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June 7, 2018 //  //       //  Opinion

Agencies Need Moms

By: Tracey Cassidy

Agency life needs a rebranding campaign and firms with programs in place to support working parents need to lead this charge.

A recent Adweek article touching on “returnships” caught my attention and reminded me agency life hasn’t always been welcoming to working parents, especially moms. Twenty years ago, I started my first agency job at a PR firm on Sixth Avenue in New York City that was reminiscent of Mad Men. As an eager recent college grad, I didn’t know anything different than an office led by chain-smoking men who ordered their “assistants” to do everything under the sun. Fortunately, since then, great female mentors and role models have debunked the perils of that 1998 gender scene and demonstrated to me that moms can have undisrupted careers if they so choose. 

The article explains intern-type programs that get mothers back to work after taking time off to raise children. And it profiles several advertising agencies, including Allison+Partners’ sister agency 72andSunny, for their efforts to create programs that welcome moms back to the industry. While I applaud these efforts, there is still a lot of work to be done. How can agencies do a better job of enticing new moms to stay engaged in their career while balancing motherhood? It might not be a returnship, but rather a “stay-the-course ship” for new moms. 

At Allison+Partners, we meet with all expecting moms to help them plot out the course for returning to work post-baby. It’s an individualized program customized for both the employee and manager, but all include a seamless transition. Most of our new moms choose to work remotely for at least one day a week as they re-engage in work life after maternity leave.

I’m incredibly proud of the programs we’ve implemented at Allison+Partners to encourage new moms to stay the course and support them through all of parenthood’s wonderful and challenging milestones. Below are some of our offerings:

  • Five-month paid maternity leave
  • Flex work time post maternity leave
  • Dependent FSA programs, that allow parents to put aside pre-taxed funds to offset childcare costs

Allison+Partners has an extremely high retention rate for returning mothers. We also have an abundance of female executives (female executives with children make up half of our C-Suite and we now have a female president of North America) who lead by example and are doing the juggle every day.

Returnships might work for some, but I’m passionate about doing more to ensure that new moms don’t see that bleak future I once did. I want new moms to know that Allison+Partners is an agency that understands what they are going through. From our fantastic maternity leave policy to flex time and unlimited vacation, we trust and empower everyone, including new moms. And by doing that, everyone wins. It’s time to pay it forward. 

Tracey Cassidy is general manager of Allison+Partners’ New York office and a mother of two.

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