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HCC honored with Best Place for Working Parents distinction

Nov 17, 2022

Houston Community College has earned one of the Houston region’s 2022 Best Place for Working Parents® designations.

The recognition comes from Best Place for Working Parents, a national collaborative and network of businesses across the U.S. dedicated to providing support for working parents through evidence-based strategies. To earn the distinction, employers must respond to an online assessment that details their support of family-friendly policies. 

"We are proud to be listed as one of the Best Place for Working Parents Houston businesses,” said Izzy Anderson, J.D., chief Human Resources officer for the HCC system. “HCC supports working parents through its family-friendly policies and practices and strives to ensure our faculty and staff have the flexibility they need to thrive in their jobs.”

Anderson cited HCC’s additional pluses of the college that enhance its family friendly reputation. These include an increase in maximum vacation rollover hours from 80 to a maximum of 200 hours, the creation of a remote work regulation accessible to employees  and multiple extensions beyond expiration of the federal regulations to an HCC-specific COVID leave policy. This reduced negative impacts to employee sick and vacation leave banks. HCC also has onsite, subsidized day care available to faculty and staff.

HCC also provides generous paid time off and sick leave. Each year, the college has up to 27 paid holidays for its fulltime, benefits-eligible employees. Included in that number is a winter break of 10 days and a Spring break of five days for its approximately 5,300 employees. The college recently increased its Thanksgiving holiday period from two days to a full week.

Policies such as these help the economy thrive at a time when the U.S. has seen a huge decline in workplace participation across the nation. According to the consulting firm McKinsey, more than 15 million U.S. workers have quit their jobs since April 2021. About 45 percent of those surveyed said the main cause for leaving their jobs was the need to take care of their families. Women in the workplace represented the largest number of those who have left the workforce.