S3 E48: Supporting parental leave to reduce burnout risk
with authors Dr Amy Beacom and Sue Campbell
Key Takeways
I had, like many women, a rude awakening when I became a mother and realized all that was involved and how little cultural support and social infrastructure was available. I was really expecting someone to hand me a plan of here's how all of this works, here's what you do. And nobody was doing that.
And I remember one night at home, just literally falling to my knees on the kitchen floor and yelling at my husband. Like I can't do all of this. And just the look of absolute shock on his face. Because culturally, we just accumulate. And we think we are supposed to continue to handle it and just take what is given and take the responsibilities. And I was too young and too naive to see that there were other choices that were available to me. So it's like shedding some of that cultural conditioning to try to find your own path and find your own way was a really important part of that for me.
So many people were going through the exact same thing during the pandemic. So that was another case where, you hang on by your fingernails as long as you can when your circumstances present. But at some point you've got to pull back and look and get creative.
And I also love that you're offering those stories to women because, when you hear there's a resiliency that's available. If you think back in your own life on times you did face burnout or come up to that edge and thinking through what did I do to avoid that or to not step over that edge? Or what did I do to come back from it if I did step over it? So that you can avoid it in the future and really use those gifts that you've been given from that time.
What I'm doing as a daily practice right now is noticing what around me is helping me not tip over the edge. And for me, that in part is having built a company that centers human lives at its very core. So making this space to support each other, to be able to walk away and take the time I need so that my team can get my back. And so I think for listeners, just noticing where that support exists around you and actually accepting that support is so critical.
What I've tried to do in my work is make life less overwhelming. During this very complex time where you're moving from what we often say being a working person, to being a working parent and all the different role changes and expectations and relationship changes that requires of you.
I focus my work on parental leave is because it was this time in a career and a life cycle that had the most opportunity to impact downstream. Later in life at different transitions at different moments. And when I think of it as when everything is most chaotic in our lives, it's also the richest most opportunity filled moments and depending on how we're supported and how we can access the love and the support around us, or just the practical tools and resources around us will help us determine how we lay down our life going forward.
Fundamentally I feel it's related to burnout because we don't have a culture that provides us any sort of meaningful social infrastructure or evidence based tools to handle this huge life challenge. We are just expected to take on more and more. And that is absolutely a recipe for burnout. We have to look at ways to do this differently if we expect people to come through it without burnout.
And so we started to find that one of the most important determinants of if that new parent and therefore their manager in their workplace had a positive and successful experience was that human connection. And that human one on one person walking with you holding perspective when things got a little tricky, giving information and skilling you up in a time where it's really compressed and you're learning a lot of different roles and skills in a very short timeframe.
I think companies don't realize is this time is so tied up in retention and attrition. When you have a retain parental leave coach that you're working with, what that coach is doing is also working on behalf of the organization, centering new parent, but also considering how do we ensure that this relationship with their work organization stays intact so that should they choose two years down the road, five years down the road to come back, they've left things in a way that sets their organization up for success and leaves them appreciated and valued as if they choose that they need to go.
So you're in the workplace and you're work focused and trying to get everything, I's dotted and the T's crossed before you go. Then you have during leave where you are spending dedicated time bonding with your family. And then you have returning from leave where you're reintegrating into the workplace and you're reintegrating your new roles and identities that you've now accumulated whether you are already a parent before or not every new child that you add to your family has an impact and makes the difference in your roles and identities.
We stress very heavily that your action plan, does not mean that everything is gonna go exactly the way you want it to go. And everything's gonna go according to your plan, that's really important, right? Some of us, especially if we're very career driven, myself included, it's if I make a plan, I'm going to force my will into reality. And that doesn't work with children and babies in particular. So you want to go through the planning process with an eye towards keeping yourself flexible and keeping yourself open and creating very specific contingency plans. So that you are able to flex in the moment when new information comes to light, or you are experiencing something in a way that you didn't think you'd experience that way.
What are my values when it comes to parenting? What are my partners, if I have a partner? What are my partners values when it comes to parenting? How do you get as aligned as possible about your values before your child comes and acknowledge the sort of the magnitude of this transition? Yes newborn babies happen every day and people are adopted every day and families are formed every day. So if on that level, it's no big deal, but it is on a personal level. There's an enormous amount of impact. And that deserves a chance to slow down and think about it.
It's a communication plan so that you are able to let your organization know how you would like to be in touch if at all, if you wanna be updated, if there's a major reorg or a new boss or something major happens, who do you want as a gatekeeper for yourself, if anyone? Do you want information funneled through that person? Do you want to be contacted via email, via phone, like down to the nitty gritty as you talked about slightly obsessive that way. How to keep in touch, how you wanna be communicated with while you're away. And what that does is it lets everyone around you know how they can best support you, how they can talk. And it erases any of that confusion, people usually are too scared to even try. So we see that it leads to isolation.
We often see that companies don't know what to do with somebody who just comes back, they're mostly not communicating So a lot of this book is really about how to communicate well and form relationships well at work and home, so that they are mutually beneficial and create win-wins.
What we've learned about advocacy is it is vitally important and we need to keep it up and get louder. As I said earlier, when there's chaos, I really believe there's opportunity. And right now with the last two years of the pandemic, all we've had for working parents is chaos. And so for the first time, this is really impacting so many people, if not all the people in the United States. And so there's much more awareness and realization of oh, wow, that is really hard. I didn't notice that you were going off and doing that and having that experience without any support whatsoever, including pay.
But there's a big difference between what we are doing, and paid leave. So what I'm talking about is how do we do this culturally? How do we support parental leave in all of the ways it needs to be supported, whether it's paid or not. And so our book isn't about paid leave. It's about, you are probably not going to have paid leave. If you're lucky to be one of the 23% of people in the United States that even have one day of paid leave, we are so happy for you and fight for all those that don't. And here are some tools so that you can navigate this well, whether you're paid or not.
If we had a federal policy that cost burden would either be completely removed from the employer, depending on the model and the plan you're looking at, or it would be a shared cost. So it's definitely for the benefit of the companies to join the fight for paid leave. We have clients who operate in several states and it's a nightmare logistically for them because every state may have a different rule around parental leave and it's up to the company to navigate all of that.
The number one thing employers can do to get started is simply talk to your working parent employees, because I guarantee they have ideas about how to improve their own lives while still keeping the company interests in mind as well.
Bio
Dr. Amy Beacom is the founder and CEO of the Center for Parental Leave Leadership, the first full service consultancy in the US to focus exclusively on parental leave. She conceived of and began developing the field of parental leave coaching and consulting in 2006. Drawing on over 25 years in executive leadership development and coaching, Amy consults with Fortune 100 companies, international organizations, working parents, and more to transform the way our companies and our country engage with the parental leave transition. Amy is also the co-author of The Parental Leave Playbook: Ten Touchpoints to Transition Smoothly, Strengthen Your Family, and Continue Building Your Career (Wiley, 2021).
Sue Campbell is a writer, author, and coach who has worked with the Center for Parental Leave Leadership since its early days, helping to communicate the transformative impact of their core mission. Her writing, often focused on issues important to parents, has been published in many outlets, including Prevention, Good Housekeeping, Scary Mommy, and Mamalode.
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