How businesses can benefit from allowing kids in the office

PITTSBURGH – Employers and workers have become more conscious of the need to maintain work-life balance, whether by turning off work mobile devices at home, more vacation time or working from home.

Yet one possibility of helping that balance, at least for parents, has remained relatively taboo: bringing kids into the workplace.

The idea of accommodating kids — even infants — for a certain number of hours each day has until recently been avoided by employers, as the prospect of a co-worker's kid occupying a cubicle may seem like crossing a line.

This has been true both in offices and in more unusual work environments, like Major League Baseball. In March, Chicago White Sox first baseman Adam LaRoche quit the sport, leaving a $13 million salary on the table after the baseball club told him to dial back the amount of time his 14-year-old son spent with him on the field and in the locker room.

LaRoche's son, Drake, spent nearly every working baseball day alongside his father, including practices and games, generating feature stories during his time with the Washington Nationals. But this spring the 12-season veteran clashed with the White Sox, which LaRoche said had changed its policy.

"Obviously, I expressed my displeasure toward this decision to alter the agreement we had reached," LaRoche wrote in a statement. "I had to make a decision. Do I choose my teammates and my career? Or do I choose my family? The decision was easy."

Both employees and businesses can benefit from allowing children to spend time at work with their parents, said Carla Moquin, founder and president of the Utah-based Parenting in the Workplace Institute. The problem lies with a lack of preparedness on the employer's part, which can create tension and lead to a blanket prohibition on kids, she said.

She estimated that hundreds of workplaces permit children but often with unclear guidelines. With rules acceptable to everyone, she said, "The business can support employees at very little cost, and employees can have flexibility," she said.

She added that, in many cases, children become part of the workplace community and benefit from seeing what their parents do.

That echoes the message of Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day, which has encouraged some 37 million Americans at 3.5 million workplaces to give children some sense of professional life.

Of course, the idea of a permanent place for children in workplaces is certainly an escalation of the annual holiday. But that doesn't mean it can't be beneficial to both employees and the business, said Mike Griffin, business manager for Tucker Griffin Barnes P.C., a law firm in Charlottesville, Va.

In the early 1990s, one of the firm's founding partners decided that when one of his two paralegals left on maternity leave, the firm needed her back as soon as possible.