Families at AWS: Supporting employees at work and home

From recommended toys for an 18-month-old to advice about when to announce a pregnancy at work to questions about family-related company benefits, the Families at Amazon affinity group is a community where employees with all types of family scenarios can share experiences, build relationships, and find belonging.

Families at Amazon formed in 2020 as Amazon’s 12th affinity group. Its purpose is to unite all Amazon caregivers and allies to share knowledge, foster career growth, and cultivate community connections among families, while advocating for policies that help make Amazon a great place to work. Today, the group has thousands of members around the world who communicate daily via interactive learning sessions, emails and newsletters, and internal messaging channels.

Life at AWS chatted with two Families at Amazon leaders from AWS to learn more about the group’s work and support for employees. Heather Mellish is the Edge Services Go to Market leader in AWS’s Worldwide Specialist Organization and president of Families at Amazon, and Kara Kadow is a product marketing manager for AWS Marketing Databases and Analytics and vice president of marketing, communications, and events for Families at Amazon.  

Heather: We focus on topics such as bereavement, maternity and paternity leave, fertility, elder care, mental health support, and career balance at Amazon.  

Kara: We advocate for all Caregivers at Amazon and lean in on National Caregivers month each November to build community, create safe spaces for our members no matter where they are in their caregiving journey, and advocate for resources and benefits that are most impactful to caregivers in the workplace. This year, we are focusing on elder care support, caring for teenagers, and promoting our awesome new Amazon fertility benefits.

Heather: We support everyone with an affinity for caregiving and welcome all families of gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, marital status, dependent status, religion, race, ethnicity, or age. Families at Amazon is a selfless community of individuals who put their own needs aside to assist in creating higher qualities of life for one another.

Kara: Families have so many variations and we try to support them all, including single parents, adoptive/foster families, those who have experienced loss, those taking care of an elderly parent or special needs sibling—just to name a few.

Heather: We seek to help all members—as caregivers of parents, spouses, partners, and dependents—meet our personal responsibilities while continuing to raise the bar here at Amazon. We strive to be a part of that success via our programming and advocacy around issues such as equal access to childcare, backup childcare, restricted stock unit (RSU) vesting schedules, bereavement leave, and career advancement.

Kara: We are seeing more caregivers at Amazon requesting more flexible work schedules and office locations. We also see a need to share more best practices around work-home life balance and self care.

Heather: We focus on policy, workplace improvements, and learning. We host networking events, speaker series, fairs, panels, and other large group events that focus on various aspects of family caregiving. These events promote peer-to-peer connections throughout the company.

Kara: We are doing our best to share common pain points with our sponsors and global diversity, equity, and inclusion leaders as anecdotal feedback that aims to help shape how our leaders support caregivers in the workplace.

Heather: Families has grown to 15,000+ members with chapters and focus groups all over the world. We recently worked with our benefits team to ensure that stock-based incentives were still able to vest during the 6-week paid parental leave of absence.

Kara: Our Progyny fertility benefits in the U.S. have been tremendously successful. Since Amazon has partnered with Progyny, more than 3,000 Amazon babies have been born! Families at Amazon works closely with our benefits team to drive awareness to our amazing benefit programs through virtual events, marketing campaigns, and more.

Heather:  We are always hosting events across a wide variety of topics, providing information and ways to reach out to our board via our newsletter, and using surveys as a mechanism to gather information.

Heather: I would say that it’s up to the employee to draw their boundaries on how they want to manage their work-life harmony. Due to the global nature of our company, there are times when you might need to have a meeting outside of your normal working hours. I think it’s up to us as employees to communicate with our managers about what works for our schedules and teams around the world. As a working mom of four kids, I am proud of the balance I have been able to create between my top priority of being a mother vs. leading a global team and finding time for myself. It’s not easy, but I have been fortunate to work with and for leaders who will listen and accept me for me.

Heather: I am really passionate about providing grief and mental health support for caregivers. We spend a lot of time here at AWS and I think the more we offer programming and mental health support in a scalable, reliable manner to our employees, the more we can help them through the hardest times of their lives. Often, those who have gone through difficult times crave the routine and community of going back to work. If we can provide them with scalable, reliable ways to access support remotely, we take that to-do off their list.

I’m also really passionate about transparency and open dialogues for our members, especially as it relates to policies or benefits. The Families at Amazon affinity group tries to encourage as many town hall-style discussions with senior leadership as we can so we can help build an environment that’s transparent and inclusive for all.

Kara: November is National Caregivers Month and we are excited about the great content we will be hosting for employees both virtually and in-person.  

Heather: We are here! We are open to ideas. We are open to your volunteer time and support. We are committed to making Amazon the world’s best employer.

Kara: Joining an affinity group helps you build community, network, and learn and grow both personally and professionally. I am a mom to four children, one of whom is an Autistic teenager, and one who is soon to be with me through Ukraine’s U4U program, so our life is always busy. Having the support from not only my day job team, but also my affinity group allies and advocates is immensely helpful on those hard days and when we want to celebrate tiny wins that only a select few might understand!

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