Why not have our children join our video conference calls? What’s the big problem with a little chatter, a few smiles, and connecting as humans as we get started? These are the questions that came up and I had no good answer. So being once-upon-a-time a child who was brought to business meetings myself, I said yes, bring your child to work.

The last time I checked, we were all babies at one point. In fact it would appear at a glance that a few of us still behave like them. The quick societal shift from the eternal past of home-businesses to an overly professionalized world of stark white shirts and slacks and clean commuter cars has led to an unspoken “un-friending” of the family. At our company I believe that people start small, are incredibly important, have rights, and are welcome on to our company meetings. Why else did they create the mute button? My company accommodates and allows working mothers to bring their life to work. Afterall, this is how we did it for thousands of years. Perhaps we can provide a more positive image and truly meet our societies needs right where they are by allowing, as much as possible, integration of family life with professional high performance work.

Are all meetings ok for babies on zoom calls?

There is a time to have undivided attention on one’s work, but what I am speaking of in this article are team meetings where you are giving and receiving updates, one-on-ones, status and orientation calls. For those more rare extremely focused work calls and meetings there might need to be total focus, and it takes time to learn how to work with a baby next to you if you have not done it before. You see, the more you work without a child next to you, the more you get used to quiet working and no interruptions. But once you start working with a baby or child nearby, you integrate tools and resources and BOTH of you get used to the work flow. Children are amazing at adapting. 

Take the following case study for an example. A single mother I know had a professional career of performing a musical instrument every week at a public performance, on stage, but not center stage. She was a support musician for the main performers on center stage, so her instrument was off to the side, but definitely at the front of the performance venue. She had no other option but to bring her 8year old and 5 year old with her. The children wanted to be near their mother, so she permitted them to sit quietly at her feet “if they were well behaved and quiet.” The children did sit near her and never once interrupted her performance. They got it. The children were smart, they knew something important was going on, and mom gave them small projects and snacks to occupy their little hands. I know this story first hand, because my wife was the 5 year old who sat at her mothers feet, and I have heard the story over and over. 

Learning from the anecdote: Mothers and children mutually become accustomed to new work and life routines. It is always going to be hard at first with any new process, but after time and acclimation, we find a rhythm. Zoom-raised babies begin to know when to generally be quiet when someone is speaking, and if not we have mute buttons. 

My personal experience with babies on Conference calls

My wife and I had a child during Covid lockdown. We literally grew our business and organized the company through the crisis of Covid with our newborn baby on conference call after conference call. Sometimes we took turns, she would step out or I would step out. But the learning lesson is this: we grew the company, and we had a child, and we did not push the child out. We invited our children into our business. And the team knew our baby by name.

The team would comment and chatter for a moment about how the baby was growing, looked tired, had a cool T-shirt on today, etc. And then business began. We didn’t do it perfectly. There were plenty of moments when I or my wife would dash outside to our home office with a laptop in hand and a meeting in progress to escape the cries of the newborn, leaving the other parent to soothe the child. We learned to identify the “quiet meetings” from the “update meetings” and respected ourselves and others- but we never apologized for the baby crying or fussing a bit. Didn’t we all cry and fuss a bit? Can we extend the same courtesy to the next generation? 

It is not uncommon over the past 10 years for our customers to call into our scheduling center and hear a baby crying in the background. I have always defended the working mother, indicating that if this occasional interruption bothered a client too much, it was just too bad.

It turns out my instinct was correct- we receive compliments not complaints about minor family background noise interruptions. I would even argue that our working mothers who answer our phones are the highest performing agents.

One such mother, a college graduate with a college degree in forestry, has been booking chimney sweep appointments for over 5 years and remains our #1 booking agent in our company. She is truly a remarkable woman, business professional, and mother, and booking agent all at the same time. Is this valued team member not balancing the very essence of work and life?

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It turns out my instinct was correct- we receive compliments not complaints about minor family background noise on our professional customer service calls.

As for me and my house, we are already all-in.

The results? As our babies have grown toward teenage-hood, we have been able to take them to conferences. To corporate meetings. To life itself.

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Byron and Verity Schramm are owners of a nation-wide chimney cleaning franchise system that has employed remote and hybrid workers for years. They can be reached at the email address below for work opportunities: byron@midtownsweeps.com