Kyte Baby’s remote work mishap shows what happens when values don’t align with HR policies

Kyte Baby, a Texas-based baby clothing company, is at the center of a PR debacle stemming from the company’s decision to deny a remote work request to an employee and new parent. Its CEO’s handling of the incident offers lessons not only for crisis comms folks, but also HR pros.

How Kyte Baby ended up here. The employee, identified as Marissa, told Today she was fired by Kyte Baby after requesting to work remotely while her adopted newborn son was in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). The outlet withheld Marissa’s last name to protect her privacy.

Marissa told Today her managers had given her clearance to work remotely and part-time while her son was in the hospital. She’d also understood she would be able to take two weeks of maternity leave offered by Kyte Baby.

A spokesperson for Kyte Baby told the outlet Marissa’s remote work request was pending approval by Ying Liu, the CEO, who ultimately “did not feel her job could be done remotely and if she could not return to the office after her maternity leave, then we would part ways.” After a conversation with HR about the remote work request, Marissa told Today she was told by her higher-ups the arrangement wouldn’t work, “and for that reason, we will take this as your resignation.”

What US law says about remote work requests for new parents. The situation highlights how support for new parents often falls short in the workplace. While adoptive parents like Marissa may take 12 weeks of unpaid leave to bond with a new child under the Family Medical Leave Act, they must have worked for their employer for at least a year in order to do so. Efforts to pass paid family leave at the federal level have so far been unsuccessful, and just a patchwork of about a dozen states currently require employers to offer it.

Flexible work, too, is increasingly recognized as vital for working parents, but is not something that employers are generally required to offer, unless the state or locality they’re based in stipulates so. Under the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, employees may request telework as a “reasonable accommodation,” but the law specifically applies to workers affected by “pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions.”

What happened at Kyte Baby is “unfortunately not unique or rare,” Allison Whalen, CEO and co-founder of Parentaly, wrote on LinkedIn. “The underlying problem here is that we rely on private companies to decide if new parents get paid family leave. And then as a country we provide businesses and new parent employees with no financial resources—or even a legal requirement—to provide any form of paid family leave.”

Company policies should align with vision. Given much of the US lacks a robust social safety net for working parents, more employers are stepping in to provide adequate support for employees with families. Some 40% of employers surveyed by SHRM in 2023 offered paid maternity leave.

Liu has posted two separate apologies on TikTok since the story started circulating on the social media platform, and has promised to review her company’s HR policies and practices. Tens of thousands of users left comments on her videos, with some users vowing to stop buying clothing from the brand.

The backlash provides a snapshot of where public expectations surrounding benefits for working parents currently stand, at least on TikTok. Given Kyte Baby’s interest in “going above and beyond” to support new mothers, as Liu said in one of the apology videos, it also highlights the role HR can play in helping companies live by their values.

“A [company’s] vision, mission, values, charitable contributions, diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, as well as their overall brand identity, should align with their corporate policies and day-to-day decision-making,” Amber Howard, head of HR and Intelliswift Software, wrote on LinkedIn. She added it’s “crucial” for employers to review their HR policies regularly.

“Often, HR responsibilities are overlooked or delegated secondarily to administrative or finance employees, which can lead to crises like the one the company is currently experiencing,” she added.