We’re not talking here about the traditional visit to the office to introduce the newborn baby or the relatively common practice of offering an on-site crèche to parents. These are employers that allow employees to bring their babies to the office every day to sit next to them (presumably in a pram or highchair rather than an office chair, that would just be silly) and even accompany them to meetings.

According to the Parenting in the Workplace Institute, there are over 80 baby-friendly employers in the US. The advantages claimed on the Babies at Work website include earlier returns to work (surprisingly, most US states don’t have paid statutory maternity leave); better employee loyalty; improvements in attracting candidates; and higher morale and productivity. Bizarrely, the website also claims that “babies attract new customers”.

Quite how parents are expected to look after a toddler while doing their day job isn’t entirely clear (gives a whole new meaning to multi-tasking). That’s to say nothing of how the typical non-parent in the office is likely to react (grumpily, I would suggest). And health and safety considerations? Well, parents are asked to sign a US-style waiver (for those awkward baby/stapler incidents) and it’s generally accepted that babies are welcome in the workplace until they are old enough to crawl.

Any UK employers brave/mad enough to give this a go can get inspiration from the sample policy and other documents provided on the Parenting in the Workplace Institute website.

Read more on babies in the workplace on the The Independent website, while The Guardian has carried out some entertaining one-day baby-in-the-office experiments.