Seta Whitford-Stark was dumbfounded last year when she found out her daughter Amy quit her job at an employee-recruiting agency to work for LinkedIn, an internet company that Seta had never heard of. Amy tried to explain what the online professional networking service did, but Seta couldn’t quite grasp the concept or why the 29-year-old would want to work there.
“What has she gotten herself into?” Seta, now 73, recalls muttering to herself.
Then Seta got to observe Amy and her colleagues in action at LinkedIn New York office and came away with a much better understanding of her daughter’s career. She was back at LinkedIn again last week for its second annual “Bring In Your Parents Day,” joining thousands of parents at companies around the globe in an event that gives adult children a rare opportunity to showcase the cultural and technological changes that have transformed the modern workplace.
Conceived by LinkedIn last year, more than 50 companies and other organisations in 16 countries are now embracing this generational spin on the take-the-kids-to-work craze that began a couple decades ago. Companies realise that some parents who once tried to enlighten their kids by letting them tag along at work may be confused about what their now-adult children do.
“The first reaction when you hear about this is, ‘Really, bring your parents to work? Is that really something you should be doing?” says LinkedIn chief executive Jeff Weiner. But it makes sense, he says, “once you have done it and see how meaningful it is. It helps us all speak a common language in terms of how the world is working today.”
Margie Sisk, a human resources specialist at an amusement park, remembers bringing her daughter Riley on a “Take Your Daughter To Work” day. She never thought the tables would someday be turned. Riley, now a LinkedIn recruiting director, celebrated her 24th birthday hosting her parents, Jon Sisk, at LinkedIn’s Mountain View, California headquarters.
“It’s a sign of the times, how much things have changed,” says Margie, 50. “We could have never taken our own parents to work.”
Leo Burnett North America chief executive Rich Stoddart expects many of the roughly 200 fathers and mothers attending the Chicago advertising agency’s event to be startled by what they see and hear.
“They are going to collide with a creative workforce that has a lot of twenty-somethings walking around in T-shirts and jeans,” says Mr Stoddart, whose 77-year-old mother flew in from Cleveland to attend last week’s event. The agenda includes lessons on how to use Twitter and glimpses at past and future ad campaigns.
Joe Hirz, 65, was pleasantly surprised by how much freedom LinkedIn’s workers seemed to have while he accompanied his daughter, Jill Hirz-Jones, to LinkedIn’s inaugural parent’s day last year. It was a stark difference to his 45-year career as an auto mechanic, a job that required him to account for his whereabouts and activity virtually every minute of his shift.
Getting an inside glimpse of LinkedIn also gave Mr Hirz, who didn’t have a television set at home until he was 10 years old, a better understanding of how technology has changed the way people find jobs today. More than 332 million people have set up profiles on LinkedIn pages where they share their career accomplishments, turning the service into a popular way to connect employers with talented workers.
“In my era, jobs came through word of mouth from your friends or in classified ads in newspapers,” Mr Hirz says. “Now, it seems like you can get information almost immediately on a phone, including finding a job just about anywhere in the world.”
Some companies participating in “Bring In Your Parents Day” may be motivated by more than enlightening parents, says Brad Sago, a Wheaton College professor of business and management who specialises in generation-gap issues.
“Getting parents on their team is another way for companies to build brand equity,” says Sago. “They are creating a company advocate, which is important because these parents are still influential in many children’s lives.”
As an advertising executive, Mr Stoddart is unabashed in his desire to sell parents on the merits of working at Leo Burnett.
“We want our best employees to stay with us and parent advice is often involved in some of those big career decisions,” Mr Stoddart says. “So, it’s OK with me if a parent says, ‘Gee, I love that place, Leo Burnett. Why are you looking around?”’
LinkedIn views parents’ day as another way to help its 6,000 employees tap the knowledge of earlier generations. Research commissioned by the company found that nearly two-thirds of US workers believe their parents have advice to give that could help further their careers but haven’t yet shared it. On the flip side, about 20 per cent of the parents surveyed said they are reluctant to pass along their wisdom because they don’t know enough about their children’s careers.
“We are better able to leverage those collective experiences if we can help our parents understand what we do and how we do it,” Mr Weiner says.
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