How we planned an engaging virtual ‘Take Your Child to Work Day’
“Take Your Child to Work Day” is a nationally recognized day, typically celebrated on the fourth Thursday of April, that gives children a glimpse into the working world. Developed by the Take Our Daughters and Sons To Work Foundation, the day allows parents to take their children to work in order to expose them to future job possibilities and reinforce the value of education.
This year marked Insider Inc.’s third annual celebration of “Take Your Child to Work Day.” In past years, we have hosted Insider children at our global headquarters in New York City, but this was our first year celebrating virtually due to the coronavirus pandemic. Read about how we’ve hosted the day in the past, what we did differently this year, and why we thought hosting a virtual “Take Your Child to Work Day” was important this year.
This year’s virtual “Take Your Child to Work Day” participants.
How we’ve hosted ‘Take Your Child to Work Day’ (TYCTWD) in the past
Each year we build our TYCTWD programming to accomplish three goals — to introduce the children to different career paths, to educate them on our company history, and to immerse them in our company culture.
When we hosted the day in our office, we would start with “new hire” orientation, where the children could meet their new “coworkers,” learn the history of Insider Inc., pick their job titles, and hear about all the different activities organized for the day. We would then take them on a tour of the office to give them a behind-the-scenes look at where our content is created. On the tour, they could also grab some tasty snacks from our well stocked kitchens!
In-office group activities have included creating Instagram graphics with our social media team, making cards for Cards for Hospitalized Kids, filming a special episode of our daily news show Business Insider Today, and hosting a kid-led all-hands meeting.
How we adapted to accommodate the new remote world we’re living in
Our offices closed worldwide on March 11. As our staff transitioned to remote work, we decided to push our TYCTWD from April to August. We figured we’d either be back in the office by then or our parents would be more adjusted to remote work by then. We also realized that by going virtual, we were no longer bound by office location, so we could open the activities to all Insider children worldwide.
The biggest change we made came while considering how working remotely affects everyone’s schedules and availability, especially parents. We realized that having one day full of activities would not only interrupt parents' work schedules, but would also cut into children’s schedules as well. This year we pivoted to hosting three activities throughout the month of August — “new hire” orientation, Insider Kids website building, and a kid-led all-hands meeting.
During “new hire” orientation, each child got to introduce themselves to their new colleagues and pick their job title — this was a very ambitious group of kids with our new CEO, vice president of fun, and director of button pushing all present. After introductions, they learned a little Insider Inc. history and took a virtual tour of our global headquarters in NYC before receiving their first assignments.
Rather than having the kids participate in several different workshops and activities, we assigned them the single task of creating content for our Insider Kids webpage. During orientation we showed examples of articles and videos published on our sites and asked them to pitch some of their own ideas. The children were given three weeks to create and submit their assignments before we published the webpage for all Insider employees to view.
We received plenty of great content — there was a written review of “Hamilton: An American Musical,” a video tour of the Red Square in Moscow, a food review of the classic cheeseburger from Black Star Burger, a drawing inspired by the book “The Day The Crayons Quit” by Drew Daywalt, and much more. We loved seeing the kids put their own spin on the Insider voice and learn more about journalism!
We closed out the month with a kid-led all-hands meeting. Each child had the opportunity to present their work and share their experience creating content for the web page.
Why it was important to us to host a virtual TYCTWD this year
With our employees working from home and Insider children make frequent appearances in daily video meetings, you may be thinking, “Isn’t every day ‘Take Your Child To Work Day?’” However, we wanted to create a structured opportunity for Insider children to be welcomed into the spotlight. We also wanted to allow parents to show their kids what they’re doing every day at work.
Two of the foundational pillars of our employee experience programming are community building and career development. We are constantly looking for ways to connect our employees around the world and provide career development opportunities and resources. A virtual TYCTWD allowed us to connect Insider children from around the world and introduce them to the many types of journalism and career paths available at Insider Inc.
Although this year has been different than the others, we were still able to create a fun, engaging, inclusive, and educational “Take Your Child To Work Day” for our Insider children. All it took was a willingness to be flexible, lots of organization and communication, a reliable internet connection, and some great kids!