This is part nine of The Logic’s in-depth series exploring how Canada is faring in the global competition for tech talent, as economies reopen and companies and governments jockey for advantage in a remote-work world. Read the rest of the series here.

After being closed through Toronto’s long COVID-19 lockdown, in July, The Workaround, Amanda Munday’s family-friendly co-working space and child-care centre in the city’s east end, could finally open again. But hardly any of her regular clients were coming back.

Munday made some calls to find out what those former clients—mostly women working in tech or running startups—were up to. Over and over again, she heard the same thing: they had quit their jobs, which weren’t offering enough flexibility or accommodations to make it possible to both work and care for their children, who were now home all day, thanks to school closures and concerns about safety even as businesses reopened.

“It was all different variations of, ‘It’s just easier and more affordable and better for my family for me to stop working right now,’” Munday said. “That is one of the most devastating things for me.”

The tech industry has not been known for being particularly family-friendly, but the pandemic pushed many parents to a breaking point. As labour gets scarcer and more expensive amid a heated market for tech talent in Canada, experts say generous parental leave and flexible work options will go much further toward helping companies attract and retain top senior talent than traditional startup perks, such as foosball tables and free beer.

Armine Yalnizyan, a Canadian economist who coined the term “she-cession” to describe the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on women and emphasize the importance of child care in the recovery, said the issue goes far beyond individual startups trying to prevent the Great Resignation from happening in Canada. As the population ages, Canada needs to radically rethink its lack of accommodation for life events that push people in and out of the workforce, she said.

“We’re not really looking at it as a kind of life-cycle story where people need to step in and step out of the labour market over the course of their lives for different reasons,” Yalnizyan said. “Anything that an employer does that provides more leave—to take care of family, to take care of yourself, to upgrade your training, to just simply step away from the grind of the day-to-day—is going to make that employer more desirable.”

Canada’s need for improvement on child care is compounded by the problem of sexism. Thanks to a host of systemic barriers and stereotypes about gender roles, women in heterosexual partnerships devote more time on average to housework and child care, with a U.S study suggesting women are more likely than men to adjust their work hours and schedules to accommodate the needs of their children and other family members. (Global studies suggest the load tends to be shared more equitably in LGBTQ households.)

Women were already underrepresented in Canada’s tech industry when the pandemic hit, accounting for about 30 per cent of the workforce in 2020, according to a report by Humi. Nearly half of Canadian women in tech said they felt the pandemic had stunted their careers, with women caring for adults or children even more likely to feel that way, according to a March survey by SAP Canada. That same survey found 44 per cent of respondents believe the companies they work for do not want to hire women at all.

Child-care and gender-equality advocates heralded funding announced in the spring federal budget that aims to create more child care spaces that cost an average of $10 a day as an important step towards an equitable economic recovery. But Ontario—Canada’s economic powerhouse and home to the tech hubs of Ottawa, Kitchener-Waterloo and Toronto—has yet to sign a deal with the federal government.

Evidence from Quebec, which saw women’s labour-force participation increase following the introduction of low-fee daycare, suggests cheaper and more widely available child care would help, but other barriers remain for parents who want to enter or stay in the tech sector. Nora Jenkins Townson, founder and chief executive of Bright + Early, a Toronto-based human-resources consultancy for startups and creative companies, said early-stage firms tend to wait too long to implement policies that accommodate parents and pregnant employees.

“I like to tell my clients, ‘You don’t want to negotiate with a pregnant person,’” she said. “It’s best to map these policies out in advance.”

Jenkins Townson and Munday are part of a push to make Canadian startups and tech companies more parent-friendly. Bright + Early wrote a pandemic update to a 2017 document called The Expecting Playbook, which was written as a resource for companies developing their first parental leave policies. Munday and Jenkins Townson are also co-authors, with Anna Mackenzie, of The Parenting Playbook, a follow-up document meant to help startups and scale-ups develop additional family-friendly benefits.

These resources help educate founders who are often unaware of the challenges parents face, such as how long daycare waitlists can be (years) or how expensive it is (it can push $50,000 annually for two children under four in Toronto), Munday said. “It’s shocking how often startups, and tech founders in particular, just have no idea.”

On-site child care and fully paid leave are gold-standard parental perks, but Munday said there are other easy, inexpensive things companies can do. Examples include implementing a policy of not holding meetings on school P.A. days, or holding social events over brunch instead of at 5 p.m., when parents are typically rushing to get their kids home, fed and into bed.

Toronto-based accounting-software firm FreshBooks is an example of a tech company that has chosen to prioritize family-friendly benefits. The company offers 30 weeks of leave at 90 per cent pay for new parents, both birthing and non-birthing, plus two fully paid weeks, a week’s worth of prepared meals and diaper delivery for new parents, and flexible hours with a remote-work option for anyone going through a milestone or transition.

FreshBooks co-founder Levi Cooperman said these perks didn’t fully insulate the company from staff departures during the pandemic, but he believes they helped. “I think it’s definitely given us a leg up to have this in place,” he said.

Having a leg up when it comes to attracting and retaining talent is only going to become more important for Canadian tech companies, who are in a high-stakes global competition for skilled labour thanks to the rise of remote work. Jenkins Townson said parent-friendly policies can “look scary on paper” to employers, but are ultimately worth it.

“Think about your best employee, somebody that you really can’t do without. Would you rather they leave for a company that is more parent-friendly, or take some time off and come back to you and be back to being productive and helpful and happy?” she said. “Obviously, the second choice.”