Women at Work - Managing Parental Leave (Yours or Someone Else’s)

Episode Date: September 24, 2018

Women around the world have access to vastly different amounts of paid parental leave. In some countries, they can take a year or more. In the U.S., they’re not guaranteed any paid leave at all. We talk about how to manage your leave, or someone else’s, no matter how long it is. We also hear from a woman in Washington, DC, who had the rare opportunity to take a year of paid leave. Guest: Daisy Wademan Dowling. Our theme music is Matt Hill’s “City In Motion,” provided by Audio Network.

Over 40,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one platform. Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free at netsuite.com slash women at Work. You're listening to Women at Work from Harvard Business Review. I'm Sarah Green Carmichael. I'm Nicole Torres. I'm Amy Bernstein. The U.S. is the only industrialized country that doesn't guarantee new mothers paid time off. Whether you get parental leave and how much time you get is totally up to the company. You're lucky if you get six weeks, maybe eight. And as a result, we women often end up using our political capital to advocate for paid leave for ourselves or our companies, woman by woman and company by company over and over again. So paid parental leave is very important. It's important for the health and well-being of new babies and their parents.

For instance, women are more likely to go back to work and they're less likely to be depressed later in life. In this episode, we'll talk about how to manage parental leave, yours or someone else's, no matter how much time you have off. So the most common question I get is, how is this all going to work? But first, we wanted to know what our lives might be like if women in the U.S. had access to longer paid leaves. So I went looking for companies that had unusually generous paid leave policies. And I was really impressed by what the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation offers

their full-time staff. So we're starting with a story about a woman who works there in the D.C. office. I went to her house to talk to her about her experience with the foundation's parental leave program. You'll hear her little girl, Cordelia, in the background. Mommy, I want to put on my hair. Okay. Are you putting spit in my hair? What's happening right now? Maeve Ward is sitting on the floor of her living room with her two-year-old daughter, Cordelia. They're surrounded by sticker books and markers, but right now Cordelia just wants to play with her mom's hair.

Are you coloring in my hair? Or are you rubbing applesauce in my hair? That's what happens. She's rubbing applesauce in my hair. Maeve is used to sticky fingers. She has three kids. When her boys were a few months old, she would get dressed to go to work and then put her bathrobe back on over her outfit to protect her clothes until she got to the car. Because I would inevitably have some sort of spit up or baby food puree or snot on my shoulder before I got to work. But with Cordelia, Maeve's experience was different.

That's because right before Cordelia was born, Maeve's employer, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, extended its parental leave policy for full-time employees from 12 weeks fully paid to 52. I had the opportunity to take a year and stay at home as a mother without any of the risks or sacrifices that usually come with that for other women. I also didn't need to worry about what I would do when that year was up, when my time as a stay-at-home mom was up. I knew that I had a job to go back to. Okay, so you find out that you

can take up to a year of leave instead of six months. Did you know right away that you wanted to do that? What was your thought process like? I actually took a really long time to decide whether I wanted to take the full year, probably a frustrating amount of time for my manager. A year is just a very long time, and I've never imagined myself as a stay-at-home mother. And the difference between three months, which I took with my first two children, six months that I was planning to take, and a full year really felt dramatic. In the end, she decided to take the whole year for a couple of reasons. I didn't think I'd ever get a chance like that again. I wanted to experience it. I knew that I could always go back sooner if I chose to.

And I know that this sounds self-aggrandizing, but I felt some responsibility to take a full year for all of the other women in the office, especially the younger women. You know, as one of the first people who was eligible for leave, if I didn't take it, it would be really hard for other women or other men to decide to take the leave. The Gates Foundation says that as of March 2018, 222 parents have taken advantage of its leave program. 71% have been women and 29% have been men, which is pretty close to the gender breakdown of who works there. Well, what were some of the concerns you had, aside from, you know, the amount of time that it was, what were some concerns you had about, you know, stepping away

from your work for a year? Yeah, when you're only out for a couple weeks or a couple of months, you can put projects on hold. When you're out for a year, that's not an option. You can't stop work for a year. So I was worried about the work continuing while I was gone. The first few weeks after I had Cordelia, I would check my email a couple of times a week, which turned out to be a terrible idea. Either I would see a response from one of the women who was doing my work, and I would say, oh, that's not how I would respond, that's terrible.

No, don't do it that way. Or I would read it and say, oh no, that's really smart. They're not gonna miss me at all while I'm gone. And neither of those were healthy for me or helpful to them. So eventually I just put my phone away, I put the computer away, and I really went all in on being home and being present for that year. And she wasn't just present for baby Cordelia. At the time I had a six-year-old and an eight-year-old, and I think in some ways the time I had may have meant more to them because they were

aware that I was there. Cordelia certainly appreciated me feeding her and having her diaper changed and I wore her in a wrap most of the time just because I could carry her around. But my sons were really aware that I was there. So it was really incredible to have that time with them and for them to know that I was available. Maeve made herself available to her colleagues, too. When she thought that she'd only have six months of leave with Cordelia,

she was planning to completely disconnect from work. But with a year, she decided that she could still help her team with some goal planning. When you take a full year off, spending a day or two or three over the course of the year going to a retreat with a team didn't feel like much of a sacrifice. A month before her leave was over, Maeve put Cordelia in daycare so she could start shifting back into work mode. I set up dozens of lunches and dozens of coffees

and asked everyone on my team to send me all the things they'd been working on over the last year to read. And it was really just more than I needed to do. Because while Maeve was on leave, two women, one an employee and one a consultant, had taken on most of her work. They had been putting together project and investment briefs for her. And once she was back in the office, they helped her gradually return to her role. She says they were key to her transition back to work. But even with all their support, Maeve says going back was still tricky. Just getting back into the working environment, I can remember sitting in one meeting and people were using all kinds of jargon,

organizational jargon about scaffolding and building guardrails and boiling things down. And that was just not a way that my mind had worked in a while. So getting back to that was frustrating, but I got there. I also had to get people used to putting me back on an email. When you're out for a year, people stop copying you. They stop sending you email. They stop trying to keep you in the loop. So I had to remind everyone that I was back, and it was time to put me back in the loop.

It was time to invite me to that meeting. And that took some real proactive outreach on my part. So, 52 weeks, paid parental leave, with plenty of coverage and a gradual return to work. I asked Maeve, is this the dream? In retrospect, it was the dream for me. I wouldn't have told you ahead of time that that was the dream. I would have said that that was probably too long. And it may not be the dream for every woman. One of the most incredible things is that this is a choice.

Women at the Gates Foundation can choose to take three months or six months or a full year, and it's always still a choice. So for me, it turned into the dream. It may not be perfect for everyone, but that's okay too. That was a great interview and it sounded like a lot of fun. It was really fun. Maeve and Cordelia were super welcoming. I think we caught them right before they were about to take a trip. So Cordelia was offering me all kinds of snacks that they had packed away.

And then afterward, she and I blew bubbles outside. It was really nice. Oh, a perfect play date. It was. It was a perfect play date. It was. It was a nice play date. Just an update on Maeve. So while her manager is taking her leave, she is stepping into her manager's role, and they call it a stretch role. She doesn't get her manager's salary, but she gets like a 10% bonus for doing the stretch role assignment. That's one of the things I think is so great about parental leave that's not as often talked about is that in an organization where you don't really know what your colleagues do, you don't really know what it's like to be your boss.

When someone's on leave, you really have an opportunity to learn, which is awesome for the person filling in and also just good for the organization as a whole. I was in that position when one of my bosses took parental leave and I learned so much while she was away. I was so glad when she came back. But I also really learned a lot about like the stuff she did that I had no insight into before. Yeah. It seems like a good opportunity to grow also and develop at least experientially in a company. And that's really the only way to learn to be a boss is to be a boss. Right. Yeah.

Yeah. So, you know, most of what we talked about was the Gates Foundation's parental leave program, but it also became clear that like parental leave is super important, but companies shouldn't just stop there. Maeve said what also made a difference to her and her, you know, childcare is that the Gates Foundation also offers unlimited vacation time. And that allows me to take time away from work to be with my children sometimes when they need it. A lot of women take unpaid time off if a child gets sick or if a child needs to go to the

doctor or even just needs a day with their parent. They also have backup daycare. And that just makes a big difference, too, in making being a good parent and being a good employee manageable. It's so interesting to hear what they're doing. And on the one hand, it's so like inventive and innovative and groundbreaking. And it also makes me so angry that most companies in the U.S. don't offer anything like this. I mean, I think only 14% of women in the U.S. have access to any paid leave at all. At all. And so I really love hearing what Maeve's experience was like and what it might be like

in a kind of different world. But I just wish more women had access to this kind of stuff. Yeah. And this is a pretty rare benefit, set of benefits. And I think about all the women who aren't getting any benefits who are working 34 hours a week. So they, you know, don't have to get benefits, that sort of thing. Yeah. I think one of the things that struck me as we were putting together this episode and as I was kind of doing research into this topic was just, we have this kind of implicit assumption that paid leave is something that women kind of ask for in some cases apologetically like oh it's so inconvenient for my co-workers or for the company but like maybe i could have this thing like that's how i've often thought of it but when i was doing the research it really made it clear that there's economic benefits to paid leave for men and for

women and birth parents and adoptive parents. And there were huge benefits to the baby. And then there were also tons of benefits to companies. I mean, enough companies offer this now that we can do research on them and kind of see how it affects them. And I think something like 87 percent of companies that offer paid leave. This was a study in California where paid leave is required. Said it cost them nothing. It cost them nothing to offer paid leave when, you know, maybe before the law was passed, they were like, oh, it's going to be too expensive. But actually, like there's really good benefits that paid leave brings to employers through like reduced turnover and higher morale. And I was not necessarily expecting to find that. I was kind of like, oh, this is a moral thing that

companies should do because it's the right thing to do. But then when I looked into it, it was like, oh, actually, there's a ton of bottom line benefits here. And it shouldn't be viewed as an indulgence. Yeah. Right. Yeah. The other thing that's really interesting is that the men at the Gates Foundation who are taking advantage of this policy, most of them were taking the full year off. And that seems pretty crucial to making a program like this work. You know, it's not just falling on women. They're not the ones expected've seen as well, especially of the Nordic countries where yearlong leaves are often offered. What you see is like when women take advantage of that policy and men don't, you don't actually see women advancing. You don't get some of the benefits of having a paid leave because women are still penalized. But if men start taking it, suddenly then you do see more gender parity and you see men being more involved in the lives of their children because those patterns that are established early on in a baby's

life, they hold, you know, until the kid moves out of the house and maybe even beyond. And I think there's also an interesting legal risk thing here for companies to think about too. So the Gates Foundation offers this benefit to both men and women, which is crucial because if they didn't, it could be illegal gender discrimination. And I am really shocked that more companies have not caught on to this yet. And companies are being sued and having to change their policies. So it's something that if I worked in a HR department or legal department at a big company, I would definitely be thinking about. So another thing I talked to Maeve about is one of the biggest

issues for women who are returning to work after being on leave, and that's having the space and time to pump. So I asked Maeve what it was like not having to deal with all of that. So at the foundation, we have mother's rooms or health rooms where women could go and use them to pump. But not having to pump was just, it sounds insignificant, but it was one of the most incredible things about having a year. With my first two kids, I was just terrible at pumping. I just never was able to produce the milk with a pump that I could when I was breastfeeding. So I gave up breastfeeding with the two of them entirely by six months because I just couldn't pump enough at work. But with Cordelia, I was with her all the time and I was able to nurse her. So I was

able to breastfeed her for almost the full 12 months. One of the things that really strikes me about that is so often in these length of leave discussions, we end up talking about sort of what returning to work is like for the mother. And we sort of focus on that. But we ignore that there's like a real health issues here for mother and baby that that are often overlooked. So about one in four women in the U.S. return to work within two weeks of giving birth. Like that is not enough time to heal. That's definitely not enough time to get into any kind of routine. No, no. And so when I heard Maeve talk about that, I was just blown away. When you think about the amount of time and effort and stress and money, frankly, that goes into pumping and keeping milk cool and shipping milk home if you're on a business trip and all this stuff.

It's a lot. And to not have to deal with that is huge. Yes. Yes. Yes. One of the other pieces of research that just stuck out to me was that when women have access to paid leave, it raises the probability that mothers will not only return to work, which is sort of obvious. I mean, it didn't surprise me. But what surprised me was that they work more hours and they also earn higher wages. So it kind of lets them continue on their upward trajectory that they were on before they had a kid, which I think is really, really important. I mean, it really just sounds like the benefits outweigh the costs.

There's no question here. Yes, which is why it makes me confused as to why we are still having this discussion and are the only country besides Papua New Guinea and Lesotho that does not offer paid leave. Wow. Wow. We have to continue having this discussion until we change it. Yes. We'll keep airing this podcast until we have it. What does the future hold for business?

Can someone please invent a crystal ball? Until then, over 40,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one platform. With real-time insights and forecasting, you're able to peer into the future and seize new opportunities. Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free at netsuite.com slash women at work. That's netsuite.com slash women at work. Thank you. Madhupe Akanola. The show features TED Talks about everything from setting smart goals to the latest on DEI in business, followed up with a mini lesson from Madhupe on how to apply these lessons in your own life. Listen to TED Business wherever you get your podcasts. Someone who knows all about managing parental leave is Daisy Dowling.

Daisy's a mother of two and the founder and CEO of WorkParent, which is a consulting firm that advises organizations and working parents. And she's here to give us a kind of professional's guide to going on leave, coming back, or managing someone who is. We started by asking her how to tell the people you work with that you're pregnant. Who should you tell first and when? And how do you tell the rest of your colleagues? So this is one of the really, really exciting opportunity points in working parenthood.

People think about the announcement with a little bit of dread or concern or confusion. When do I do this? How do I do this? This is actually a great way. Handling this announcement well is a great way to set yourself up as a working parent later. And by that, I mean you get to establish from the very first day that people know that you're going to be a working parent, how you're going to handle things, what you want from working parenthood, and you get to really, really establish yourself as a working parent professional. So as soon as you are comfortable sharing this news with somebody, and by that I mean medically, socially, practically, thinking about all of those things, when you are ready to tell people that you are expectant,

the first person that you need to speak to is your boss. There is a very excited tendency, particularly amongst first-time parents, to think about telling trusted work colleagues or friends or other people in the office. But you have to remember that your manager is the person who really is there to oversee and help steward your career. You're working for them. They're evaluating you. And in my view, you really owe that person the first conversation. And then you can start telling other people around that. But if they hear about it from other people or through the grapevine, it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, but it doesn't establish that level of upfront trust and

natural, honest dialogue. So talk to your boss first. When you do talk to your boss, be careful about the words that you use, because you want to do a couple of things. You want to set a tone, and you want to open the door to future conversation. So if I go in, if I'm expecting, I go in and I say to my boss, Mary, I have some really exciting news, and I hope you're going to be excited for me. I'm expecting my first child in March and my partner and I are over the moon about this. Now, I know there are probably a lot of questions

that we both are going to have about how this is going to work around the leave that I'll be able to take, around how my projects and clients will be covered while I'm gone, around what this will look like when I come back. We will talk about all of those in due time and I'm sure that we'll come to a great solution on all of them together. But for right now, I just wanted to share that news with you and let you know that

we can follow up on those other issues later on. And then stop the conversation. You don't have to establish everything that needs to happen in the future in the first five minutes post-announcement of your pregnancy or adoption. You are just sharing that piece of news. But you are also letting them know that you are in problem-solving mode, that you're committed to making this work, and that you expect them to be a partner to you in that process. What if you are either interviewing for a new job or have just started a relatively new job and you find yourself in this happy situation? Yeah, I wouldn't change that advice too much. I think you want to be clear about your commitment to the organization. So if you are interviewing and you need to disclose during the process of interviewing that you're expecting, I would treat it as a piece of information that you want to

share, but add in some statements or add in part of the conversation that I'm really excited about this role. The fact that I'm expecting does not, from my perspective, change my desire and my excitement about coming to work for you. I know I can still bring you this value. All the things that we've talked about, you know, my experience and what I have to offer are still there. I would, as everybody in your organization has, take a leave, but that would be a brief period of time. And then I'd be excited on working on this client project or starting this new program or initiative for you, et cetera. So change it back into a business conversation. I think a lot of people go into those types of conversations where they have to share news with somebody they may not know very well with a lot of apprehension, like, oh, they're

going to think the worst of me, or this is going to come as a negative surprise, or whatever. Most of the clients I advise who have been in that situation expect to be caught out or have the conversation turn sour are usually really pleasantly surprised. Most people in the workplace actually are parents. The majority of people are working parents themselves. They've been through this. They see this. They deal with it all the time. They may have dealt with it themselves.

So assume that there will be positive reception to it. And again, really focus on what you have to offer, as opposed to what you think they may think that you're taking away. Maeve said that for her, taking 52 weeks of maternity leave turned out to be the dream. You know, you talk to a lot of mothers. Where do you think they would fall on that? I think it worked extremely well for Maeve for a lot of different reasons. And I'm delighted that she had that opportunity. And I think having 52 weeks, a full year of paid leave would be the dream for so many mothers. But I think mothers come with infinite varieties of personal needs, of professional goals, of levels of ambition, of enjoyment of their work.

We're all different. We're all wired differently, and we're all in different circumstances. And so while many people may say 52 weeks, a whole year, yes, that is my dream. I get to really be at home, be engaged, effectively be a stay-at-home parent, but with pay for that year. And they would be excited, just so happy for it. For other people, it would be a godsend. Maybe they need that time for health reasons or for other very practical family reasons. But honestly, for a lot of the people who I work with and advise, 52 weeks would not be the dream. Maybe they really enjoy their work and they don't want to be out of it for that long. Maybe they're extremely extroverted and they really, really love being around other

intelligent, motivated adults. They love being around their colleagues. Maybe they just like the discipline and routine of work. Maybe they feel that they would be losing opportunities. Even if they had a workplace that endorsed having that amount of time off and compensated them for it, they may feel like, maybe my clients might move away from me. Maybe I wouldn't get first dibs on projects I wanted. They may just not want to be away from their job for that long a period of time. And I think the really important thing here for women to think about is to respect their own needs and their own wiring. Certain organizations may be able to offer very, very long leaves. But what we should be focusing on and what individuals, I think, should be focusing on is embracing their own choices

and thinking of them that way. I may be offered 52 weeks of leave. That may be right for me. I may choose to approach my maternity leave in a different way. In Maeve's story, it took her a while to figure out how much time she would really take off. A year was going to be such a long time. What should a woman ask herself when she's trying to figure that out for herself, assuming she has the flexibility? Yeah, you have to ask yourself what you want professionally and how things are working and what you want personally. So from a professional standpoint, I would encourage people, and this would be many, many different questions,

but I would encourage people to think about things like, what might be the trade-offs for me if I take more time off? Am I going to feel more motivated or less motivated when I get back to work if I'm out for a longer period of time? Are there certain projects coming up that I really want to get on that I may not have the opportunity to if I take another three, four, five months out of the office? Am I coming up to a big promotion point? I worked with a woman recently who's in a professional services organization, and she was coming up to one of these great big milestone promotions that happen in that type of

company. And she wanted to take a longer leave. She could have taken a longer leave. But frankly, she was just really excited being up for promotion under consideration. She wanted to be in the mix when that was happening and when those decisions and announcements were going to be made because it was a once in a career type of opportunity for her. So I think you have to think holistically about what you might be giving up short term and long term and how you feel about that in terms of work. And then just very practically on the home front, what would your care arrangement be like in either direction? How would you feel about being back at work earlier and away from the baby?

What benefit would it give you to spend more time at home? Again, for a lot of women, I think there's a little bit of a pressure or an orthodoxy. We are supposed to feel like longer leaves are inherently better. And again, for so many women, they can be. And it's great if you have the opportunity or the access to one. But a lot of women who I work with, frankly, say, you know, 52 weeks at home with a baby? Wow, that's going to be hard. Boy, get me back to the office, please. So I think it's taking stock personally and professionally and then figuring out what's going to be the right decision for you. Not the quote unquote right decision, because that doesn't exist, but right decision for you. What if you're on maternity leave and you start thinking that you want to go back to work sooner than you'd initially planned for? Yes. So I see this happen all the

time. And again, when women talk to me about it, they usually talk in a very hesitant way. So they'll say, oh, it's been eight weeks. I'm really itching to get back to the office. I miss it. I need the routine. You know, the baby's doing well. I still want to spend a lot of time with him or her, but I really want to be back to the workplace. I think the things to think about there are twofold. One is personal and professional choices and what works for you. But two, to think about a point in time, right? Time off is a very, very valuable thing. You don't get that much of it. And nobody says that when you are on maternity leave that you need to spend 24 hours a day with the baby. I have seen some clients do really interesting things professionally in small bites when they're on maternity leave. Maybe they

get to go to an industry conference that they normally don't get to go to because they don't have the time when they're in the office working full time, or they write an article for a trade publication. And that's something that would never, you know, they'd never have the opportunity to do when they're so busy at the office. But it's something that they can do to engage with their professional selves and maybe with their colleagues a bit, but still get to enjoy that precious, precious leave time. Because once you give that leave time up, it's gone. It's not coming back. It's not something that you can find again so easily. So that's one important thing. The other thing is to be careful about the messages that you're sending at work. And this is where I think individual choices spill over into leadership choices. I may really, really desperately

want to be back at the office after six weeks at home. And let's say I get 12 weeks off, but I really want to be back after six. That might work for me personally. It may be where my head is at, but just be careful because a lot of the other younger women or women who may be planning families or want that in their future might see you back at work after six weeks and misinterpret that as you're having been pressured to come back or that the profession or that the company really isn't set up to support the leaves that are actually offered. And I think you want to be careful about the fact that a lot of eyes actually are on you when you take maternity leave. People want to know, how is this going to work? And they're sort of in an excited, you know, they're rooting for you,

but in an excited way, they're looking and saying, that could be me. And what's this going to be like? And if you're back so quickly, it could be a little tougher, maybe even disheartening for others. So I think you want to weigh all those factors. What about if you are on maternity leave and you are, for whatever reason, actually feeling like you need more time? Is there a compelling a statement as if I am given another two weeks to lock down my care arrangement. It means that I'm going to come back to work for you, not distracted, really on point and ready to be back in the game. That's a much more compelling way to ask for that, you know, for that extra couple of weeks off. It sounds like a small semantic difference, but I think the way it lands with a person who has the power to either grant you or not grant you that time is going to be really big. So when you're thinking about coming back, the advice we give on hbr.org over and over again is make a plan. What factors should you

consider when you're making a plan? So here is where I encourage women to get as tactical as possible. And when I work with expectant moms or ones who are just about to transition back into the workforce, I think they're surprised by how much I push them to think about the nitty gritty about how things actually work. When people say a plan, they're used to thinking about business plans, which are sort of, you know, 10 to 30,000 foot level views of what you want to accomplish over time and sort of general trends and how things should be approached. Whereas a maternity leave return plan should be about things as tactical as how long it takes you to get dressed in the morning. Right. So returning to work is going to be hard. It's going to be hard emotionally. It's a big transition. Going back, you're going to be balancing two new things. It's almost like starting a whole new job. You're starting a new set of responsibilities that you haven't had before. So when I encourage

people to plan, I don't just talk to them about things like their care arrangement, but literally about how their day is going to unfurl. One of the specific assignments that I love to give people is to, a week to 10 days before they return to work, to have a rehearsal day. To get up in the morning, get themselves ready as if they're going to the office, get the baby ready for a drop-off at daycare, get in the car or get on the bus, do the drop-off, get themselves to work. Practice it as if you are actually going through and you're going to go up to your office and sit down at your desk and start working. And see how things go. Do things take you more time than you thought? Does it feel natural? Where were some of the potential break points? What happens if you're late at drop-off? Are there quicker ways to get to work? All those little, little things, if you don't rehearse them, if you don't practice them, they can boil up to things that are major distractions or even deal breakers when you actually do go back to work. So control the controllable and think about your time, your schedule, what the baby needs, what's in the diaper bag, all those sorts of things. And I

typically give new working moms or ones who are returning a checklist of items. And it's many, many, many items to think about just so that they can eliminate all the little potential nitty gritty distractions that might weigh on them when they've got bigger fish to fry. This is also where I'm going to throw in a piece of advice about the actual return. No employee of any organization ever should return from a parental leave except but on a Thursday or Friday. That's a great tip. It is an overwhelming transition back. And if you make it on a Monday, the stretch of fairway between you and Friday afternoon is just going to look like from here to forever. Whereas if you come back in on a Thursday or Friday morning, you sort of put your coat down, you check some emails, you walk around the office, you tell people, oh, hey, I'm back. You don't really do any work during those two days. You just get back to being used to being at work and to doing the care handoff and the evening routine. And you sort of use those as little rehearsal days. And then Monday, you come back on, you know, May 15th, but to actually come back on May 13th because that lets them come back, go through emails, you know, read through documents,

plan their calendar, do other things. People don't really know what they're in the office. Maybe it depends, you know, how your office seating plan is and how visible you are and things like that. But it gives you a buffer time that is just about sort of getting yourself together. It's a soft launch. Exactly. And then on May 15th, you're, you know, you're back at it. The more gradual transitions are easier transitions. And so think ahead to that time. And then another thing to think about, you know, while you're planning leave or maybe while you're on leave is whether you should come back to work full time or try part time.

How do you help women make those decisions? I think that's very hard to think about before you've tried to come back as you were. So when I counsel women on this, I usually ask them some questions about what type of professional they have always been, what kind of hours they've worked, what kind of energy and excitement they have about the job, what their long-range ambitions have been, Because I want them to carry the professional self that they have always been that's true and authentic and unique to them. And I want them to bring as much as possible of that into their working motherhood. Motherhood changes a lot of things. And any of us, I have a four-year-old and a six-year-old, any of us who are working moms will tell you that.

It changes so much in your life. But what it won't change is the sort of essence of you and what you really like about your work and some of your long range goals and dreams for your career, honestly. So I think if you are informed by that and you go back to work, give or take in the same schedule that you had before, it will let you see if that's feasible. It lets you make a decision from a point of continuity, as opposed to saying while you're on leave, and you haven't even gone back and sort of tried the working mom thing to say, oh, no, no, no, it's I know it's not going to be possible. I should just go back three days a week. I think, frankly, that's a mistake, because it may be very feasible. And it may be very happy to be possible, I should just go back three days a week. I think, frankly, that's a mistake because it may be very feasible and it may be very happy to be back in the exact same schedule you were as long as you plan around that. Motherhood is a journey. It's not a

destination. And working parenthood is certainly a journey. Make decisions as you get the information to make them with, as opposed to preemptively saying, well, everybody else in the office who has kids works three days a week, and I should too. Or I know this is going to be hard, so let me take a reduced schedule. Don't shortchange yourself. What does the future hold for business? Can someone please invent a crystal ball? Until then, over 40,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one platform.

With real-time insights and forecasting, you're able to peer into the future and seize new opportunities. Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free at netsuite.com slash women at work. That's netsuite.com slash women at work. What about taking back over the key projects you were working on? I mean, and maybe we should break this into two parts. How do you kind of set yourself up to delegate all that stuff before you head out? And then when you're coming back, how do you take it back over? Yeah. So there are two questions, but they're important to address up front. So as you think about stepping out of the office, I'm a really big advocate of creating as much clarity as possible about who's

going to do what and about what exactly needs to be done. So when you are leaving, make certain that the delegation plan or the coverage plan is really, really clear, not just generally who's going to be touching your projects, but exactly what they're going to need to do, what weekly reports they'll need to produce, what documents they'll have to be editing, how they're going to update your boss or your boss's boss on the work that's being done. All of those things that you would think about in the context of your own job, you have to think about somebody else picking up and doing to a pretty high degree of quality while you're out. It may only be 12 weeks. You may be able to sort of stagger through, but the more clarity and the more direction you can give people, the better. I'm also a big believer in having that

on a piece of paper. And I don't mean that for sort of, you know, risk management reasons or, you know, legal reasons of any kind, but simply for clarity. So if you can sit down with the people who are covering your projects and say, here's a list of the things that I usually do and that are going to need to be covered. That's a much more effective conversation than just sort of generally talking to them about the projects. And if you can sit down with your manager and say, here's who's doing what while I'm gone, it looks good on you. But it also makes certain that there's not going to be any snafus or a lack of clarity while you're out. I think part of those conversations too, upfront, before you leave, you have to have a conversation about how things will be transitioned back. And that conversation might be to say, okay, in the two weeks after I return back from leave,

we can work side by side on this project so I can reabsorb all the details and make certain that I'm picking this back up in a graceful way. Or it might be while I'm out on the six-month leave, I'll join you once a month for an update meeting or call just to get a sense of what's going on in these projects so when I come back I can really hit the ground running. You have to forward plan and, again, be very operational about what it is going to look like and who's going to do what while you're gone and then how you're going to take control back. The number one frustration, business frustration, I hear from working moms once they go back to the office, beyond just it's difficult to find balance and they feel like they've got a long, long, long to-do list. Beyond that is I'm having difficulty getting my projects back or being able to take ownership of them again or feel like other people are taking them away. And that's what you

want to try and avoid. So Daisy, you come back from leave and what conversations should you have with your teammates who have been doing your work, who took on the work that you were doing when you went on leave? There are two different narratives that you need to have when you come back from leave. One is for those people who have been covering for you. And again, this should start before you go on leave. I think an atmosphere of directness, this is their responsibility while you're away, but gratitude, acknowledging that that person may be working a little bit extra, a little bit more to have helped cover for you. There may not be resentment, although there may

be resentment too. But I think what you want to do is to convey to people that I appreciate that you're on my team and I want you to know that I'm on your team too. Whether that is, you know, helping somebody who's more junior to you who helped cover for you, helping mentor them, helping them get ready for the next promotion point. Think about ways to try and return the favor, right? And to be a collaborator in the other direction, even though you feel like you've got a lot going on. I think that will win you a lot of points and put you in good stead with people. I think praising them, saying this was a job well done, it may not have been done in exactly the way you would have done it or perfectly, but still saying this was great and I've told my manager or

your manager that you did great work here. I really appreciate it. So I think going in with that approach, with that storyline is imperative because if you just come in and just say, okay, yeah, let me grab that project back, you're shortchanging yourself. You're not going to create the image of yourself as a really collaborative, classy professional that you are. The other narrative that you have to have with manager, manager's manager, all the way up the chain with colleagues, everybody, is about your being back. If you come back into the workplace after 12 weeks and you slink back to your office and hunch over your emails, it sends a very ambiguous message. What you want to do is come back and say in one line or two, it's so great to be back. The next couple of weeks and months may be daunting, as every working parent knows, I'm going to have to roll with a lot of

punches here. But I'm excited to be here. It's good to see all of you. And I'm going to be picking up right away on Project XYZ, which I think we can make a lot of progress on, and then start talking about Project XYZ. Remember that ambiguous leadership actions are often interpreted negatively, right? If you slink back to your office and just start, you know, emailing people and don't say things like I've just said, people might say, well, she's really not excited to be back. You know, she seems ambivalent about this. Is her head really in the game? They're filling in a narrative because you have not provided them one.

So be preemptive. Decide what you want your story to be and then tell it. So how do you counsel your clients on the problem of exhaustion, being completely wiped out so much of the time? Yeah, there are a lot of different ways to approach this. But let me say up front that there's no silver bullet to this. Working and taking care of a child is a daunting task, and it's tiring, and it can be overwhelming. And I wish I could solve that for myself and for all my clients, but it's there. And so let's acknowledge that upfront. That said, there are a lot of things people can do and you have more control than you

think you do here, right? So the first thing that I work with with my clients is figuring out to the max how much they can try and get off their plate at work. One exercise I encourage people to do is to every Friday afternoon or evening, look back over their calendar for the past week. And in a absolutely ruthless, you know, red pen in hand kind of way, look at everything that was on their task list and everything that was on their calendar and try and cross things out. What could they have taken a shortcut on? What could they have not done or not done so perfectly? What could they potentially have delegated away or collaborated with somebody on to try and win themselves back even just a couple of hours?

So I think you can gain yourself just through good self-management techniques, a little bit of time. And a little bit of time doesn't, you know, it sounds like, well, that's not going to change, you know, change the world. But if you could get back 90 minutes in your week that you can spend with a baby, that's going to make a big impact. So that's the first thing. The second thing is I encourage people while they're on leave, and this is a very, very delicate area that I always approach sort of with a light touch, but while they're on leave, to think about the things at home that are going to make them not exhausted. And the number one thing that's going to help them there is establishing, for the whole family, establishing as much as possible healthy sleep patterns. Now, we all have different babies. We all have different perspectives on how babies should be raised and cared for and everything. And I have no judgment

whatsoever on people who make all kinds of different choices there. But there is no glory in martyrdom. And coming back to work, you know, 12 or 20 weeks after you've had a baby and you're still getting up, you know, many, many, many times during the night is just, it's a recipe for disaster. As much as possible, try and establish good continuity so that you can get some rest. And then finally, I just think general self-management techniques and energy management techniques, as busy as you are, as crazy as life is, you should spend at least 15 minutes a day, whether it's at work or on the drive home or at home, doing something you find restful, whether that's, you know, reading the newspaper or, you know, going for a jog or a walk or something to clear your head. If you as a working mom aren't going to take care of you, then nobody else will. Where do most managers fail in supporting parents taking parental leave or preparing for parental leave? And what's kind of the most important thing that we can do as managers to make this easier for our working parents? Managers who may have many, many, many people reporting to them usually underestimate how daunting, confusing, and opaque this whole working parenthood thing is for somebody who's going through it for the first time.

And they don't do things like encourage the employee to talk to other people in the organization who have recently come back from parental leave or who have had that experience themselves to see what their advice and techniques and what their experience was. They don't do things like say, let's sit down together and think exactly how everything will be covered while you're out on leave. They sort of leave that to the employee and assume that the smart, hardworking person that they know and that they appreciate having on the team will just sort of make things happen. They trust, you know, they're busy on other things. This isn't the only thing that's top of mind for them, if it is at all. And they just don't have those conversations. I think the more managers can prompt attention to the specific planning, again, to the nitty gritty of how this is all going to go down, I think they do both themselves, the organization, and the individual such a huge

favor. Now, I think for individuals, the key is to realize that your manager, again, your manager's dealing with so much different stuff. They're busy. They may even want to talk to you about some of those things. But if they're not a recent parent themselves or maybe they're working in a remote office, they don't see you on a day-to-day basis, they may also feel a little bit awkward talking to you about things that begin to feel a bit personal, right? Because it's about you becoming a parent and having a child. So they may even shy away from some of these topics. I think you as an individual do yourself and your manager a huge favor by prompting some of those conversations and saying things like, you know, what advice do you have for me? How has this worked really well for other members of the team or other people in the organization? Who should I be talking to? Who would be good mentors for me here? You know, what kind of information do you want to see from me about how all these projects or clients will be covered before I go out on leave?

How are you and I going to remain in contact during the three, four, five, six, whatever it is, months that I'm away? What should be the schedule of us checking in and what does that look like? And I think the more that you can sort of gently nudge your manager, the healthier it is. You're bringing things that will have to be addressed and discussed at some point out into the open, but you're bringing them out into the open early when they can be addressed and discussed constructively, as opposed to when you've already fallen into a negative habit or there's been a miscommunication and people are less happy. So if you're a manager and you see that someone on your team,

just back from maternity or paternity leave, is kind of not keeping it together, you know, the stress, the fatigue, it's clearly getting to that person. How do you have that conversation? You want to help them. You don't want to put them off. You don't want them to shut down or feel embarrassed. How do you do that? Yeah, I think it's by asking a lot of open-ended questions. If you critique, you know, it's going to feel to the employee like you're pushing them away or that, you know,

things have reached a really dire situation. It may just be that they're off their game because the baby has been sick. So I think simply asking some open-ended questions. How are things going? What have things been like since you've been back? In what ways could I help make this an easier transition back for you? And you can surface the issue and then discuss it. That doesn't mean that you have to solve the employee's problems for them. It doesn't mean

that you have to jump in and be a hero and save them. It is their job to do their job. But at the same time, you can establish a very neutral, supportive way to have some of those difficult conversations, as opposed to saying, you're not keeping up what's going on. So I would frame everything as a question and make certain that you're being as neutral as possible in asking them. Daisy, thank you so much for talking with us today. My pleasure. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Thanks so much, Daisy.

So we have a special guest with us today. Yes, Erica Trexler, Associate Editor at HBR, and also pretty much brand new mom. Not exactly brand new anymore, but journeyman mom. Erica, we're so excited that you're here. Yes, thank you for having me. Well, I think I know the answer to this, but did you have a rehearsal day? That was one of Daisy's pieces of advice for how to prepare for coming back. Yes. So we did. We tried. So the week before I came back, we had a daycare lined up and I thought, yes, I'm going to be responsible.

I'm going to try to get Claire into the daycare and just see how it all goes. And my rehearsal day started off in a funny way in that I was so proud of myself because I got there at 9am when I thought that was when the daycare told me to arrive. And I get there and I see that the director is disheveled and kind of like, oh, you're here. And I realized the time was actually 10am. And so it was one of those funny moments where I was so proud. And then afterwards, it was very clear that I'd arrived at the wrong time. But I did in terms of having a rehearsal day, at least I tried to rehearse with daycare drop off. I didn't quite do it in terms of like getting to pretending I was at

my desk or something. So I didn't do the time as if I were actually going to get to work on time. But I tried to do the drop off, leaving Claire, my little girl who's now seven months old, for the first time was very, very good to do a week before because I will be the first to admit there was a lot of crying on the way back when you drop off your baby for the first time. So I'm very glad I did that first. We did daycare for two days before I came back. In some of those early days, I know you mentioned things didn't quite go as planned. Claire would get a fever sometimes. She initially went on strike against bottle feeding. She was like, what is this? And so there were kinds of some early hurdles that weren't expected. What was it like for you

when that was happening? I mean, how did you feel about it and how did you deal with it? Yes. So again, it's so funny to hear. And I did read our articles before going on leave. And like Amy mentioned, make a plan is the first thing they always say. Come back and make a plan. And you quickly learn, like I mentioned again, that babies throw a wrench in your plans. And my baby just did not take a bottle. So she essentially was fine taking it up to six weeks and then stopped taking it like a champ, like completely, completely refused it. And she did not take a bottle at daycare for three weeks. So she did not eat for three weeks when I was at work. And I would call at lunch and ask if Claire has eaten and the daycare would be like, I'm sorry, she's still not eating. So it's a lot of guilt.

And they talk about mom guilt. And I'll be the first to say before you have a baby, you kind of hear that. And you're like, well, how bad can it be? Like how much guilt can you have? And then when you're actually living it, the feeling of I'm sitting here like drinking my hot coffee and my baby's not eating is actually really, really a strong emotion. And meanwhile, you're trying to be productive. And meanwhile, you're trying to put on a front of professionalism. Meanwhile, you're exhausted. So it's a lot.

Well, and because she's eating all night. Well, that's the thing. I mean, right? Yeah. She's not like she's starving herself. But it's like you're not sleeping at all because she's eating all night and then fasting all day. Exactly. So she figured out her ways.

So the minute I would pick her up, she would. She's a strong-willed girl. She already is. So I would get home. I wouldn't even be able to put my bag down. I was basically nursing her in the front entryway on the floor, essentially, because she was so mad. And then I would nurse from 6 till 6 in the morning. So 12 hours every hour, two hours for the first three weeks.

And to be honest, I'm now, I came back when she was four months old. She's now seven months. And we're still feeding every three hours. So it's not that I'm on the other side yet, but it's gotten easier because now she's eating at daycare at least a bit. So Erica, I manage you now. And I will say my biggest fear, 100%, was just that you would decide not to come back. That you would be so happy at home with beautiful little baby Clara that you would not come back. And I was like, oh my God, I just need her to come back. So I was so I was so relieved when you came back. And I was so

worried those first stressful weeks when Claire was not eating. I was like, Claire, take the bottle. What are you doing to me? So so I was just wondering, like, was there was there a moment when you thought maybe I can't do this or was there kind of something you were worried about? deprived and can hardly write a sentence right now, you know, and you feel that. So it's wonderful always, I think, to hear that people want you to stay, even though you may not be feeling like a great employee yourself. And I will be the first to admit, yes, there were definitely days when I was upstairs, like pumping. And you feel so bad that you're like, I can't do this. But I feel like when you feel like you're going to quit, you have to kind of step back and give yourself this almost like this long game, which I think Daisy was mentioning. And I feel like that's what I did. I gave myself a long game and I did talk to people.

So I think there are definitely days where you still feel that way. What can we as managers do to make this easier for you? It's a really good question. I think it's really interesting to me because I feel like there is this sense of trying to be two people, trying to be the best mom and being the best employee. And I think the confidence that people saying like, actually, you did a great job with that article, like, because I'm not seeing that, you know, I'm not seeing that I'm actually producing work, you know. so I think being able to get just maybe those first few weeks telling a mom, like, I noticed that you did that, and that was actually very good, and I will say, it just makes a

difference, your work culture, I have to say that I have never felt here that anyone is thinking about me any less, I think that helps a lot, and I think, you know, I feel very fortunate to work here, where I feel like people are very, very understanding. And I've always felt that way throughout all of the ups and downs of being just a human. So I think it helps tremendously to have a supportive work culture. And just to really, I think those first few weeks, as much positive feedback as you can give that new mom the better. I'm sure you got tons of advice, you know, while you were preparing to have a baby and take four months off. Was there any advice that you thought really worked and you were super grateful to get? Was there any advice that didn't really apply to you that you kind of discarded? For me, it was helpful to have one eye on email, but also not to feel like I ever had to respond. I would just scroll and it helped me kind of keep abreast as to like who's leaving, who's coming, when am I missing. It also in some

ways helped me realize I'm actually not missing that much. You know, I think you feel like you're missing the world and then you're looking at the emails going through and you're like, oh, my colleagues have got it down. Like everything's still happening and it's fine. And I can just look at Claire and her playmat for the next three hours, you know? So it actually helped me, I think, to just check in, but not as regularly. Maeve had a year of paid maternity leave from her employer and that's not a benefit that we have here.

So I'm just curious to know if that's something you would have wanted, if that would have helped you. It's interesting. My inclination would have said initially it's too long. And I know that Maeve also said it's too long. I'm not going to take it. But then after listening to her story, and of course she had a big support system, so I think that makes it work. I do feel there's real value in having that much time. I think I personally, I think as a nursing mom would

find it so much easier than the balancing act of trying to find time to pump every few hours at work is really hard. And the one time I didn't and I went to back-to-back meetings, I ended up with mastitis, which if anyone's listening and has had this, they know it's terrible. So if you have back-to-back meetings and you miss your window, you're going to have a fever and be sick. So I think it's one of those things where, you know, all of that and also just, like I said before, I surprised myself with how I didn't feel lonely at home. And I think I probably would have enjoyed being home with Claire for a longer amount of time. But that said, I do have the hesitations about coming back to work is never easy, whether it's three months, six months, a year, you know, a year sounds like it should be easier, but it's still a band-aid you need to rip off and you're not going to see your baby all day. So it could still just be as hard a year as it is six months, as three months. So it's a good

question and I almost feel like it's a tricky one to answer, but it does sound, I'm not going to lie, sound tempting. Erica, thank you for sitting and talking to us, telling us all about your experience. And thanks so much for your candor. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Thank you for not leaving after having a baby. Thank you, guys. Sure is good to have you back.

Thank you all. Thank you. Yes. That's our show. I'm Sarah Green Carmichael. I'm Amy Bernstein. And I'm Nicole Torres. Our producer is Amanda Kersey.

Our audio product manager is Adam Buchholz. Maureen Hoke is our supervising editor. We get production help from Rob Eckhart and Isis Madrid. One of the ways we can encourage companies to offer paid parental leave is by getting more parents to tell their stories about their experiences with it, whether they're good or bad. So we'd like to hear from you. Email us, womenatworkathbr.org, if you'd like to tell us your story and we'll choose some to record and play on an upcoming episode. And of course, you can email us about anything else Women in Work related. We always like reading what you have to say.

Again, our email is womenatworkathbr.org. Thanks for listening.