BEST PLACE FOR WORKING PARENTS® DALLAS IS PRESENTED BY
The Dallas Regional Chamber (DRC) named three local companies as recipients of the 2023 Best Place for Working Parents® Dallas Innovator Awards.
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- Micro/Small Business (under 200 employees): BCL of Texas
- Medium Business (between 201 and 999 employees): Grant Thornton LLP
- Large Business (more than 1,000 employees): Parkland Health
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The Best Place for Working Parents® Dallas, presented by PNC Bank, is a local partner of the Best Place for Working Parents® national initiative. The program recognizes family-friendly workplaces in the Dallas Region through a proprietary business self-assessment and aims to raise awareness of the importance of family-friendly benefits and policies for employers and workers.
The Best Place for Working Parents® Dallas Innovator Awards recognize companies whose family-friendly offerings go above and beyond the requirements for a Best Place for Working Parents® designation.
“Our mission is to lead the Dallas Region to become the best place to live, work, and do business for all people, including working parents,” said Dale Petroskey, President & CEO of the DRC. “We are proud of these three companies for demonstrating the Dallas Region’s commitment to being family-friendly and setting an example for employers throughout North Texas.”
In the standard Best Place for Working Parents® self-assessment, companies are evaluated against peer businesses of similar size and industry based upon their family-friendly offerings in 10 research-backed policies, including paid parental leave, child care assistance, and flexible working conditions, among others. In 2023, more than 120 Dallas Region companies received the Best Place for Working Parents® designation.
Innovator Award applications were evaluated carefully by an anonymous panel of judges, who scored each submission based on the comprehensiveness, innovativeness, and impact of the company’s family-friendly policies and benefits. All Dallas Region companies with the Best Place for Working Parents® designation were invited to apply for the Innovator Awards.
BCL of Texas, a statewide nonprofit that supports community wealth-building through homeownership and entrepreneurship, earned the distinction of Micro/Small Business Innovator. For a small nonprofit organization, BCL offers a comprehensive set of family-friendly benefits, headlined by a “children-in-the-workplace” policy that allows working parents to bring children of any age to the office to alleviate the burden of childcare breakdowns. This policy, introduced in 2018, helped BCL navigate workplace and school disruptions during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I am proud of the work BCL has done to develop systems that support the work-life resiliency of our staff,” said Raquel Valdez Sanchez, Chief Operating Officer at BCL of Texas. “As a community non-profit, we want our employees to know that we are an extension of their support system, and want them to be the best working parents they can be both at home and in the office.”
Grant Thornton LLP, one of America’s largest providers of audit and assurance, tax and advisory services, earned the Medium Business Innovator distinction. The firm’s Dallas office offers a Working Parents and Allies Business Resource Group to provide peer support, resources, and best practices for Grant Thornton’s working parents. The firm also provides a back-up care benefit for employees whose care arrangements for either a child or dependent adult fall through, as well as a flexible lifestyle spending account for all employees that working parents can utilize for dependent care costs.
“This tremendous honor is a tribute to our caring Dallas teammates, especially the leaders and members of our Working Parents Business Resource Group,” said Doreen Griffith, Grant Thornton’s market managing partner in Dallas and a member of the firm’s Partnership Board. “They ensure all of our working parents have a voice at the highest levels of our organization, which has helped our firm implement a robust suite of benefits and programs that reflect the evolving needs of our people and their families.”
Parkland Health, the public hospital system for Dallas County, was named the Large Business Innovator. Parkland’s best-in-class partnership with Annie’s Place offers drop-in childcare services for patients and certain employees of Parkland. In the future, Annie’s Place will offer full-service childcare plans for Parkland team members. Parkland also brings other benefits onsite to ensure access for employees, such as dental cleanings and eye exams.
“Parkland is proud to be on the cutting-edge when it comes to providing benefits and resources that support our team members,” said Felicia Miller, EVP, Chief Talent Officer at Parkland Health. “This recognition illustrates our commitment to addressing the holistic needs of our staff, from health and wellbeing to dependable childcare.”
The DRC is pleased to recognize these three companies for their outstanding support of working parents and encourages Dallas Region employers to follow their example in providing comprehensive, innovative, and impactful family-friendly policies in the workplace.
To learn more about the Best Place for Working Parents® Dallas, please visit the DRC’s website.