In 2021, entrepreneur Robyn Scott faced a critical moment. Her second child was due to be born just as Apolitical, the UK-based networking platform for public servants that she co-founded, launched a critical funding round.
“I realized I couldn’t do it justice, I couldn’t lift the bullet while I was drunk from lack of sleep – effectively, drunk behind the wheel,” says Scott, who is also the new company’s CEO.
It gave the company an idea: pay employees to hire a babysitter to watch their baby or toddler overnight. These nannies differ from traditional maternity nurses in that they only provide overnight support, rather than full-time postnatal care, and are usually hired once the baby is at least a few weeks old.
Apolitical offers four months of maternity leave with full pay that can be taken at any time during the first two years of a child’s life. If an employee wants to work during that period, she can take advantage of the “night nanny” policy, not just in the initial period around birth.
The company is one of the few startups that have begun offering that kind of support to new parents.
Night nannies offer help during normal sleeping hours. They arrive at a client’s home around 9:00 pm and 10:00 pm and leave between 6:00 am and 7 am, according to Denise Iacona Stern, CEO of Let Mommy Sleep, a child care agency. based in the United States that offers overnight child care. During that time they are available to perform tasks such as feeding, changing and calming the babies, so the parents can sleep.
Scott says the benefit is “obvious,” especially for small businesses that rely on fewer staff. The value of not losing key employees for extended periods and “having them back in a high-functioning state” is “immense,” he says: “orders of magnitude greater than the cost.”
“If I had not been present to raise our [funding] rounds, as a startup, survival was at stake,” he adds.
There are serious warnings, particularly concerns that the benefit will be seen as a means of encouraging staff to return to the office in the first months of their children’s lives, rather than helping them take the time off to which they are entitled. The risk is that simply by having the benefit and offering it alongside maternity leave, as is often the case, women will feel pressured to return.
“It will seem like a purely mercenary tactic if you don’t have an overall supportive environment that recognizes the stresses that are placed on people’s lives by a wide variety of personal circumstances, whether it’s having children or health problems,” Scott says.
At Apolitical, only Scott and Pooja Warier Hamilton, the company’s director of partnerships, have used the benefit, and both hold senior positions. They recognize the advantages of politics. “Feeling like you’re capable of operating at the level of your potential, that you’re not in second gear,” Scott says.
But Hamilton warns against creating a “superhero syndrome” related to returning to work early.
Companies should also consider how they treat employees after they have received the benefit. Colleen Ammerman, director of the Race, Gender and Equity Initiative at Harvard Business School, says the “core problem” tends to be how employers interpret staff taking advantage of these types of benefits. Could they be “branded as underperforming or less committed”?
If people using the benefits start to feel like they are being overlooked or not being developed, they may leave, meaning the boost to retention is only short-term, he adds.
To avoid this, companies must create an environment that supports employees and their caring responsibilities. Apolitical tries to promote a broader culture of “trust and autonomy,” for example by offering other benefits such as unlimited vacations.
Hamilton and Scott also focus on open communication. “I think it is very important to communicate. . . to say, ‘This is a personal choice.’ That is why I am making this decision.” “We don’t expect anyone to have to follow this at all,” says Hamilton.
Auctionomics, a small company that specializes in designing and managing multimillion-dollar auctions, also has an overnight nanny policy: Any team member with a certain seniority is offered two weeks of coverage when they have a child.
The majority (80 percent) of staff who had children while working at Auctionomics were eligible for the benefit, says Silvia Console Battilana, the company’s co-founder and CEO. Of those, 50 percent used it at birth (while they were on leave) and the other half used it later.
The venture capital firm Seven Seven Six established a program that delimited 2 percent of any investment in a company for the well-being of its founders. Half of that amount funded personal development, such as gym memberships, therapy or language classes, and the other half went to care and could be used for childcare or trips to visit sick relatives, for example.
After some analysis, the company modified the program and now offers a flat fee of $40,000 to founders, vested over four years, explains Katelin Holloway, founding partner of Seven Seven Six. She says the program helps people starting new businesses who are often the “last people to focus on themselves.”
Professionals also pay for support privately. Rachel Carrell, founder and CEO of Koru Kids, a London-based childcare agency, says overnight nannies are popular with business founders, entrepreneurs and lawyers, particularly lawyers, people with jobs they do ” harder to walk away and come back. Carrell paid for an overnight babysitter herself after having her first and third children.
She says she understands the concern that the benefit is seen as pressuring women to return to work, but maintains it is important to give parents options. “I think we shouldn’t patronize women by taking away options to encourage what we think are best for women,” she says. “I don’t think that’s empowering.”
Let Mommy Sleep typically receives inquiries from families with two working parents, those with twins or other young children, and those who “have no family support,” says CEO Stern.
The costs are high. An overnight nanny from the London-based agency Eden Private Staff charges between £180 and £250 per 10 hour night, For example. Norland babysitter charges from £170 to £265 more per 12 hour night, according to their website. In the United States, costs range from $28 to $38 per hour, depending on geography, Stern says.
Shannon Sullivan, a clinical professor of sleep medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine, says broader social changes could be part of the appeal of a nighttime babysitting plan. Young people are now more likely to live further away from their families, while people have children later, so their parents may be less able to help. “There is a void,” she points out.
She adds that families taking advantage of a nighttime nanny would need to make sure the professional followed sleep recommendations for babies and that their techniques (such as rocking the baby) were aligned with those of the parents.