Making it Work: How culture, policies and perks are making the difference for parents at Strava
Even under ‘‘normal” circumstances, being a working parent can feel like a daily wrestling match between pursuing your growth as a professional, showing up well for your teammates, supporting the growth of your children and trying to care for yourself and those closest to you. Now, in this ‘new normal’ of an enduring public health crisis where working, learning, exercising, you name it, is happening from home, the wrestling match is no longer about trying to win — it can feel like a game of pure survival.
As a parent in the COVID era, you can’t leave your job to go home or leave your kids to go to your job. It’s a constant battle of context switching between the work we need to move forward and the needs of our children. Between home school, toddler meltdowns, hours of zoom meetings and a mounting to-do list, it’s easy to feel guilty for letting our kids and teammates down despite our best efforts. There’s not a lot that can be done about some of these tensions, but a company’s culture can make the difference between working parents barely surviving or flourishing against the odds.
That’s why Strava is such an incredible place to work for parents.
Balance is a core value at Strava. It has been since the beginning. Our co-founders are both dedicated parents who celebrate family. As working parents at Strava, we can attest that this company — and its leadership — practices what it preaches.
There’s always time for a workout. There’s always time for family. Period.
We share the understanding that caring for an individual’s whole self on the team ultimately helps the whole team realize our best work. That sense of team, of empathy and camaraderie, is baked into our culture.
Larissa Rivers, our Sr. Marketing Manager for the US and mother of 3, says it well,
“I’ve had the flexibility to work from home (when that wasn’t the norm) during my full tenure here at Strava (8+ years). There has always been an understanding that people come first and that we have lives outside of work. It was understood that I couldn’t take in-person meetings after 4:30pm so I could still get home in time for pick-up. And no one gave me a hard time if I had to rush out to grab a sick kid or couldn’t come in because I had to hold down the fort at home.I have always felt supported as a parent that I get to do a job I love and still be there for my family to do all the important mom things that I love as well.”
Earlier this year, Strava rolled out a new parental leave policy that offers 16-weeks of fully paid leave for any parent, which can be taken in week-long increments across a 12-month period of time. So, a natural thought here is, “Yea, but do parents actually take that 16-weeks? Even the dads?” The answer: hell yea!
A new dad to his son Lionel, Ian Elliott, our Brand Marketing Director for the Americas is all about Strava’s paternity leave program,
“As any new parent can attest, nothing in the world can prepare for the universe-shifting transformation that happens the second your child gulps their first breath of air. In the lead up to Lionel’s birth, everyone at Strava showered Emily and I with support. As soon as he arrived, that support continued to generously flow our way. I was able to dedicate all of myself to Emily and Lionel the first four weeks postpartem — and plan to use the next 12 across the year!”
Let’s be honest, it’s literally impossible to be caring for our kids full-time while also kicking ass in a full-time career at an intellectually demanding, dynamic and fast-paced technology company.
That’s why Strava’s leadership introduced a generous child care stipend in response to the unique challenges brought on by the pandemic.
The child care stipend supports us working parents with additional income to partially subsidize things like hiring a tutor to supervise distance learning, hiring a nanny or babysitter to care for children for some hours during the workday, or paying for an outdoor camp which will get the kids (safely) out of the house for at least a portion of the day.
When the child care stipend policy was announced at our company All Hands in July, Genevieve Pearson, our Copy Manager and single mother of 2, expressed what many of us felt,
“This kind of support can mean the difference between being able to stay in a career or not. Beyond the material generosity, it means so much to have my team and leadership truly care about how my family and I are managing. Thanks to this stipend, we have a tutor who is able to help us navigate the complexities of remote 7th grade.”
As COVID continues to keep the future of work, school and any form of normalcy uncertain, the tension between performing at the highest level at work and at home will continue to persist. In fact, there will always be a healthy tension between work and home for working parents. But the company policies that Strava has been implementing paired with the culture Strava has cultivated since Day 1 mean we don’t have to choose between work and kids. Working parents here are given the support we need to take on new challenges at home, and we’re genuinely empowered to put our best selves forward while at work.
If you’re interested in working at Strava, check out our careers page.
Written by: Ian Elliott, Genevieve Pearson and Larissa Rivers
