 |
|
|
|||||
Care.com launched in 2006 as a platform that helps parents find babysitters and nannies. But nearly two decades later, the company came across some disconcerting data: According to Pew, 64% of young women and 50% of young men don’t want children, a figure that has been rising in recent years. As Care.com conducted its own research, it discovered that one significant reason for this phenomenon is that young people are overwhelmed by all the different forms of care they must provide. In a survey, the company found that 28% of people have caregiving responsibilities for parents, grandparents, and other loved ones; 35% say this makes them less likely to have children. Indeed, by 2034, the number of seniors will outpace children. “So many of us are living in the ‘sandwich generation,’ caring for both kids and aging parents,” says Brad Wilson, Care.com’s CEO. “There’s a compounding effect.” Care.com believes it can better position itself to be a resource at this cultural moment, providing much more than just childcare, but also senior care, pet care, home services, and even finding summer camps for kids. Today, it’s unveiling a new brand identity that highlights a more comprehensive approach to caregiving. It also launching new tools that help families manage the mental load of juggling all these different caregivers. But the company also acknowledges that the caregiving crisis in America is also rooted in systemic issues, including the high cost of raising children and the lack of government support for families. So Care.com is also playing a role in advocating corporate and government policies that bring down the cost of caregiving. [Image: courtesy Care.com] A Compounding Burden Care.com has observed the growing burden of caregiving, as society has evolved in recent decades. For one thing, as women’s workforce participation has increased, more families are looking for daycare, nannies, and babysitters. Also, Americans no longer live in multigenerational families. “Families no longer feel like they have a ‘village’ to raise their child,” says Meiling Tan, Care.com’s VP of Brand. “Grandparents often live across the country. We don’t live in places where we can ask a neighbor for help in a pinch.” Wilson points out that the pandemic exacerbated this situation. During the lockdowns, parents had to work while also taking care of their children, leading to overwhelm. Many professional caregivers also felt burnt out and left the industry altogether. And the cost of care kept increasing. “There’s a lot of mental anguish around caregiving,” he says. “People are losing sleep about all of this.” [Image: courtesy Care.com] Care.com allows users to search for caregivers for free; it also offers a premium membership that costs between $13 and $40 gives you more features like unlimited messaging and access to a broader range of caregivers. The company has been steadily adding new services to meet the needs of its customers. In the realm of childcare, for instance, the platform offers tutoring, night nurses, camps, and help finding pre-schools. But importantly, the company now offers more forms of care for adults, from housekeeping services to help with post-surgery recovery to dog walking. When it comes to senior care, it offers everything from hospice support to memory care. And yet, the company says most people still see Care.com as a platform that specializes in childcare support, which is why it has invested in a comprehensive rebrand to help change this perception. Today, it unveils a new logo: It’s a green box with a large letter “C” with a smaller letter “c” nestled inside it. The font and the green color scheme is a change from previous coral palette. The imagery on the site, as well as in the new advertising campaign, will emphasize different types of care. “Before the site definitely felt more childlike,” says Tan. “We wanted to redesign our homepage to make it look more sophisticated, and show that we provide more holistic care.” [Images: courtesy Care.com] This rebranding is designed to spur growth for Care.com. The team hopes it will attract customers who may not know all the services the company provides, while also introducing existing customers to new kinds of caregiving. Care.com built its user base with the help of venture capital: It received a total of $156.8 million in funding between its 2006 launch and 2012. Then, in 2019, it was acquired for $500 million by IAC, the conglomerate that also operates DotDash and People Magazine. Over the past two decades, it’s faced a growing array of competitors, from platforms like UrbanSitter and Sittercity, to Facebook groups which enable babysitters to connect with parents in a particular neighborhood. [Image: courtesy Care.com] A Mental Burden Along with this rebrand, the company is also focused on helping manage the complexity and stress of juggling all these different forms of care. For instance, creating a shortlist of nannies then interviewing them is a laborious task. Care.com has launched a messaging platform that allows you to easily eliminate caregivers from a search or keep them in the running. Soon, it will launch a hiring hub where you can take notes on the backend and sort through candidates more efficiently. It is also unveiling an AI search function so you can lay out what you are looking for in a caregiver in your own words. The platform will then search for the right person using descriptions from the caregivers’ profiles. “You can ask for a meal prep guru or someone who loves art so they can do crafts with your kids,” says Tan. “And we’ll deliver results tailored to your needs.” Care.com users have also said that safety is a big cause of concern. So the new website will feature a safety center that explains the platform’s robust background checks, from an initial criminal check to continuous monitoring of caregivers. It also allows you to pay for more comprehensive background checks. (There’s also a dedicated safety team at Care.com that is available around the clock for users to call in the case of a crisis.) Systemic Problems Wilson points out that while Care.com can be helpful to Americans struggling with all their responsibilities, the caregiving crisis is a product of many systemic issues. Paying for caregivers is very expensive, and many families feel crushed by these costs. One solution Care.com has developed Care for Business, where it partners with companies who can pay to give employees free premium Care.com memberships and also subsidize the cost of caregivers. Employees can get access to “backup care” for days when regular caregiving falls through; a caregiver can be sent at the last minute so the employee can return to work. “We’ve found that employees with caregiving benefits are more likely to stay at their job and not miss days of work,” says Wilson. “This is great for the employee, but it’s also great for the employer.” But ultimately, Wilson says that part of the burden American families feel has to do with the lack of government support. Care.com does policy work, advocating for child tax credits, for instance. And Wilson himself is the co-chair of the Future of Care Economy at the World Economic Forum, where he advocates for leaders around the world to prioritize the care sector. For Tan, part of her work as head of branding is to elevate the role of caregivers in society through the brand’s website and advertising. “From personal experience, many of our caregivers talk about themselves as just a babysitter or just a nanny,” she says. “We’re trying to change the narrative so that caregiving is a respected, celebrated profession. Caregivers do more than help families; they are what keeps our economy going.”
Category:
E-Commerce
As a manager, its easy to get caught up in the day-to-day grind of fixing processes, eliminating bottlenecks, and streamlining workflows. We focus on reducing frictionthe things that get in the way of people doing their best work. And sure, thats important. But heres the thing: Reducing fear is just as, if not more, important. A comprehensive two-year study by Google identified psychological safety as the most important factor in high-performing teams. This environment allows team members to take risks and be vulnerable without fear of negative consequences. Harvard Business School professor Amy C. Edmondson emphasizes that psychological safety enables employees to speak up, make mistakes, and learn from them, which is essential for innovation and growth. Lets face it. The best processes in the world wont help much if your team is afraid to speak up, take risks, or challenge the status quo. Fear can stunt creativity, shut down communication, and make people avoid the very risks that lead to growth. So, as leaders, we need to think beyond just fixing processes. We need to also focus on creating an environment where people feel safe and confident enough to acteven if it means making a mistake along the way. Why Fear Matters More Than You Think Fear is a powerful force. It can make people double-check their work, avoid taking risks, and be extra cautious. But when fear becomes the driving force behind decisions, it also leads to silence. When people are afraid to speak up, they hold back good ideas, overlook problems, and avoid making necessary changes. Neuroscience backs this up. When we experience fear, our brains go into fight or flight mode, which limits our ability to think clearly and make rational decisions. When were scared, we become reactive instead of proactive. This is why a culture of fear isnt just uncomfortableits downright unproductive. As a leader, its your job to create a culture where people feel safe to speak up, ask questions, and challenge the status quo. Thats why reducing fear should go hand in hand with reducing friction. Fixing Processes Doesnt Fix Everything Lets look at a real-world example: the United States Postal Service. In the early 2000s, the USPS faced a significant drop in productivity, rising operational costs, and declining employee morale. To address these issues, management introduced new technology, upgraded processes, and streamlined workflows to improve efficiency and reduce errors. They invested in automated sorting systems and revamped scheduling to make operations run more smoothly. However, despite these process improvements, the results werent as dramatic as expected. Productivity wasnt increasing, and employees still seemed disengaged. The reason? Fear was still very much present in the workplace. Employees were afraid to speak up or share concerns about the new processes. If workers noticed something wrong with the new systems or had ideas to improve efficiency, they didnt feel comfortable offering suggestions or challenging the way things were done. This is a perfect example of how reducing frictionby fixing processesdidnt have the full impact it could have had because fear was still holding back the team. How could USPS have tackled both issues at once? They could have started by actively working to reduce fear within the organization. Management needed to create an environment where employees felt safe to make mistakes, raise issues, and offer constructive feedback. Employees who feel safe and supported are more likely to speak up when somethings not working and more likely to suggest creative solutions. They become partners in progress rather than passive participants. Balancing Both: Reducing Friction and Fear SEB, a Nordic financial services group, implemented a five-month training program focusing on psychological safety and perspective-taking for its investment banking leadership team. This initiative aimed to overcome transformation challenges and foster open communication. As a result, the team achieved revenues 25% above their annual targets in a strategically important market segment. A multi-industry case study followed businesses whose team members were hesitant to voice concerns. All participants implemented psychological safety workshops emphasizing active listening and constructive feedback. This initiative led to improved conflict resolution, enhanced communication, and increased productivity, positively impacting the company’s bottom line. To be an effective leader, you cant just focus on fixing processes. Thats a quick fix, but it doesnt address the deeper issues that impact team dynamics. Reducing friction is important, yes. But reducing fear is essential if you want to create a truly high-performing, innovative, and engaged team. Simon Brown, global learning and development leader at EY, has spent years building critical skills and behaviors in high-performing teams. He shares: You cant automate courage. While systems help things run smoothly, its the culture that inspires people to run toward challenges instead of away from them. Real-world application So, what does this balance look like in practice? Reduce friction: Simplify workflows, cut out unnecessary steps, and ensure your team has the tools and resources they need to do their jobs efficiently. Reduce fear: Foster a culture of psychological safety, where mistakes are treated as learning opportunities, where feedback is welcomed (not feared), and where team members feel confident enough to take risks and innovate. You/me/we: Adopt a decision-making framework that defines what decisions employees can make on their own without fear or reprisal. This cuts down on back-and-forth decision-making bottlenecks and helps people feel more empowered in their roles. Model a hands-off approach: Is your leadership decreasing the number of mandatory meetings but still attending themselves? Making outdated rules optional instead of obsolete? Without buy-in from the top, team members will be too afraid to take action on simplification initiatives that can free up time and decrease unnecessary mental distress.Leadership isnt just about improving processesits about improving peoples ability to act within those processes. If you want your team to truly thrive, youve got to focus on both reducing friction and reducing fear. When you do, youll create an environment where people feel empowered to make decisions, try new things, and speak up when somethings not working. Thats when the real magic happens.
Category:
E-Commerce
Loving Pinterest has long been a part of my secretly middle-aged personality. I have 16.1k pins to my name to prove it. I started my account in middle school eight years ago, and Pinterest has been a dear companion to me ever since. I used to log on every day to tuck away precious ideas and artworks into my boards, which I could take out to admire every time I needed advice, a joke, or a drawing lesson. I am not alone in this. Pinterest says that 42% of its global user base is Gen Z. I think Gen Z has really latched onto Pinterest as a safe platform to use, especially with so much happening around other social media platforms, says Lois, whose Tiktok videos about Pinterest under the username dandydemon have garnered over six million views. Pinterest is a very atypical social media platform. It’s not like Instagram, it’s not like TikTok, where youre actively scrolling. It’s a very personalized social media platform, and it feels almost like a journal of sorts for people. But for many users like Lois, a worrying pattern has emerged over the past couple of years. There is so much AI on the platform . . . that it’s hard to determine what [posts are] AI, and where it is coming from, she says. Other people like Reddit user InterationInternal agree. I was looking for hair color inspo and it was all AI. I couldn’t find a single human!! Then [I] typed in nail inspo, interior design – same thing. Is this platform dead? they wrote in a thread titled Pinterest is 100% AI now? R/Pinterest hosts hundreds of posts with similar complaints. Frustration over AI content and the recent mass deletion of user accounts is boiling over to the point where many users are leaving the platform for alternatives. Andy McCune, cofounder and CEO of the curation app Cosmos, says that after launching in August 2024, Cosmos has already gained millions of users. And, in the couple of days after Lois shouted out the platform as a Pinterest alternative in her a video discussing the Pinterest bans, McCune noted that Cosmos saw tens of thousands of new users join the platform. Pinterest says AI slop is not a problem on its platform. Pinterest’s systems are designed to prominently surface high-quality, inspirational content says a spokesperson for the company. Low-quality Gen AI content is therefore not broadly recommended by our systems or widely seen by users. Still, to help address user concerns about the presence of AI generated content on the platform, Pinterest rolled out a new feature to tag AI content in April. To help people determine whether a post contains AI-modified or generated content, Pinterest now analyzes the metadata of its images to look for AI markers. For those that fall through the cracks, Pinterest has also developed classifiers to detect AI generated content automatically. If Pinterest determines that an image is AI generated, it adds an AI modified label when users view it in closeup. As we refine these classifiers, our labels will become even more helpful and accurate, says the spokesperson. Not everyone thinks this fix will be enough. Lois believes that the existence of the AI pins in the first place undermines the utility of Pinterest. I use Pinterest for home decor reasons, she says. I love to imagine what my future home would look like, and also get decor items from Pinterest, and there’s no way to get a decor item that was made by AI . . . the whole point of Pinterest, to me, as far as the commerce side of it is seeing products that I can buy because they exist within reality. Pinterest is piloting a solution for this as well. The company is currently experimenting with a see fewer option for Gen AI pins in categories prone to AI modification or generation such as decor and food. We believe that AI should enhance, not replace, the value provided by our creators. Pinterests algorithms will continue to prioritize content that is inspirational, actionable, and most relevant to individual users, says the spokesperson. Deeper questions about AI on Pinterest Although these features may help users declutter their homepages of AI content, the overall amount of AI generated content on Pinterest will likely keep growing. After studying Pinterests monthly data and trend reports for January through April 2025, the technology-focused newsletter Garbage Day wrote for Sherwood News that every trend that Pinterest has specifically reported as growing since January 2025 has been saturated with pictures created by AI models. In fact, the article asserts that all 16 trends in Pinterests April trends report contained multiple AI generated images in the top 20 search results. The continued encouragement of AI generated images is worrying for many people working in the arts. It’s the sort of indiscriminate use of [AI] that bypasses the very valuable and hard work and the very sophisticated and complex work and creative processes of artists says Robert Brinkerhoff, Department Head of Illustration at RISD. I think one of our chief worries is that visual culture will diminish ultimately because with capitalism as a driving force, quality is not as important as money. Brinkerhoff notes that it is getting more and more difficult for artists to compete with the speed and increasing accuracy of AI generated content. For instance, an exploding area of practice for illustrators in recent years has been in visual development for film, for games, for animation, and many of our students are interested in that, he says. But those industries . . . are losing jobs and they’re being replaced by AI because it’s quite easy to generate that stuff and [AI is] very readily capable of creating stuff quickly. This concept is exactly what AI slop farmers on Pinterest such as Jesse Cunningham bank on. Cunningham openly admits to flooding Pinterest with AI content to make revenue. “I’m talking $10,000 per month on Pinterest . . . using AI images, using AI text,” he says in a YouTube video explaining his process. “On my page, we do 50 to 80 [posts] a day,” he says. We are presenting Pinterest with unique images every single time. This is why its hard to compete with AI. Not to mention that despite launching their new filters on AI content, Pinterest itself continues to use users’ information to train their own AI models. When you save or upload content to Pinterest, we may use it to improve the accuracy, safety and overall performance of Pinterest Canvas, says Pinterest on its Help Center website. What happens when a platform uses AI to train tself to better help people find inspiration to create a life they love, when an increasing number of uploads are AI generated? The more you subtract human beings from making things like art . . . the more dehumanized we become as a society, I think, says Brinkerhoff.
Category:
E-Commerce
All news |
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||