking other questions like, what is the marital status?
Many places already know this from benefits enrollment purposes. Ask your employees, “What do you need at this stage of your life? What would be most helpful? Here’s a list of benefits. Rank them.” When I support organizations with compensation and total rewards redesign, we like to send out a perspective survey. Oftentimes, one of the exercises is asking employees to say, “You have 100 points. Here’s all the different things you could spend it on. How would you spend it?” ASs a way for us to figure out the weighting of that. Maybe student loan repayment is somebody’s number one. Somebody else is number one is going to be retirement because they’re 55 and they’re getting closer.
Go to your employees and ask. Get feedback on your current programs, what’s working, your current policies, your leave, your PTO, and what isn’t working. Build it around that and do that regularly. The demographics of your staff will change over time and where people are in their life stage will change over time. If you want to retain them long term, you’ve got to think about all those different stages that they might move through.
When we talk about singles picking up the slack or taking on more of the work or being in a culture where maybe they feel less valued. It doesn’t matter if you have all of the benefits in the world for partners and for folks with children. They’re never going to see themselves in that stage. They’re going to think, “I will burn out before I ever get to enjoy those.” They’re going to leave you. Think about what all of the different life stages someone might go through. Get that feedback and figure out how you can apply it to your programs and your policies.
How Workplaces Can Catch Up With Solo Needs
That’s outstanding. What underlies this is about half of workers in the United States are single. If you close off to them, you close off 50% of your talent pool. This is just simply a matter of retention of trying to find the best employees out there in the workforce. It sounds like one of the things you’re saying is, one of the best places to start is to figure out how many single employees you have.If you don’t have any, ask why you don’t and what might be coughing you, for example. Two more questions before we close. Are you optimistic that work places are going to catch up to this new demographic reality?
I am. We’ve seen workplaces change every time there’s been a demographic shift. Oftentimes, they’re on the back end of the curve. I think employers that are going to be successful will make these changes sooner rather than later. You quoted all of the research up front and we know how this is shifting and where this is shifting. People are also going to start demanding it. That’s where I would also encourage singles.
You don’t have to sit back and wait for your employer to do all of these things. If you’ve got capital at work, especially if you’re higher up or if you’re more senior or if you’ve been there for a while, talk to your manager or to HR. “Would we ever consider X, Y, and Z?” We talked a lot about scheduling, staffing and travel and all of these things that are expected of singles. There’s a good chunk of that’s on the employer. There’s also a chunk of that that’s on the employee.
If you’ve never set the boundary or if you’ve never said, “I’m leaving because I have a tennis match.” They’re going to keep asking you to stay. You keep saying yes. I love it when singles are able to say, especially if again if you’ve got capital or you’re a manager of a team or you are a higher up. Say those things. Say you’re leaving early for pickleball. Maybe don’t say you’re leaving early for a date, but say you’re leaving early for whatever you think is your “excuse.” Say, I’m leaving early to go watch Cash reality TV.” I don’t care. Say those things.
Amen. I have something that’s even easier. You just say, “I’m leaving.”
You don’t need an excuse.
You don’t need to tell. It’s not their business why you’re going. You don’t have to tell them what you’re going to. I say this to my colleague. There’s a time to accumulate capital and there’s a time to spend it. Be aware of which one you’re doing and why. I do agree with you. This is not all, “Woe is us.” Singles contribute to this because they’re not vociferous enough about it, about the inequalities, and the unfairness that’s there.
That’s great. I agree with your optimism in the following way. We also started talking about the Solo economy and I started to outline the different institutions that are affected by this striking rise of singles. Some of those are fast moving institutions and some of them are slow moving institutions. In the United States, businesses are relatively agile, relative to other types of institutions or religious institutions. The government in particular.
Learn To Advocate For Yourself At Work
As I’ve written about, we’re going to see change first on singles as customers. As businesses start to focus on singles as customers, it’s going to be natural that they start to focus on singles as employees. I also have to be an optimistic person, in general. I have my own bias. You might have already said this but I’m going to ask it again. Is there something that you would want a single reader to know? Whether they’re a manager or an employee or both in one case. Maybe someone who’s feeling like their time in life are not being treated as important at work. Is there some takeaway that you would give them?
It’s advocating for yourself in the same way you would if you had a medical accommodation that you needed or if you were doing a salary negotiation. There’s all these things. There’s articles about it and people talk about advocating for yourself at work. You don’t see as much about advocating for yourself at work because you’re single. Again, that’s a conversation. That’s not a habit. Advocate for yourself. If you need that time off, if you feel like, “I’ve worked Christmas the last three years.” To your point, you don’t need to give an excuse. You don’t need to give a reason just say, “This doesn’t feel fair. I have worked Christmas for the last three years. What do we need to do to make sure that I get off this year?”
A lot of people will ask for what they need or won’t advocate for what they need. That’s what I would say. If you are single and you’re feeling like, “At work, my life doesn’t matter. My milestones still matter. What I’m doing doesn’t matter in the same way that others do.” Advocate for yourself. Tell folks what you need. Don’t be shy or ashamed of whatever your hobbies or whatever you’re going home for. If you want to share it, share it. It helps everyone know that there’s other things that are happening in our lives.
We’re not just going home and sitting on our couches sad. That’s what I’d push people who are single to think about it. What does it look like to advocate? The second piece is, what does it look like to be a good member in a community and to be a good ally for others? We want partnered people to be allies for us. I’m child-free. I want somebody with children to acknowledge that I’ve made a valid choice and I want to do the same for them.
We’ve got to be good partners. Don’t go fight your employer about their parental leave policy because you don’t have twelve weeks as you don’t plan on having kids. It’s about, “Could we expand this so that I can go care for my parents?” It’s about not putting us against each other. It’s about how to become allies and work together so that we both see a lot of benefits regardless of our stage of life.
That’s wonderful advice. Sarah, thank you for helping me develop these ideas and thank you for contributing to the article and to the Solo Movement through the show. I appreciate your time and your wisdom.
Thank you for having me.
Important Links
- Sarah Brock on LinkedIn
- Sarah Bee Talent
- Sarah Bee Talent Consulting on LinkedIn
- Family‑friendly workplaces are great − but ‘families of 1’ get ignored
About Sarah Brock
Sarah Brock is the Founder and CEO of Sarah Bee Talent, bringing close to two decades of experience leading talent strategy and HR initiatives in the education and nonprofit sectors.
Before becoming a solo entrepreneur, Sarah served as a Managing Director of Talent at a large, high-growth charter school network, where she built and led a multi-functional team spanning recruitment, leadership development, and performance management.
She began her career as a middle school English teacher in Houston, Texas, and also has experience leading communications at a start-up nonprofit. Through her business, Sarah now spends her time helping organizations rethink how they support their people, including often-overlooked groups like single employees.
She partners with leaders and organizations to build stronger, more equitable workplaces through thoughtful talent and HR practices.