Season finale: Can we stump a parental leave expert?

When I’m back from parental leave, what are the best ways to communicate that I’m still invested in my career?

Why should we invest in coaching specifically for parental leave when only a percentage of our employees take leave?

How can we help managers redistribute work to cover for employees on parental leave without causing the rest of the team to get burnt out?

These are just a few questions we received from our community of HR leaders and working parents over the last several months.

And so we saved our season 1 finale for an “ask me anything” to answer all of these thoughtful - but complex - questions live!

In this episode, Jenna Vassallo, our head of brand and marketing, tries to stump Allison by asking your questions about parental leave policies and how to support working parents and their coverage teams through leave transitions. 

We closed it out with a few rapid fire questions, including what her kids think she does for a living.

Thank you to everyone who has tuned in this season. We hope these interviews have inspired you to use what you’ve learned to improve the parental leave experience at your organization.

We’re taking a short break for the holidays but will be back with season 2 in January!

‍

Jenna: Welcome, Allison, to the very last episode of season one of The False Tradeoff. I'm putting you in the hot seat again.

Allison: And I'm putting you in the hot seat because I didn't prep for this. So here we go.

Jenna: Great. It'll be more real, genuine responses. Today we're going to do an Ask Me Anything. So if you remember, we started season one with an Ask Me Anything. So I thought it would be fun to take all the questions we've received, really a lot of questions on LinkedIn, we get a lot of emails, you get a lot of direct messages. So I pulled a list of questions we've got from parents, HR folks, and then I'm also going to end with some rapid fire questions. So I'm going to start with the parent questions that are more so about parental leave planning and how to support that experience as a person taking leave. 

So first question, what's one thing that usually surprises new parents while they're on leave from work? I've read a lot, but I like to hear from other parents in case I'm missing something that will better prepare me as a first time parent.

Allison: I think what surprises people is that they have no clue how they will actually feel. And that goes no matter how you feel. It doesn't matter if it's your second child, your third child. I think everybody thinks that they know how they're going to feel when they step away from work. And often they are shocked at what that experience is actually like. 

All the time I'll hear people who say they plan to return in a part-time capacity or they plan to go in and work over leave, and then they do the exact opposite, and that's not what they actually want. And so our advice is always like, wait until you are on leave to make major decisions about your life afterwards, because you just don't know how you're gonna feel. And oftentimes these feelings can be temporary, too.

Jenna: Right. And actually I'm remembering I've worked with you through one of your three leaves. And when you, your plan completely changed, right? 

Allison: Yeah,  in the hospital. I was like, I don't want to hear from work, like at all. Like, ever.‍

Jenna: Yeah. You really did. She messaged us and said, I’m deleting Slack. Don't call me. Give me at least eight - I think it was eight weeks - and we're like, okay, bye, Alison.

Allison: Yeah, I think you just think you know what you want and then you don't. And it doesn't matter if you've done it multiple times. It's just always very different from what you expect.‍

Jenna: Right. Okay, moving on to the second question. How can I share my leave plans with my team in a way that makes it clear I'll set them up for success, but without feeling like I'm apologizing for being away?‍

Allison: I would like to remind people that just because you're gone doesn't mean that the people who are taking on your work are mad about it. It does not have to be a negative thing. It doesn't have to be something you apologize for. You may be giving someone an opportunity of a lifetime because you're stepping away and they now finally get access to something that they've never had access to. Maybe it's working with someone more senior or working on a project that they're no totally qualified for, but they've always been interested in. And so I think the key here is to plan. Like this is something that you can control. People only get upset if they feel like they are something sprung on them or if they're overworked. And so the earlier you can start planning with open communication, the better. And I would say also this doesn't have to fall on you.

This is something that you should be working with your manager on. It doesn't need to be you as the expecting parent having to go around and make the full plan on your own and get buy-in from other people.‍

Jenna: Actually, I'm going to go rogue a little because I think we have enough time, but we did this really well, again, with your leave. Do you want to share one of the examples? I'm thinking of product development with Sara.‍

Allison:Yeah, I mean, Sara was an ops associate and she had never done anything in product. And I said, you want to? Because this needs to be built and we're either going to pause it and I'll do it when I come back or like, you want to try? She was absolutely terrified. But she decided that, yeah, that was something that she was really interested in.

And so we took other things off her plate and we also brought in an advisor who came from a strong product background so that she wasn't on her own and she felt like she had appropriate guidance. And so we set up a system where she felt supported and also scared in a good way to try something new. And she discovered through that, that she absolutely loved it. And quite frankly, someone with zero product experience would probably never have been given that opportunity at any other company had it not been little bit of a desperation scenario where like, I'm going out on leave to have a baby, sorry, someone's gotta do it. I see this happen all the time. It can be very positive. 

And so I don't, I hate when people say the word apologize. It's like, well, you don't have to apologize if you're actually planning and working with the rest of the company to set everyone up for success.

‍Jenna: Right. Yeah, all the guilt, like I feel like we get a lot of comments when we post about this on LinkedIn where people are like, I'm just so happy, you know, that I got to take leave and I felt really guilty for everything that they needed to do, or my team had to do while I was out, but totally agree.  Like, especially we've seen it multiple times where it's turned into a really positive career moment for the people covering, but also for, you know, the person returning from work, feeling just supported, happy, with the outcomes when they return.‍

Allison: You can also feel gratitude without feeling guilty. I have always felt deep gratitude for the people who've covered for me, but that doesn't mean that I feel like I've done anything bad or wrong or feel guilt around it.‍

Jenna: Yeah. Okay. Moving on. What's your top piece of advice for feeling confident about returning to work after being out for a while? I'm taking six months of leave and I feel nervous to be out of the loop, but I do plan to completely disconnect once the baby is born.‍

Allison:You're going to hate me. There is no top tip. It totally depends on what you're concerned about, what your role is, what your company culture is, who your manager is. There are so many different factors that I would have to unpack to understand what my top piece of advice would be. 

And this is exactly why our program exists. It's impossible to productize the top tips because everything is so nuanced. There are certain activities that yes, we've productized and we've said you should be thinking about your coverage plan and here's how to do it. But at the end of the day, the most important pieces of advice and learnings and insights really do come out of coaching and they are so personal.‍

Jenna: And what's your take on the fully disconnecting part of that question?‍

Allison: How was the question framed? I don't remember.‍

Jenna: Like you're planning to fully disconnect, like have no contact whatsoever with work while they are on leave and they're taking

‍Allison: I think you do you. I think if that's what you want, you should do it. Absolutely. I think usually when people say that, there's an underlying reason why that is coming from a really good place. And maybe they're in a position where they're in a really high performance, high anxiety type situation, and they just don't think that that can coexist with expanding their family. And so they should absolutely work with somebody to figure out how to achieve that.‍

Jenna: Okay. Next question. When I'm back from parental leave, what are the best ways to communicate that I'm still invested in my career? I don't want people to assume my priorities have changed.‍

Allison: You just have to communicate it. I mean, unfortunately, we do live in a world where there are a lot of assumptions, particularly if you are a mother, about your career ambitions. And if you don't talk about them, you are at risk of people making those types of assumptions. I don't like that answer. It's not what I wish for, but it is the reality is that there are a lot of assumptions. I also just think that open communication and discussing what your career goals are is always helpful, regardless of what stage of life you're in.

Jenna: Okay, last question on the parent side: How did you learn to set boundaries with work once you had kids? I love my job, but realize I'm going to have to work differently after I become a dad.

Allison: There's, how did I and then how should you. Two very different questions. For me personally, it was a nightmare. I returned to work after my first leave and I was in an environment where there weren't a lot of parents. I also prided myself on being basically a workhorse. And so I really felt that that is where my strength came from. I can work so hard and you know, around the clock. 

And this is the story I told myself. That is why I'm successful is because I'm such a hard worker. And I tried to do that as a mother and couldn't do it. And then basically just broke down and said, something's got to change and had to sort of relearn and reteach myself. How do you work in a world where you can't solve every problem just by throwing more hours at something?

And that was really hard. And so it took a long time, I would say until, I mean, I think things were the worst three months after I returned from leave. And it took a good like three to six months after that to basically start drawing boundaries. And I wish I had a great story as to what I did. I mean, I was just so exhausted that that was kind of the end. And so it's like, I just had to.

And I was very fortunate that I was running my own team and had a lot of freedom and flexibility to reinvent myself and to create boundaries. And most people, or I should say many people don't have that. And then ultimately what it came down to is like, I set very strict rules that everyone on my team knew that I would not work between these hours. I would not work on weekends and that everything had to get done within a certain number of hours. And eventually you gotta figure out how to deliver, how to reprioritize.

But I do think that for anyone who's looking into setting new boundaries, the best piece of advice that I've ever heard from one of our career coaches is you should frame everything as an experiment. People are afraid of change, but they're not afraid to experiment. And so if you frame it as we're going to try this, we'll see how it works. If it doesn't work, we'll go back to what we were doing before. That allows you to make changes faster.

Jenna: That's good advice. Scary to commit sometimes. Okay, I'm going to switch it up. We got a lot of questions that are more policy focused and then some that are actually specific to our services. So I'm going to run through those now. 

So question number one. I believe in career coaching, but why should we invest in coaching specifically for parental leave when only a percentage of our employees take leave? I'm finding it's a tough sell if it isn't applicable for all of our employees. Love this question.

Allison: I actually think that it is applicable to 100 % of employees. The benefit is applicable to 100%. And the mechanism with which we provide the benefit of better coverage planning and better business continuity is by giving a career coach to a specific group at the organization, which is the parents going on leave. But the actual benefit, I would argue, is actually much, much greater for the company at large.

And so, yes, of course, you're not going to give this career coach to every single person to work through someone's parental leave. You're going to give it to the person that needs to work through coming up with a plan to both build a coverage plan and a re-onboarding plan afterwards. But at the end of the day, the benefit is felt by every single person at the company.‍

Jenna: Right. And I also think when we get questions like this, we didn't always do the manager training, but it is like if folks are thinking specifically about which employee can use this actual thing, it is a mix of, you know, employees and anyone who manages someone that's going on leave.

‍Allison: Well, at the end of the day, the word benefit is very misleading because our manager training is never considered a benefit. But at the end of the day, our manager training and our career coaching program are effectively the same thing. They are both vehicles to share best practices, to drive the outcomes that we want, which is business continuity and retention of talent. 

And so we've just discovered that career coaching with the employee going on leave is the better mechanism with which to deliver this support versus training for managers. You would never have a manager get upset that they don't have access to this training. I mean, of course they have access to it, but they would not be mad about that because, you know, if it, if it isn't relevant to them, then it doesn't matter. And so I think the word benefit sometimes is a little bit misleading.‍

Jenna: Okay, next question. How do existing clients prove the ROI of a program like Parentally? Do they focus on retention rates, promoting from within or something else?‍

Allison: We've really focused on a few key things. The first is retention. And so we track what percent of employees say that they are more likely to stay at the company directly because of parental leave. I believe our average overall across our entire portfolio of clients is about 88% of employees say they're more likely because of Parentaly. 

We also focus on business continuity. So we ask a handful of questions around, did your team perform better as a result of the support you got from Parentally? Did they perform better while you were out? We also ask managers how they feel their team will perform or did perform as a result of the support they got from Parentally. 

Then finally, an interesting one that we've actually, didn't intend for this to be one of the ROI metrics, but we discovered this in a review that we made of one of our older clients that we discovered that the folks who went through the parental leave program were two and a half times more likely to be promoted after their parental leaves as opposed to those who did not go through the parental leave program. 

And so you can put together a very nice calculator that shows across all of those things, this is just such an obviously high return on investment. And in fact, just to make it even more succinct, For the cost of this program, you can put 50 people through the program and that amount of money that that costs is the equivalent of retaining just one of them. That's it. And so, you know, that's just one of the levers we focus on that ignores business continuity, that ignores all of these other things that we know that we improve for the business.‍

Jenna: Yeah, I feel like a lot of the other stuff we track, like more of employee productivity, morale like all of the sort of warm and fuzzy parts of culture and just knowing that parents are supported. I personally love reading that feedback and seeing those numbers, but I know the ROI is a little bit bigger than that with retention. 

Okay, we got a mix of questions about policy Improvements, so I'm gonna generalize. Why isn't extending a parental leave policy like in terms of how long to offer paid leave. Why isn't that good enough?

Allison: I think it's step one. I think every company should be evaluating their paid parental leave policies to make sure that they are offering something that is competitive and supportive. But I think the problem is that too many companies think that that's all they have to do. 

So they roll out these longer paid leave policies and then they're shocked when they're still losing people after parental leave and when those folks return to work and report really negative experiences coming back and re-onboarding after leave.

And I think for any of us who have been through the parental leave experience, it's a really tough conversation to have because at the exact same time, we appreciate every single day of paid leave that we get. We would not trade it in and come back early. But we know we have to pay for it by having a more difficult time in our career trajectory and our business results oftentimes suffer as a result. 

And so, yeah, and so I just think that when companies roll out these longer policies, they need to also be thinking if we're going to allow people to take more time away, how do we make sure that business continues, that we continue to thrive and that they continue to be supported?

Jenna: Okay, the last question is pretty tactical. How can we help managers redistribute work to cover for an employee on print to leave without causing the rest of the team to get burnt out?

Allison: Everything's a math equation. So if you add something to someone's plate, you have to take something else away. Or you can add in another resource. And so I really think that managers should think of everything like a math equation. 

There is no easy answer here. There isn't a simple solution. And it's never as straightforward as it seems. Even if you have budget to bring in a backfill, it's not as simple as just bringing in a backfill. You have to bring them in for extra time before and after the person goes on leave. You have to train them.

You have to hope that they can understand the systems and seamlessly get into the work. And so it is a really difficult project to figure out who is going to continue this work while they're out. That's why our business exists. 

But I do think that managers should always think of it as a math equation, because too often what we see is, we'll just figure it out, or we'll just split this up and add it to everyone else's plates. And then what ends up happening is everybody suffers and that is so bad for so many reasons. Your business results will not be as good. Morale will decrease. This new parent will return. People will be upset. It decreases the moral, you know, it's just a really tough situation.

Jenna: Yeah. Okay, moving to rapid fire because I wanted to keep this episode under 30 minutes and we're just about at 20. Will we see a federal paid parental leave policy pass in the next four years or ever?

Allison: Yes, of course. You know, if you say it, believe it, it'll happen. I hope so.‍

Jenna: What's one thing people get wrong about parental leave that really bugs you?‍

Allison: I think you were trying to get me to say this earlier, but it really bugs me when people believe that somebody who takes parental leave needs to have zero contact with work. If the person wants that, that's wonderful. We should honor that. But too often I see companies saying, we're going to shut down systems and we're not going to give this person access to any information and we don't want anyone to reach out to them. I deeply believe that we should be supporting the new parents. We should support their long-term careers. We want them to be successful over time and every person is not the same. And so making these blanket rules or statements can really damage people. And so I think people don't fully appreciate that.‍

Jenna: And then often they think it's not actually illegal to communicate with folks. I feel like the pushback for a lot of people is the fear of doing something that's gonna get them in trouble. ‍

Allison: Right. Yeah, I just think like I am a person that is very focused on my career. I am going to return to work and I'm going to want to continue to be successful. And too often if you say, but I can't, no one can talk to me for four to six months for any reason under the sun. It feels like it's not treating me like an adult. And it's tough, right? Because it's like, we want to be respectful. We don't want to have this person work, but there is oftentimes a level of communication that is actually really beneficial for that new parent. And they miss out on that when we have sort of these blanket rules.‍

Jenna: Yeah. Okay. What's the number one thing you've learned about yourself since becoming a parent? I'm going personal.‍

Allison: I have learned that I am the exact same person. I think so often people feel once they have kids that they change, they're different. And it's funny because I don't feel that way at all. I feel like I am the exact same person. I've always wanted to be a mother. Now I am a mother. My interests, my hobbies, my dedication, everything feels like me, but I feel like more of me. 

And I don't know, it's funny because I don't oftentimes hear people saying that. I think people talk a lot about feeling like they changed and I'm sure that's true for them. For me, I'm just more of me. And I kind of like that.‍

Jenna: Okay, I'm adding one in. How would your kids describe what you do for work in like one sentence?‍

Allison: Archie would say that I'm a podcaster. He thinks it's so cool. He asks if this is on YouTube. So Jenna, you got to make sure that our YouTube channel is up because…‍

Jenna: I'm uploading it as we speak, believe it or not.‍

Allison: I'm like mom of the year if he can go into his second grade class and tell them his mom is a YouTuber. That's like his life dream. The girls say that I'm the boss. ‍

Jenna: Also true! Okay. If you could have anyone join this podcast next season, who would it be and why?‍

Allison: Okay, I'm going to cheat and throw out a few people and then we have to put this on LinkedIn and try and put them on blast and get them out of the podcast. Okay, here's my dream list. Buttigieg. Now that the election is over, he's going to have some more free time. I want him to come on and I want to talk about his experience going on parental leave. I just thought that that was so huge the way that he navigated that. And I think really sent a major statement out. And so would love to interview him about that experience. 

Alexis Ohanian, is that how pronounce his name? Ohanian, Ohanian. I also think he has a unique perspective. And I think especially in the startup VC space for him to come out and really advocate for paid parental leave, specifically paternity leave. He's done such a great job there. I want to talk to him about that.

Who else? I want to have Katie Couric on because I just love interviewing women who are older, more experienced, have learned way more lessons. She's a working mother. And I just think that she's so cool. And so I would love to interview her. Basically anyone else that I'm like, who else do we want, Jenna? Who else is on our list?

Jenna: Right? Well, two out of three, we're in conversations, I think, with two out of three and we've met Katie. So I'll add her to my list. We'll get in touch with her people and we're going to make it happen for season two. Okay. Give me your elevator pitch in response to someone who says, our offering is a “nice-to-have,” but it is not business critical.‍

Allison: That Parentaly is a “nice-to-have,” but not business critical. I would say, Parentaly at our core is focused on business continuity and retention of talent. That is at the core of what businesses are attempting to provide for their shareholders. And so it is the definition of business critical. We only work with companies that have already committed to provide paid parental leave. So they have already made this decision that they are going to offer this benefit of taking paid parental leave. All we then do is reduce the natural disruption that occurs when people step away from work for an extended period of time. And so when we come in, we are literally solving for a problem that you already have. We are not coming in as like a “nice-to-have” benefit that makes people really happy. Although we do make people happy, too.

Jenna: I was going to say I'm cutting that. We do make people really happy and we solve business problems. Okay. Final question. What are you most excited about for our team in 2025?

Allison: I don't have an exciting answer. I think it feels like we have a really good team right now. We're a nice size of a company where we all kind of know each other, but also still have our specialties. So I'm excited to do what we said that we were going to do. And I also get really excited about a bunch of the thought leadership work that we're doing. So the research partnerships that we're launching, some of the conferences that we're going to and speaking at.

I think at the end of the day where I get the most joy and motivation is when we can amplify stories and voices. You know, I think a lot about the fact that I'm done having kids. And in some ways that makes me almost a more powerful voice to be able to talk about this experience because with a little bit of distance, you then realize how much stronger you are when you know things that people should be doing and talking about and experiencing. 

And so I don't know, I'm kind of excited to be like, I'm out of those baby years, my youngest is over two, and now I want to get better, more direct, more, I don't know, I want to go bigger on making sure that I'm now bringing more data and focus and voices into the room to continue to talk about this topic.

Jenna: Love it. All right. Well, this concludes our interview and our first season. So thank you. I have loved producing this with you. We will, for anyone listening, we're going to relaunch in January. So hopefully you'll continue listening and thank you, Allison.

Allison: And Jenna's gonna get all sorts of celebrity guests, because she said she would.

Jenna: Yes, totally. So just subscribe for that reason. You'll have, it's crazy the amount of celebs we'll have next season. Thank you, Allison.‍

Allison: Thanks, Jenna.

‍