Managing Parental Leave (Yours or Someone Else’s)

09/24/18 • 59 min

Having a baby is exciting — and exhausting. Figuring out how to take parental leave, or manage someone who’s doing it, can add an extra wrinkle.

No matter how long you’ll be away from work, there’s preparation to be done: talking to your boss, making sure colleagues can cover your projects, handling unexpected needs and feelings.

With the help of our guest expert, Daisy Wademan Dowling, we talk about how to effectively plan for your parental leave or the leave of someone you manage. And through the story of a lucky woman whose organization offers 12 months of paid leave, we explore what our lives might be like if we had access to more generous leaves.

Our HBR reading list:

“The Best Ways Your Organization Can Support Working Parents,” by Daisy Wademan Dowling

“Need a Good Parental Leave Policy? Here It Is.” by Joan C. Williams and Kate Massinger

“How Companies Can Ensure Maternity Leave Doesn’t Hurt Women’s Careers,” by David Collings, Yseult Freeney, and Lisa van der Werff

“Denmark Has Great Maternity Leave and Child Care Policies. So Why Aren’t More Women Advancing?” by Bodil Nordestgaard Ismiris

“Why Walmart Expanded Parental Leave — and How to Convince Your Company to Do the Same,” by Sarah Green Carmichael

Get the discussion guide for this episode on our website: hbr.org/podcasts/women-at-work.

Email us: [email protected]

Our theme music is Matt Hill’s “City In Motion,” provided by Audio Network.

Having a baby is exciting — and exhausting. Figuring out how to take parental leave, or manage someone who’s doing it, can add an extra wrinkle.

No matter how long you’ll be away from work, there’s preparation to be done: talking to your boss, making sure colleagues can cover your projects, handling unexpected needs and feelings.

Our HBR reading list:

“The Best Ways Your Organization Can Support Working Parents,” by Daisy Wademan Dowling

“Need a Good Parental Leave Policy? Here It Is.” by Joan C. Williams and Kate Massinger

“How Companies Can Ensure Maternity Leave Doesn’t Hurt Women’s Careers,” by David Collings, Yseult Freeney, and Lisa van der Werff

“Denmark Has Great Maternity Leave and Child Care Policies. So Why Aren’t More Women Advancing?” by Bodil Nordestgaard Ismiris

“Why Walmart Expanded Parental Leave — and How to Convince Your Company to Do the Same,” by Sarah Green Carmichael

Get the discussion guide for this episode on our website: hbr.org/podcasts/women-at-work.

Email us: [email protected]

Our theme music is Matt Hill’s “City In Motion,” provided by Audio Network.

Previous Episode

Let’s Do Less Dead-End Work

Could you take notes? Would you mind ordering lunch? We need someone to organize the offsite event — can you do that? Whether you’ve just started your career or are the CEO of the company, if you’re a woman, people expect you to do routine, time-consuming tasks that no one else wants to do.

We talk with University of Pittsburgh economics professor Lise Vesterlund about why women get stuck with — and even volunteer for! — tasks that won’t show off our skills or get us promoted, and how that slows down our career advancement and makes us unhappy at work. Women of color in particular are asked to do more low-promotability projects, and we talk with inclusion strategist Ruchika Tulshyan about some ways they can say no. Lise and Ruchika tell us how they’ve handled these kinds of requests and what managers can do to assign work fairly.

Our HBR reading list:

“Why Women Volunteer for Tasks That Don’t Lead to Promotions,” by Linda Babcock, Maria P. Recalde, and Lise Vesterlund

“Women of Color Get Asked to Do More “Office Housework.” Here’s How They Can Say No.” by Ruchika Tulshyan

“For Women and Minorities to Get Ahead, Managers Must Assign Work Fairly,” by Joan C. Williams and Marina Multhaup

“‘Office Housework’ Gets in Women’s Way,” by Deborah M. Kolb and Jessica L. Porter

Get the discussion guide for this episode on our webpage, hbr.org/podcasts/women-at-work.

Email us: [email protected]

Our theme music is Matt Hill’s “City In Motion,” provided by Audio Network.

Next Episode

Making Great Decisions

There’s a lot that goes into making a good decision at work: figuring out priorities, coming up with options, analyzing those — and several steps later, planning for what to do if you’re wrong. If you’re a woman, you are also factoring in how your colleagues expect you to ask for their opinions so you can create consensus. And if you do, they’re still likely to see you as indecisive and lacking vision.

We talk with Therese Huston, author of the book How Women Decide, about our strengths as decision makers and how to work around double standards when we’re making decisions and communicating them to our team.

Our HBR reading list:

“Research: We Are Way Harder on Female Leaders Who Make Bad Calls,” by Therese Huston

“Women and the Vision Thing,” by Herminia Ibarra and Otilia Obodaru

“Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders?” by Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic

“Get Excited: Reappraising Pre-Performance Anxiety as Excitement,” by Alison Wood Brooks

Get the discussion guide for this episode on our website: hbr.org/podcasts/women-at-work

Email us: [email protected]

Our theme music is Matt Hill’s “City In Motion,” provided by Audio Network.