LinkedIn, in an effort to get further up in your business, so to speak, has designated November 7 as Bring In Your Parents Day. As if Bring Your Child to Work Day wasn’t bad enough, now our coworkers may be making arrangements for the parental units to come in and see just how tiny our cubicles really are.
Could any good come of this? Well, probably so. LinkedIn’s program revolves around the idea that many parents have valuable career advice to offer, but may not know how best to deliver it because they aren’t exactly sure what their working offspring actually do. And many of those knowledge workers toiling away in technology, marketing and other somewhat mysterious jobs may not have thought to ask for that advice, either.
For those who don’t have parents or other adult family members to invite, LinkedIn is working on a Report Card that employees can send out (still in the works right now). This might also be a good option for the growing number of knowledge workers who don’t have an office for visitors to see because they work from home.
The whole event is pretty loose, including how exactly employees are to explain what they do to their parents in a one- or two-hour visit that will likely mostly be taken up with chit chat. The video from LinkedIn’s test of Bring In Your Parents Day at its headquarters in Dublin, Ireland, doesn’t shed much light on how everyone in the office got so happy that day, but if you enjoy Irish accents as much as I do, you should definitely check it out – and forward it to your parents.
