A new module connects family life, self-reflection, and professional development.
Parents organize complex processes daily. They coordinate different needs, provide guidance, involve children in decisions, resolve conflicts, and react to situations that can only be planned to a limited extent.
This can lead to the development of skills that extend far beyond everyday family life. Many of these, however, remain self-evident and thus largely invisible.
This is precisely where the Parental Skill Scan – PSS for short – comes in.
I am therefore very pleased about an important professional development at easyfaM: I have successfully completed the course to become a PSS Coach with Joachim E. Lask. This means the Parental Skill Scan will be part of easyfaM’s offerings in the future.
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What is the Parental Skill Scan and the SCOPE Model?
The Parental Skill Scan was developed by Joachim Lask in the context of the WorkFamily Institute. It is a structured reflection tool that makes parental behavior patterns and skills from family and care experiences visible and discussable.
It focuses on five interconnected competence and functional areas, structured and mapped in the SCOPE Model.
The PSS helps parents to perceive their own actions more precisely: How do I provide guidance? How do I involve others? How do I deal with stress, responsibility, and different needs? Which behaviors have proven effective – and which do I want to develop further?
These observations lead to a structured status assessment. Experiences that often remain intuitive or self-evident in everyday family life are given a language and can be specifically reflected upon.
This translation is particularly interesting for companies: The PSS not only makes informally developed parental skills visible but also professionally discussable – for example, in HR development, re-entry programs, development talks, leadership development, or as part of family-friendly employer offerings.
It is not about generally evaluating parenthood as a professional competence. It is about reflecting on family and care experiences in a nuanced way and examining which patterns of action can be transferable to collaboration, communication, self-management, or leadership.
The PSS does not evaluate parenthood and is not an aptitude test. It creates a solid framework for self-reflection, development, and transfer.
Why does the PSS fit so well with easyfaM?
easyfaM supports families in shaping their everyday lives together. The Family Boards provide an overview, make tasks visible, and invite children and adults to take responsibility.
They are more than just organizational tools.
Around a Taskboard, concrete situations arise in which families provide guidance, negotiate tasks, make decisions, manage handovers, and communicate with each other. It is precisely in such everyday situations that parental skills become practically tangible.
The Parental Skill Scan complements this level with a structured space for reflection:
The Family Boards support joint action in everyday life. The SCOPE Model helps to recognize, reflect on, and further develop the effective skills within them.
This creates a connection between concrete everyday practice and conscious skill development.
From Family Life to the Professional Context
For HR and personnel development, the PSS becomes interesting when work-life balance is not only considered organizationally but also as a topic for development and reflection.
Many abilities that parents use in everyday family life can also be relevant for collaboration and leadership: orientation under changing conditions, communication, participation, conflict resolution, self-management, or dealing with different interests.
The PSS makes it possible to examine these connections in a nuanced way. It is not about generally reinterpreting family experiences as professional competencies. The crucial aspect is shared reflection:
- What experiences have I had?
- What patterns of action have I developed?
- In which situations are these helpful?
- Where are there personal areas for development?
- Which competencies can be meaningfully transferred to other contexts?
For employees, this can lead to a clearer understanding of their own resources. For companies, it opens up a more professional language for informal learning and experience spaces that often remain invisible in classic qualification logics – for example, during re-entry, development talks, leadership development, or talent development.
An Important Next Step for easyfaM
With the Parental Skill Scan, easyfaM is expanding its offerings with a module that fits very well with our previous work.
Our Family Boards help families to make their everyday lives visible and shape them together. Our learning and support programs create space for orientation and development. The PSS complements this work with a structured analytical and reflective perspective.
This clarifies the connection that easyfaM has long been concerned with:
What parents experience and learn in everyday family life can be a valuable resource for family, career, and collaboration.
In the coming weeks, the specific formats in which the Parental Skill Scan can be used at easyfaM will be developed. More information will follow soon.
If you are already curious, would like to learn more about the PSS, or discuss possible areas of application, please feel free to contact me.
I am very much looking forward to this new development step – and to the conversations and insights that will emerge from it.
What Companies Can Gain
The PSS can help companies to:
- make parental skills from family and care experiences professionally discussable,
- supplement re-entry programs, development talks, and HR development with a reflective perspective,
- more strongly connect leadership and work-life balance,
- perceive employees not only in terms of work-life balance needs but also in terms of informal learning and experience spaces.
It remains important: The PSS is not a selection or aptitude procedure. It is a reflection and development tool.
If you would like to learn more about the PSS or check whether it could be an interesting module for your company, your employees, or your managers, please contact me.
I look forward to your questions and to discussing how parental skills can become visible, reflectable, and transferable within organizations.
Contact: frommherz@easyfam.com