In 2021, entrepreneur Robyn Scott faced a crunch moment. Her second child was due to be born just as Apolitical, the UK-based networking platform for public servants she co-founded, was launching a critical funding round.
“I realised I just couldn’t do it justice, I couldn’t raise the round while drunk on a haze of sleep deprivation — effectively drunk at the wheel,” says Scott, who is also chief executive of the start-up.
It gave the company an idea: paying for employees to hire a nanny to look after their baby or toddler during the night. These nannies differ from traditional maternity nurses as they only provide support during the night, rather than full-time postnatal care, and are typically hired once a baby is at least a few weeks old.
Apolitical offers four months of maternity leave at full pay that can be taken any time in the first two years of a child’s life. If an employee wants to work instead during that period, they can take advantage of the “night nanny” policy, not just in the initial period around the birth.
The business is one of a small number of start-ups that have begun to offer such support to new parents.
Night nannies offer help during typical sleeping hours. They arrive at a client’s home at about 9pm-10pm, and leave at 6am-7am, according to Denise Iacona Stern, chief executive of Let Mommy Sleep, a US-based childcare agency that offers overnight infant care. During that time they are on hand to do tasks such as feeding, changing and soothing babies, so the parents can sleep.
Scott says the benefit is a “no brainer”, particularly for small businesses that rely on fewer staff. The value of not losing key employees for extended periods of time and “having them back in a high-functioning state” is “immense”, she says — “orders of magnitude greater than the cost”.
“Had I not been around to raise our [funding] rounds, as a start-up, survival was at stake,” she adds.
There are serious caveats, particularly the concern that the benefit is seen as a means to encourage staff back to the office in the early months of their child’s life, rather than support them to take the time off they are entitled to. The risk is that simply by having the perk, and offering it alongside maternity leave, which is often the case, women might feel under pressure to return.
“It will seem a purely mercenary tactic if you don’t have a generally supportive environment that recognises the stresses placed on people’s lives for a wide variety of personal circumstances, be it having kids, be it health challenges,” says Scott.
At Apolitical, only Scott and Pooja Warier Hamilton, chief partnerships officer at the company, have used the benefit — and both are in senior roles. They recognise the advantages of the policy. “Feeling like you are able to operate at the level of your potential — that you are not in second gear”, says Scott.
But Hamilton cautions against creating a “superhero syndrome” around coming back to work early.
Companies also need to consider how they treat employees after they have taken the benefit. Colleen Ammerman, director of the Race, Gender & Equity Initiative at Harvard Business School, says the “core issue” tends to be how employers interpret staff taking advantage of these kinds of benefits. Might they be “branded an underperformer or less committed”.
If the people who use the benefits begin to feel they are being overlooked or not developing, they may leave, meaning the boost to retention is only short-term, she adds.
To avoid this, companies need to build an environment that supports employees and their caregiving responsibilities. Apolitical tries to promote a wider culture of “trust and autonomy”, for example, by offering other perks such as unlimited holiday.
Hamilton and Scott also focus on open communication. “I think it’s quite important to communicate . . . to say, ‘This is a personal choice. This is why I’m making this choice.’ We do not expect anyone to have to follow this at all,” Hamilton notes.
Auctionomics, a small business that specialises in designing and running multibillion-dollar auctions, also has a night nanny policy: any team member of a certain seniority is offered two weeks of cover when they have a child.
The majority — 80 per cent — of staff who have had children while working at Auctionomics were eligible for the perk, says Silvia Console Battilana, the company’s co-founder and chief executive. Of those, 50 per cent used it at birth (while on leave) and the other half used it later.
Venture capital firm Seven Seven Six established a programme that ringfenced 2 per cent of any investment in a company for founders’ wellbeing. Half of that funded personal development, such as gym memberships, therapy or language classes, and the other half was for caregiving and could be used for childcare or travel to visit unwell relatives, for example.
After some analysis, the firm tweaked the programme and now gives a flat fee of $40,000 to founders, which vests over four years, explains Katelin Holloway, a founding partner at Seven Seven Six. She says the programme helps people starting new businesses who are often the “last person to focus on themselves”.
Professionals are also paying for support privately. Rachel Carrell, founder and chief executive of Koru Kids, a childcare agency based in London, says night nannies are popular among company founders, entrepreneurs and lawyers, particularly barristers — people with jobs that make it “harder to step away and come back”. Carrell paid for a night nanny herself after having her first and third children.
She says she understands the concern about the perk being seen to pressure women back to work but argues it is important to provide choice for parents. “I think we shouldn’t patronise women by taking away choices in order to encourage the choice we think is best for women,” she says. “I don’t think that is empowering.”
Let Mommy Sleep commonly receives inquiries from families with two working parents, those with twins, or other young children and those with “no family support”, says chief executive Stern.
Costs are high. A night nanny from London-based Eden Private Staff agency charges between £180 and £250 per 10-hour night, for example. Norland nannies charges from £170 to £265 plus per 12-hour night, according to its website. In the US, costs range between $28 and $38 per hour, depending on geography, says Stern.
Shannon Sullivan, clinical professor of sleep medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine, says wider societal changes could be part of the attraction of a night nanny plan. Young people are now more likely to live further from their families, while people are having children later so their parents may be less able to help. “There’s a void,” she notes.
She adds that families taking advantage of a night nanny would need to ensure the professional followed sleep recommendations for infants and that their techniques — such as rocking the baby — were aligned with the parents’ own.
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