Marketing and My Mat Leave
Those of you who happen to be my Facebook friends may have noticed my recent posting, “Want My Job? Hiring Yahoo! Trade Marketing Manager” and will know my news. My husband and I are expecting. So in just three short months, I’ll go from Marketing Manager to Mom. Maternity leave, which I’ll be taking for up to 1 year, is going to be a huge change, personally and professionally, impacting both my family and co-workers.
There’s few of us in marketing who will go through our careers without being affected by a maternity leave, whether it’s our own, our spouse’s, or a co-worker we rely on.
In 2000, parental leave was greatly expanded in Canada from 10 weeks to 35 weeks divided as desired between two parents. This is in addition to 15 weeks maternity leave, giving a total possible period of 50 weeks paid leave for a mother. There is still no paid leave for new fathers, however. (Wikipedia).
So how does mat leave impact marketers? And how do you start planning your own mat leave contingency plan to keep your marketing projects chugging along, while you’ll be busy chugging the choo choo train with junior? I can’t say I have all the answers. But here are the Do’s and Don’ts I have gathered from my time being pregnant and starting to plan for my leave:
• Don’t rely too much on HR or your bosses to guide you on all the aspects. Don’t get me wrong, my managers and HR staff were extremely supportive and informative when I told them my news. But the truth is, depending on the company where you work, your mat leave may be a situation they haven’t had a lot experience dealing with. There may or may not be a set company plan in place for employees who take mat leave, especially at companies or agencies with a young (or male) demographic skew where they’re not yet accustomed to the situation among their staff.
If they’re doing their jobs, like my HR and management team is, they will provide you with info on your legal rights, the benefits you’re entitled to from EI, and info on how your compensation, insurance, RSPs, etc. will be impacted. What you likely won’t get guidance on is doing the mat leave version of temporary succession planning. I.e. setting someone up do successfully take up – for up to one year – where you left off.
• Do start recruiting early and be active in the hiring process. As I’ve discovered, it’s not easy to trust someone to take on your job, or to find the ideal person with the perfect mix of skills and experience. Luckily, I am getting lots of support from HR and my company’s recruiter to aid in the search. But whether you’re hiring someone external, or recruiting internally, no one knows your job better than you. You want someone who can match the level of work you do, be just as trusted by your colleagues, but also have the flair and initiative to add their own creative twist to projects so they’re not lying fallow for a year.
• Don’t expect to have any control over what happens when you’re away. This is a tough one for us Crackberry (or now iPhone) addicts. If your company is an 11pm email culture like Yahoo! is, where even a few unplugged days away means coming back to a mountain of email, it’s pretty hard to contemplate being away from that constant change and upheaval for up to a year. You’d be pretty much coming back to almost a brand new company and job. I’m not going to pretend I have any advice in this arena. But my action plan is to not be completely unplugged (OK Moms who have been on mat leave…I can hear you laughing!) I’d love to hear from other readers for a reality check on how you handled this. But my plan now is - I will try and be copied on emails for major projects and to check in every month or so to see what’s going on. The idea is to try and help without being a constant hovering presence that prevents people from doing their jobs.
• Do – relax and try to slow down. If you’re like me, you may be in a state of denial of how pregnancy will physically and psychologically affect you doing your job. It’s better to accept and listen to your body when you are hungry, dead tired or sick. Also, give a heads up to your colleagues, as well as learn to delegate and ask for the support when you need it. As you will need to be out for numerous appointments, ultrasounds, doctor visits, etc.. at least once or twice per month. Nobody expects you to go to as many industry parties as you did before. But the drive to remain visible, relevant and appear just as capable is still there. Still, you don’t want to stress out to the point where it’s impacting the baby. Baby’s and Mom’s health are your number one priorities, and you may need to be more assertive and ask for some flexibility in deadlines and workloads to accommodate that. Again my plans and advice do not always equal my own reality. But at some point in the next few weeks I do plan to do work from home (or..gasp, vacation day) on Fridays.
There is no doubt this is a women’s issue as well as an industry one. Much has been written on whether women who step off the ladder from their fast paced careers bump right into the glass ceiling when they try and get back on, tot in tow. The whispered rumblings you may not always hear among the congratulations, mazel tovs and smiles is sometimes a hidden resentment, often among old-school male management and less progressive companies. “You hire these women, invest in them, then they go on mat leave for over a year,” is sometimes the unspoken (or in my case with another job – spoken!) complaint. So does that mean your prospects of promotion and advancement get sucked up like the soiled sausages in the Diaper Genie when you decide to take that year off?
While this hasn’t been an issue at my current job, I have heard this before from employers in more traditional businesses I’ve worked for. And it’s true to a large extent…your mat leave is going to be disruptive to the flow of business and to the company. But a responsible and progressive employer knows that a parent who is supported on their mat leave often returns as a more committed, loyal and motivated employee who is less likely to move around, especially when they have a family to support.
I’d love to hear some more from those of you who are or have been on mat leave, and how you, your spouse and your work team dealt with it. It should be a fun three months..and lots of change to come. But in the meanwhile… I’m dying for anything lemon flavored.
