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Advice for Managers on handling Parental Leave

Recently I’ve had the opportunity of supporting one of my reports in this transition and I thought it would be helpful sharing my experience on what worked well.

Announcement

• Celebrate with them and the immediate team. Focus on the excitement and share in their joy. Know that if it’s their first time, there might be anxiety around the uncertainty of this news and make it a safe space for them.
• Work with HR and learn the policies at the company. We have “People partners” who are very helpful since they are allies in the process. If that is not the case, reach out to HR, document the policies in place and prioritize having a conversation on policies with them in your following 1:1s. Emphasize that working on getting the paperwork done for their leave is the highest priority and that you will work with them on that.

Before leave

• Schedule a team celebration. Send them off with a card or a gift so that they feel loved and know that the team cares for them. Ask them to share updates when the baby is born and express the desire to be partners in this new journey.
• Create a transition plan for ongoing projects. Ensure that work is handed off to other teammates and work is reprioritized early on so there is both continuity for the work that they were doing and that the team is not burdened by this transition.
• Remove them from on-call rotations. Be clear that the expectation is that they will be fully offline and unreachable during this period. Any communication that needs to happen should go through you and communicate that broadly.
• Agreed on a cadence for communication. Share personal contact information and agree that you will share updates in a consolidated manner as needed. Ask if they would like to have monthly 1:1s either via text messages or zoom to keep in touch. This will allow them to know that you are considerate of their time away but anticipating and preparing for their return.

During leave

• Communicate efficiently. With them, as agreed, continue to share updates that is relevant at the organizational level. Do not share anything negative to ensure that communication is not anxiety inducing. With the team, share updates that helps maintain the camaraderie. With your manager and directors, share relevant updates mostly to communicate the anticipation for their return and to be their advocate in their absence.

Return

• Plan for re-onboarding them. Ensure that quarterly planning accounts for ramp up time, carve out projects that are relevant to the work that they were doing or new projects that is self contained to ensure that there is less disruption while they re-adjust.
• Share missed context in 1:1s. Make notes during their leave so that once they return, you are ready with summaries that can be helpful for them. This can be links to Slack conversations, design docs, release updates, decisions that were made that can be helpful for them to gain quick understanding of what they missed for them to be effective fast.
• Be prepared for additional time-off requests and plan accordingly. Having a new baby is a challenging responsibility. Be empathic but plan ahead so that the remaining team is not burdened by unrealistic expectations with the report returning.

To summarize - set clear expectations, over communicate and have a lot of empathy.