The Dallas Regional Chamber has named three local companies as recipients of the inaugural Best Place for Working Parents Dallas Innovator Awards.

The companies are:

Micro/Small Business (under 200 employees): Barnes & Thornburg

Medium Business (between 201 and 999 employees): Corgan

Large Business (more than 1,000 employees): Children’s Health

The Best Place for Working Parents Dallas is a local partner of the Best Place for Working Parents national initiative that recognizes family-friendly workplaces in the Dallas Region through a proprietary business self-assessment and it seeks to raise awareness of the importance of family-friendly benefits and policies for employers and workers, the DRC said.

“Our mission is to lead the Dallas Region to become the best place to live, work, and do business for all people, including working parents” DRC President and CEO Dale Petroskey said in a statement. “We are proud of these three companies for demonstrating the Dallas Region’s commitment to being family-friendly and setting an example for employers throughout North Texas.”

The DRC said companies are evaluated against peer businesses of similar size and industry based upon their family-friendly TT offerings in 10 research-backed policies, including paid parental leave, child-care assistance, and flexible working conditions.

This year, more than 120 Dallas area companies received the Best Place for Working Parents designation.

Barnes & Thornburg, a national full-service law firm with a Dallas office, earned the distinction as the Micro/Small Business Innovator due, in part, to its partnership with Bright Horizons to offer backup dependent and elder care services and to the formation of “BTParents,” the firm’s employee resource group focused exclusively on the needs of working parents.

“We are honored to be recognized as a leader for working parents in Dallas,” Victor Vital, Dallas managing partner for Barnes & Thornburg, said in a statement. “We are proud of the culture we have created for our team. While we always strive for better, this recognition is a testament to the progress we’ve achieved through the successful implementation of policies, benefits and creative resources to support our team members and their families.”

Dallas-based architecture and design firm Corgan earned the distinction as the Medium Business Innovator. Corgan’s partnership with Stork Club, an industry-leading family-friendly benefits provider, offers employees a wide range of supports, from fertility and family planning assistance to quality childcare referrals.

“We have worked purposefully and diligently to get to this point, and we’ll keep evolving our parent-centric benefits to support all Corganites in their family-building journeys,” Corgan President Lindsay Wilson said in a statement. “From paid time off for parents and wellness programs, our comprehensive benefits package seeks to support all employees. We will keep asking our people what matters to them, wherever they are in their life!”

Children’s Health, a nationally ranked pediatric health system in Dallas, earned the distinction as the Large Business Innovator. Children’s Health offers highly impactful benefits to its prospective and current team members providing up to $10,000 in reimbursement for adoption or surrogacy expenses and subsidizing $1,000 in a dependent care flexible spending account for its employees.

“We continually evaluate our benefits to provide innovative, unique, and competitive ways to support our team members, as parents and professionals,” Kim Besse, President and Chief People Officer at Children’s Health, said in a statement. “We want our colleagues to know we acknowledge, appreciate, and deeply value their unwavering dedication to providing world-class care to our patients. We are thankful for all they do to support our mission of making life better for children.”

The Best Place for Working Parents® Dallas Innovator Awards seek to recognize companies whose family-friendly offerings go above-and-beyond the 10 policies evaluated by the business self-assessment. All Dallas Regional companies with the Best Place for Working Parents® designation were invited to apply for the Innovator Awards. Nearly 50 companies submitted applications.

DRC said that the Innovator Award applications were evaluated by an anonymous panel of judges, who scored each submission based on the comprehensiveness, innovativeness, and impact of the company’s family-friendly policies and benefits. A single winner was selected in each business size category.

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