First, encourage them to ask questions because discovering what people do at work is one of the main points of the whole exercise.
It is important to let children know that it is okay to ask questions – of anyone. A child will not remain interested in the job if parents just ignore the questions that their kids have. If you have an interesting job, or you enjoy it tremendously, whatever it is, get that across to your children.
If you don’t like your job, this day may not be right for you or your daughters.
Technology, whether it’s video games or high speed internet, is very appealing to young people. A construction site has this; a desk job with a few different software programs gets this across. It can be really useful to get them interested in the IT department of your company. In other words, even if that’s not directly your job, arranging with the IT department to bring her back and show her the banks of modems and wires makes an impression. Kids understand connections and why everything is part of a network these days.
If you have the ability, creating a video about your job has a lot of appeal to younger people who are visual learners. Playing it at work with everything you’re talking about right before her, can have a strong impression. And it can be really fun to make. Daughters are tuned into the digital world.
The Purpose of Such a Day
Take Your Daughters To Work Day is something that the Ms. Foundation has been very big in promoting. Forbes Magazine wrote about how important it was to make sure young girls were included in this workforce related day. The day allows girls the chance to gain more confidence and consider a wide variety of career options.
A parent can certainly teach their child about the logistics of their job, as well. A sales professional can show their child how to talk when trying to get people to part with their money. Or even the mundane task of properly filling out an order form when the parent has successfully completed a sale. The Florida Department of Education encourages parents to help their kids learn about the concept of logistics.
Safety Concerns
Safety is important to a lot of jobs; even if kids think it’s not. Emphasizing it as an aspect of what you do, is instructive. It’s strange to think about as well, but you want to make sure that you can convince your kids that your job is safe. They do worry about what you’re doing all day; not every day but it comes up at the oddest times.
And they may be tuning the entire process out if they are scared about the job itself – for you or if they might otherwise be considering the job as something they’d like to do. If you are talking to an advanced student then you can certainly mention things like OSHA certifications that your company has earned regarding worker safety.
Are you a lawyer? There are a lot of good stories that come up in this line of work. Honest stories, about people’s lives and what can go wrong. Young people can find an interest in labor law or personal injury cases or almost anything that demonstrates a right and a wrong. That’s true no matter how old you are; think of all the courtroom dramas out there.
You should realize that your daughter certainly will seek to be treated fairly when they enter the labor force, so labor law comes up. A lot of different TV programs now film shows inside of factories and they are going to play a highly public role in making sure that negligence by a company is caught on camera.
Travel Means Something New, Every Second
Traveling around the world; heck traveling to a new city is something that can be engaging to younger people. And again, adults often enjoy it, too.
If your job requires you to do a fair amount of traveling then you can certainly use that information as a tool to keep your daughter interested in the job. If your job involves the concept of shipping plastics to Japan or selling plastics to Japan then you are likely cutting a deal with one of America’s top export partners.
Because face to face communication is important, you will likely find yourself traveling overseas. Any extended travel gets kids thinking about how commerce works on a global scale and how, ultimately, almost everything is connected these days.
If you work for a cereal company, it can be a reasonable goal to try to send more cereal overseas to a country like Brazil. Brazil buys more than $1 billion in cereal from the United States on a yearly basis. The cereal company that you work has likely already created great videos and commercials. Making it clear you’re a parent who really wants to do a thorough job explaining your job and what the company does, will reflect well on you, as a parent and a “completist”
A final example is education-oriented companies. It also happens to be one in which your child has intimate knowledge and is already a consumer. Different educational firms and entities are definitely going to highlight the need to reach out to all consumers.
Because the educational mindset is to address different ways of learning, they also should have plenty of materials – from videos to websites and maybe even an app. The content will likely embrace diversity. So if you work at this type of company, take advantage of what’s on offer and generate excitement and hopefully some respect for what you do, as well.
