Dallas City Wire

The Dallas Regional Chamber (DRC) named three local companies as recipients of the inaugural Best Place for Working Parents® Dallas Innovator Awards.

• Micro/Small Business (under 200 employees): Barnes & Thornburg
• Medium Business (between 201 and 999 employees): Corgan
• Large Business (more than 1,000 employees): Children’s Health

The Best Place for Working Parents® Dallas, a local partner of the Best Place for Working Parents® national initiative, recognizes family-friendly workplaces in the Dallas Region through a proprietary business self-assessment and aims to raise awareness of the importance of family-friendly benefits and policies for employers and workers.

Companies are evaluated against peer businesses of similar size and industry based upon their family-friendly offerings in 10 research-backed policies, including paid parental leave, child care assistance, and flexible working conditions, among others. In 2022, more than 120 Dallas Region companies received the Best Place for Working Parents® designation.

The Best Place for Working Parents® Dallas Innovator Awards seek to recognize companies whose family-friendly offerings go above-and-beyond the 10 policies evaluated by the business self-assessment. All Dallas Regional companies with the Best Place for Working Parents® designation were invited to apply for the Innovator Awards. Nearly 50 companies submitted applications.

Innovator Award applications were evaluated carefully by an anonymous panel of judges, who scored each submission based upon the comprehensiveness, innovativeness, and impact of the company’s family-friendly policies and benefits. A single winner was selected in each business size category.

“Our mission is to lead the Dallas Region to become the best place to live, work, and do business for all people, including working parents” said Dale Petroskey, President & CEO of the DRC. “We are proud of these three companies for demonstrating the Dallas Region’s commitment to being family-friendly and setting an example for employers throughout North Texas.”

Barnes & Thornburg, a national full-service law firm with a Dallas office, earned the distinction as the Micro/Small Business Innovator due, in part, to its partnership with Bright Horizons to offer backup dependent and elder care services and to the formation of “BTParents,” the firm’s employee resource group focused exclusively on the needs of working parents.

“We are honored to be recognized as a leader for working parents in Dallas,” said Victor Vital, Dallas managing partner. “We are proud of the culture we have created for our team. While we always strive for better, this recognition is a testament to the progress we’ve achieved through the successful implementation of policies, benefits and creative resources to support our team members and their families.”

Corgan, an architecture and design firm headquartered in Dallas, earned the distinction as the Medium Business Innovator. Corgan’s partnership with Stork Club, an industry-leading family-friendly benefits provider, offers employees a wide range of supports, from fertility and family planning assistance to quality child care referrals.

“We have worked purposefully and diligently to get to this point, and we’ll keep evolving our parent-centric benefits to support all Corganites in their family-building journeys,” said Lindsay Wilson, President of Corgan. “From paid time off for parents and wellness programs, our comprehensive benefits package seeks to support all employees. We will keep asking our people what matters to them, wherever they are in their life!”

Children’s Health, a nationally ranked pediatric health system in Dallas, earned the distinction as the Large Business Innovator. Children’s Health offers highly impactful benefits to its prospective and current team members providing up to $10,000 in reimbursement for adoption or surrogacy expenses and subsidizing $1,000 in a dependent care flexible spending account for its employees.

“We continually evaluate our benefits to provide innovative, unique and competitive ways to support our team members, as parents and professionals,” said Kim Besse, President and Chief People Officer at Children’s Health. “We want our colleagues to know we acknowledge, appreciate and deeply value their unwavering dedication to providing world-class care to our patients. We are thankful for all they do to support our mission of making life better for children.”

The DRC is pleased to recognize these three companies for their outstanding support of working parents and encourages Dallas Region employers to follow their example in providing comprehensive, innovative, and impactful family-friendly policies in the workplace.

A list of 2022 Best Place for Working Parents® Dallas designees and the business self-assessment are located on the DRC’s website.

Original source can be found here