Flipping Work-Life Balance to Life-Work Balance with Parents@

Every April, we celebrate Parents Month by dedicating time to recognize our incredible parent and caregiver community at Instacart - and this April was no different.

This year, our Parents@ Employee Resource Group (ERG) aimed to uplift and support Instacart parents and caregivers by driving intentional, focused Parents Month programming on topics important to the community. By giving space to important matters that keep caregivers busy, Parents Month helped recognize employees making strides in hopes that it positively inspires the lives of other employees.

To kick off the month, Parents@ hosted Coffee Table Talks, a series of candid conversations on various topics. From a session exploring the summer balancing act of work and family, to a session on caring for our aging parents, these talks offered an opportunity for fostering understanding and belonging amongst all employees. The conversation on caring for our aging parents featured experiences from our Elderberries Carrot Club, an employee interest group of self-identified older employees. The Elderberries have created a supportive community where they can discuss both the joys and challenges of growing older, both in work and life. Their input has helped expand the conversation company-wide, making space for more voices, including non-parents.

Later in the month, Instacart's Sarah Mastrorocco, VP of Health, and Ryan Hamburger, VP of Retail Partnerships, hosted a fireside chat on balancing career growth while growing their families. Employees appreciated hearing how executives were showing up outside of work. They especially enjoyed Sarah and Ryan's candid remarks about helping their teams make space for their changing families, as well as how they unapologetically take the space they need from work to show up for their families.

Employee's Slack status

And to close Parents Month, we hosted Take Your Kid to Work Day* in our offices spanning San Francisco and New York City, as well as virtually. At Parents@, "we're flipping the work-life balance to the life-work balance because we don't believe that work should take precedence over family," said Rebecca Younis, Senior Program Manager on the next generation operations team and Parents@ ERG co-lead. "We're working to create environments where members feel like they can balance their life and be vulnerable at work. Part of that is normalizing a challenge shared by our members by reminding them that they can bring their full self to work without fear of hindered career success."

"For example, children join calls no matter how hard you try. Our in-office event is a chance for managers to meet the kids that jump into calls with their direct reports. It's also a time to meet other employees going through similar experiences so that we feel less alone. It was especially encouraging hearing this echoed throughout the month in the Coffee Table Talks, and by Sarah and Ryan during the fireside chat," said Rebecca.

Since last year's Toronto Take Your Kid to Work Day, we made some intentional changes to be more inclusive of the growing families at Instacart. One change that we've heard good feedback on is the expansion of our program to include more programming to engage middle schoolers and teenagers. So in addition to art projects and photo-ops, we're prioritizing long-term impact. This year, we offered activities and conversations on STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) and interesting career opportunities, letting young adults hear from employees around the company talk about their careers and how they got there (e.g. college, early career jobs, etc.).

Parents@ aims to support every parent within the Instacart family through social events, community building, employee development, and educating the company at large about life as a parent.

Are you interested in a flex-first job at Instacart? If so, check out our careers site for open roles and our LinkedIn to learn more about what it's like to work here.

*Our Toronto office will host a separate in-person event in November 2024 to align with the National Take Your Kids to Work Day in Canada.