> In Canada, companies have had no option but to make 52-week parental leaves work, when requested, since 2000. The question Canadian companies ask isn’t “Can we do it?” but “How do we do it?”
Okay, so... how do they do it? They never answer the question.
If you have say, a CFO or a specialist mechanic (that you only need 1 of, but definitely need) and they take a year off, what do you do? Just go without a CFO/mechanic for the year? Or do you start the hiring search, bring in another person as a temp CFO for a year? What if you can't find a temp, so you hire someone? Is the person entitled to their old job back? Do you fire the new person or the old one?
What if the person takes parental leave again after 1 month back? Do you accept that you've torpedoed some role? Do you try to slowly phase out this person's job description and offload their work onto their coworkers?
More succinctly, what if someone is definitely necessary in the near-day-to-day, and does not do work that is interchangeable with other employees?
I'm not trying to make some kind of gotcha. I really don't know the answer, and I figured the article would answer what seem like extremely obvious questions that arise, but it didn't.
I suspect that firms have learned to deal with it, but by doing things like passively selecting against women and younger people for critical roles. Is that how they manage? Is that an improvement?
There's also something unsettling about "here's how [countries where the native birth rate is pretty much 0 or 1 babies] do parental leave!" feels a bit like... the women already did half the corporation's work for them.
Surprisingly few people are actually trying to answer this question on this thread. The answer is straightforward: you either structure your organization so that there are enough overlapping responsibilities to account for parental leaves (e.g. good business practice of not making a fragile organization), or you hire a temporary employee explicitly on a 1 year "parental leave" contract.
The labour market is quite good, and there is no shortage of qualified individuals for almost all positions (CFO, specialists included). Often, a good temp ends up getting another position at the same company after doing the 1-year contract. There is also a small cottage industry of successful individuals who basically take such jobs.
Maybe hard to accept for some, but the world doesn't end when people go on leave to have kids.
It also turns out that most people (that I know) are quite happy to buy into this particular social contract. There is a tacit understanding that you might have to pick up the slack a bit for someone else, but one day you might need the same in return - borrowing against the future is another way to think about it.
Source: Canadian, have worked in organizations and involved in hiring policies where this is successful.
Canada does it because there aren't very many high-performing companies in Canada. I'm saying this as an expat. Most of the top performing Canadians move down to the States.
The companies that exist in Canada are companies like banks, Rogers, Bell, etc, where you won't find too many high performers. I have a friend who has taken 2 1-year leaves, and it didn't impact her job because her job as an account manager isn't particularly hard to take over.
A high-performing company like the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation can't perform at the level that they want if their employees are taking 1 year leaves, and that's just a fact of life. It's the same as Netflix. They have a 1 year policy, but I doubt any engineer will take the full year, but kudos to them if they do.
First, as sibling comment notes, this is actually quite mild in terms of business continuity planning because unlike actual "hit-by-a-bus" issues, you have many months of lead time to prepare for it. Second, your choice is not "one year of parental leave" or "perfectly performance from the person with a baby at home". Having a young child is a huge life event, parental leave or not. So, you can eliminate the most competent cross-section of the employable demographic (age for having children is usually past the point when someone is junior to the point of being useless, but before cognitive decline becomes an issue). It's a hard problem, so you have companies struggling with it like the Gates foundation, here.
Since Canada is doing fine, perhaps instead of asking rhetorical questions you should read some Canadian HR journals?
"I suspect that firms have learned to deal with it, but by doing things like passively selecting against women and younger people for critical roles. Is that how they manage? Is that an improvement?"
While that probably happens, in Canada this is parental leave that either parent can take advantage of. I would imagine this decreases the amount of gender discrimination.
It also worked out really well for me. As a father I was able to take several months off after the birth of our twins to help care for them. My wife had quit her job earlier due to a toxic workplace and medical issues.
The comparison is a bit flawed here. The Canadian system only pays a percentage of your normal wage, is subject to a wage cap, and the 12 months leave is shared by both parents.
So it’s not like every situation will have a parent missing for a full year.
>If you have say, a CFO or a specialist mechanic (that you only need 1 of, but definitely need) and they take a year off, what do you do? Just go without a CFO/mechanic for the year? Or do you start the hiring search, bring in another person as a temp CFO for a year?
What do you do if your single point gets sick or quits?
I'm in canada and there is an actual problem. I know of a lawfirm that suffered through a new hire. She had one kid, took the leave and then was pregnant with another within months of returning. The nasty part was that she made is known she intended on leaving the firm after the second kid. She did then leave. The firm effectively paid her for two years only to have her then walk out the door.
Women should get the time. I have no issue with them, and men too, taking the time. But given modern family planning, pregnancies are most often not a surprise. I don't like seeing an employee who plans and executes a multi-year campaign to extract as much money as possible from a program with the goal of then walking away once the tap runs dry.
There is no answer. Employers cannot interfere with family matters. Patents get the legally mandated leave. And they are free then to walk away. It only gets horrible when people start to leverage the program beyond the original purpose.
Your questions are all valid but please remember Canada is a real country and business do exist with this law. It's not an hypothetical scenario. Same exists in other European countries.
What do you want out of life is a great question, I prefer the more social view of the world Canada has, even if I am paid less than in the individualist culture of US.
The birth rate is dropping to at/below replacement across most of the world. Take Iran, for example. It has a lower birth rate than Europe. Not what you'd expect, but it happens to every nation that develops a modern economy. At a certain point, it makes more sense for young parents to concentrate their resources on one or two children, rather than hedge their bets against disease and famine and war by having many children - and more importantly, having a child at all is sufficiently expensive and difficult that many adults just opt out of it.
I can only speak from personal observations as a Canadian; note that I am using female workers/maternity examples and pronouns to try to answer the specific question posed, especially since historically my observed experience has been predominantly with maternity leaves, but also note that in Canada men can increasingly take paternity leave instead/in addition, which I 101% support and further believe will further make this less of a concern/issue.
My wife is a store manager for a major international hardware store chain, and much of her senior leadership team up and down (assistant store managers working for her, as well as her district manager she reports to) are female as well, so in their neck of the woods at least there's no passive selection. Due to nature of pregnancy, maternity leave is something that lends itself to some heads-up, so as far as I have observed the company handles it through careful, productive and communicative planning. This may include contracted positions, but also internal temporary/trial opportunities - role only being available for a period of time is not necessarily a bad thing, if you know and plan for it. Additionally, while people will fall onto a curve and experience counts (so we're not all fully replaceable blocks or cogs), nevertheless you can build an organization that has documented procedures, overlap, and shared collaborative knowledge.
I absolutely have seen people who are "irreplaceable" (and have occasionally occupied such a position), but it's all too frequently just a gap, that is addressable if you're forced to address it and need to do so ahead of time.
Similarly in my line of work, both the functional and technical experts as well as middle managers or senior leadership, happen to have a majority of female team members, and while as IT/BT projectized organization we are less proceduralized than my wife's organization, again - you see it coming, and you prepare for it.
Bottom line - I really think the combination of seeing it coming and having to deal with it, makes it far less of an issue than it might seem from the other side :-/
That’s what you have managers for. The real question is why is the person in charge still employed if a critical business process depends on a single person.
I worked for a place where the CFO was diagnosed with cancer and was out for nearly 6 months. You know what happened? The Comptroller was appointed interim CFO and the CFO resumed his duties on his return.
All of these what ifs reflect a profound missing of the point. Instead of babies, think about injuries or extended jury duty or whatever. Any institution, whether a corporation, government agency or school, needs to be able to function independent of the individual employees.
If the magic mechanic or money lady is that critical, you already have a much more serious internal controls problem.
There's also something unsettling about "here's how [countries where the native birth rate is pretty much 0 or 1 babies] do parental leave!" feels a bit like... the women already did half the corporation's work for them.
There's the rub, can you (at a population level) have a birth rate at or above replacement if both parents are expected to find employment outside of the home? I don't think that's realistic.
Not sure if the question is meant seriously. There is no shortage of countries in the developing world having all kinds of parental leave, and plenty of information how that is structured.
> bring in another person as a temp CFO for a year?
Yes, that's bascially how things are done. Either a temp hire or, more commonly for specialised roles perhaps, a consultant. There's a whole job market for doing these one year stints.
Of course, you can't force people into parental leave. Some doesn't take any at all. Some take as much as they can. It may very well be the case that specialists and business leaders take less time off than others, but it's not a general trend, especially not with the working class which is perhaps the opposite of what one might expect.
> Is the person entitled to their old job back?
Generally yes, but these things are hard to enforce.
> Do you fire the new person or the old one?
Not really since replacements are hired for a specific time period.
> if someone is definitely necessary in the near-day-to-day?
Then you have a problem but usually you know about it half a year before it's too late.
> things like passively selecting against women and younger people for critical roles. Is that how they manage?
There are plenty of data available on this. Comparing data from different countries is problematic, but countries with more social insurance tend to also have more women in leading positions. This is probably due to confounding effects of course but should be indicative that if the above effect exists it is comparably small.
> the women already did half the corporation's work for them.
> here's how [countries where the native birth rate is pretty much 0 or 1 babies]
Most of the West is below 2 and the world is now at 2.5 average. And one of the main factors helping reduce it is .. the availability of employment outside of parenting.
It's not unusual to employ people on 1-year fixed contracts as maternity cover.
Those who have studied economics will not be surprised at how Canadian companies do this. The law effectively makes it illegal for all Canadian companies to operate in Canada if they can not afford this 52 week leave. Pretty much like how minimum wage makes it illegal for low productivity individuals to work or be employed.
There is a definite cost to this which is paid for by the other employees,share-holders and economy in general. It also makes age an issue in hiring decisions and employers would be less willing to hire potential new parents. Secondly, people figure out clever ways to avoid this through contractual employees, outsourcing and other methods.
Without such law Canadian society would have been more rich, more innovative and ensured welfare of all in the society.
First, on the legal side: the firm can leave the position open, or hire a full or temporary person for it, but when the parent returns they get their old job back (or an equivalent one). Also it's not exactly 52 weeks parental leave, it's 13 weeks medical leave (for the mother expressly) and 39 weeks for either parent, to be split as desired. And that's just the paid component (which is paid by the unemployment insurance system). You're also able to take unpaid leave as the other parent. Same difference to the employer, of course. They're not on the hook for the direct cost.
What generally happens is the firm hires a person on a one year term, and then at the end of the year the original person comes back and the replacement person is either kept on (if they were good) or not (if they weren't). It's a decent way to hire new people, actually.
>>What if the person takes parental leave again after 1 month back? Do you accept that you've torpedoed some role? Do you try to slowly phase out this person's job description and offload their work onto their coworkers?
In Canada you can't take parental leave simply at any time, it's tied to the birth of the kid (wth leeway). It's very unusual to have a child 13 months after the previous one, and there are rules about how often you can take the paid unemployment insurance (tied to how much you've worked over the last year). But yes, you'd be entitled to leave from you job.
>>More succinctly, what if someone is definitely necessary in the near-day-to-day, and does not do work that is interchangeable with other employees?
A well-structured organization typically doesn't have very many of these people, because it's a ticking time bomb. That person will leave; they'll quit or get fired or get hit by a bus or get cancer or take a three week vacation and the business has to figure it out. And babies don't really sneak up on you that much - there's plenty of time to train someone, etc.
>>I suspect that firms have learned to deal with it, but by doing things like passively selecting against women and younger people for critical roles. Is that how they manage?
I've never seen any data that Canada has poorer gender equality or more age discrimination than the US.
Overall I think that the parental leave laws in Canada do make things marginally more difficult for businesses but significantly easier for new parents. That's a tradeoff I consider reasonable.
Basically what happens when the developer is hit by the bus. Don't we accommodate for this in regular business by creating redundancies? When you know someone is going on a parental leave you double down on that and add one more redundancy. For cases like the CFO, it's not unusual for someone reporting to the CFO temporarily taking over the CFO role (with/without the title).
(Honestly why is this any different from someone leaving an org or being generally unavailable for any reason? In fact, in this case it's much better since a baby doesn't pop-out just like that - it gives a nice few months to train a temp.)
To be somewhat fair this is still an amazing benefit: “It’s now capping parental leaves at six months and giving parents a taxable $20,000 stipend to defray the costs of childcare.”
In the context that they are doing this while few other American organizations do it, and not that many other countries do something this generous.
The fact that after they backed off of the leave they are giving out a 20K bonus for child care is amazing in and of itself.
I'm surprised that's not emphasized more. They probably also have very flexible work environment for parents so that when daycare's are closed and other issues crop up the parents can get back in there.
I'm a dad of 2, 2 years and 5 year. I don't know if I'd want a year off to stay home with the kids. I'd have loved to get 3 months instead of the 1 month i did get but a year... That just sounds like a lot of cabin fever to me. I'm sure a lot of people would appreciate it, so I'm 100% not knocking it at all. This new benefit is more attractive to me at least.
I’m not surprised. This is so different to how workplaces are usually run in the US that organizations, or society even, has no institutional memory on how to deal with it.
In Sweden, where 400+ days of parental leave has been mandatory for years organization have adapted and learned patterns and ways to deal with people dissappearing for around a year.
It’s a shame the Gates Foundation didn’t research this better before diving in.
Well it’s not an employer deciding whether it’s done so organizations just deal with it. And yes it does give effects that last years and disrupt organizations three layers deep. But it happens to all organizations, so it’s not a competitive disadvantage.
In reality its not that simple. Its often extra difficult for 30-35 year old women to find new jobs as employers are wary. Its also more difficult for women to return to work after taking longer off. Discrimination lawsuits are more common in Europe from what I've seen.
I once worked with a guy who had 4 children in 5 years. He took a lot of parental leave, sick days and often slacked off early. As soon as the last baby was stable he quit for a new job. Companies and teams that are too generous get shafted.
In Canada you can now take 18 months shared paternal leave.
First 12 months you are entitled to employment insurance which is a certain percentage of your income.
The next 6 months are unpaid.
Our recent company ethics training had a interesting scenario on maternity leave discrimination and comments.
Some work places if you are key employee in some aspect entice you with pay, more flexible working conditions or provided daycare for coming back early.
My company deals with it by hiring contract workers.
Some content could take years to learn, so we recently shifted the core duties to remaining members and gave the contract worker remedial/administrative tasks which we all hated any ways.
Overall things still function smoothly
- however we have an interesting scenario coming up in the next few months where one employee is retiring and two are going on paternity leave (me being one, but only taking a month off using vacation as my wife plans
To hog the paternity leave lol... it does make sense financially.
It will be interestinghow my company handles losing 3 key members of a 7 person team(atleast I will be gone a month only)
Didn't know they had such an extremely generous benefit. 52 weeks of paid time off is a huge benefit. I think people here are underestimating how huge that is - it is far better than any country. I don't see any countries that offer 100% PTO for parental leave. Most cap it at $XXX/week or some percentage like 50-66% that is a far cry from 100%. (Which I assume still has a true upper limit but isn't well documented in articles)
Personally, I can't imagine having kids here in the bay area unless I finally hit big startup riches or get a job at FAANG. A month isn't enough time off and unemployment is going to be severely financially draining when state benefits won't even pay half my rent (And the financial burden of health insurance will probably devour most of that before it even gets to paying rent anyway). C'est la vie.
Guaranteeing a job opening (and presumably the same position, or at least the same salary) for a year is a huge ask.
I suppose there are two problems. One is paying partial or full salary during the leave, and the other is getting a job when you’re ready to return.
The first problem is easy to solve just like unemployment, except that in this case it’s paid based on voluntary leave. Since companies don’t make the decision, companies wouldn’t be penalized for having employees take the leave like they can be with unemployment though.
The second issue of finding a place to work when you’re ready to return is tricky. It’s absolutely unfair in certain situations for the company and particularly the specific team for someone to take a year leave and have to hold their spot. But I also understand you want to minimize friction of returning to work.
In many cases the person taking leave isn’t doing anything particularly specialized and it’s a complete non-issue. I don’t know how you might try to codify how specialized a position is other than a salary cap. For example, if you’re paid less than $X and the company has over 50 employees, your position is guaranteed. Over $X or 50 and under employees and you have a job search at the end of the paid leave.
We (Austria) have up to 1063 days of paid parental leave (paid for by social security), if both parents decide to take it. It seems our companies manage :)
This seems to be the key in countries with similar policies. You wouldn't see that system grow in the US as it stands, because companies pay for leave.
I'm fine with this. They have to strike a reasonable and sustainable balance.
Thinking more broadly, I am not sure it makes sense to subsidize having more children. Sustaining the standard of living we expect today with the population numbers we have is simply not viable, since those standards carry heavy externalities.
Summary: countries with mandatory parental leave have the parents paid at least partially by those high social security taxes, so it's no problem to hire a replacement.
If the company has to pay the parental leave and the replacement, it's of course more difficult.
Isn’t a solution to allow parents to work part time instead of being completely off or on?
I feel like most people could still make valuable contributions at 50% time, at least for knowledge workers. Maybe like build up from time off back to full time over many months?
They ought to receive overwhelming congratulations and support for testing the idea
How do we create a culture that totally celebrates the process of experimentation even if the results from the result test aren't the pie in the sky we hoped for?
I am against one-year parental leaves. My wife and I want ten children. That means ten years off work? How can a company manage? What if I were a less moral man and got two women pregnant a year? I mean, it's not that difficult. Even for faithful men, we plan on trying again (last baby born in December) in a few months. Is it really fair to ask my company to pay for my sex life?
More worryingly, what kind of incentive does this set up? Obviously, it would force companies to adopt policies that overall reduce the reproduction rate of society. This can hardly be said to be a good thing. The number of children my wife and I have should be determined by our ability to support them and our willingness to have them. I am perfectly able to support children with my salary, and I'd prefer to spend my time making that salary, rather than having it handed to us.
Nevertheless, the main reason I am against them is that it removes all incentives from employers (and government, by extension) to make things better for parents that are actually working. I'd rather have a more flexible schedule and more vacation than one year of parental leave. Or to live in a society where only one parent has to work.
Your argument is so convoluted that you were probably better off not saying anything at all.
It seems like you're starting from a conclusion and providing all of the things that support your conclusion. Instead, consider all the data and see what conclusions are revealed.
You haven't conceded a single merit to the counterargument.
> I am against one-year parental leaves. My wife and I want ten children. That means ten years off work?
You are an outlier in terms of how many children you want. This sort of benefit is intended to help with people who have the median number of children (1.9 in the US today) [1].
The way to deal with outlying cases like yours is to rapidly phase out the benefit as you move far above the median, so you only get the benefit for the first N children.
We already do this today with income-based tax-credit phaseouts for tax mechanisms like the investment and education tax credits.
That's not at all to say that you shouldn't have that many children, but rather that after a certain number of children, it's only in your personal interest to have them, and not in society's.
the point of perks is to attract talent. if you want 10 kids it'll take you about 20 years. if the company got someone to stay for 20 years, the perk worked
and no one has any incentives to make things better for working parents. the only incentives are to make things better for top talent. it just so happens that more experienced people tend to be that top talent. and more experienced people are older, and older people tend to have more kids. the company should try to make things better for top talent and if that is being more flexible on schedules, or vacation, then they should do it (and most companies do both of these)
On the other hand, say you and your wife each work for 40 years each. Take 10 years out, and that leaves 70 years. Take one parent out, and that leaves 40 years. You've just earned 30 years of skilled labour by granting parental leave.
This is the same level of horseshit as Medical coverage for all and single payer.
Maybe it wasn’t working the foundation because the US has such a pent up demand for parental leave that people who want to have families target working there. My company recently rolled out some pretty sweet parental policies and lo and behold we have a bunch of people taking advantage of it.
Here in Canada, there is always someone on parental leave. You just deal with it.
Generally speaking, execs and c levels operate at a different financial level and parental leave is not as life changing as it is for your typical middle class worker.
America, get it together and start treating your people with dignity and respect. You’re a first world country. Your people deserve better.
My mom had 4 children within 7 years. It's crazy to think someone could be employed somewhere 7 years and only work 3. You'd have to hire 2.3 people to get 1 full-time employee!
[+] [-] simonsarris|7 years ago|reply
> In Canada, companies have had no option but to make 52-week parental leaves work, when requested, since 2000. The question Canadian companies ask isn’t “Can we do it?” but “How do we do it?”
Okay, so... how do they do it? They never answer the question.
If you have say, a CFO or a specialist mechanic (that you only need 1 of, but definitely need) and they take a year off, what do you do? Just go without a CFO/mechanic for the year? Or do you start the hiring search, bring in another person as a temp CFO for a year? What if you can't find a temp, so you hire someone? Is the person entitled to their old job back? Do you fire the new person or the old one?
What if the person takes parental leave again after 1 month back? Do you accept that you've torpedoed some role? Do you try to slowly phase out this person's job description and offload their work onto their coworkers?
More succinctly, what if someone is definitely necessary in the near-day-to-day, and does not do work that is interchangeable with other employees?
I'm not trying to make some kind of gotcha. I really don't know the answer, and I figured the article would answer what seem like extremely obvious questions that arise, but it didn't.
I suspect that firms have learned to deal with it, but by doing things like passively selecting against women and younger people for critical roles. Is that how they manage? Is that an improvement?
There's also something unsettling about "here's how [countries where the native birth rate is pretty much 0 or 1 babies] do parental leave!" feels a bit like... the women already did half the corporation's work for them.
[+] [-] unavoidable|7 years ago|reply
The labour market is quite good, and there is no shortage of qualified individuals for almost all positions (CFO, specialists included). Often, a good temp ends up getting another position at the same company after doing the 1-year contract. There is also a small cottage industry of successful individuals who basically take such jobs.
Maybe hard to accept for some, but the world doesn't end when people go on leave to have kids.
It also turns out that most people (that I know) are quite happy to buy into this particular social contract. There is a tacit understanding that you might have to pick up the slack a bit for someone else, but one day you might need the same in return - borrowing against the future is another way to think about it.
Source: Canadian, have worked in organizations and involved in hiring policies where this is successful.
[+] [-] xutopia|7 years ago|reply
If any company is run in such a way that bus-factor means the company can't thrive with one person gone you're simply doing it wrong.
[+] [-] docker_up|7 years ago|reply
The companies that exist in Canada are companies like banks, Rogers, Bell, etc, where you won't find too many high performers. I have a friend who has taken 2 1-year leaves, and it didn't impact her job because her job as an account manager isn't particularly hard to take over.
A high-performing company like the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation can't perform at the level that they want if their employees are taking 1 year leaves, and that's just a fact of life. It's the same as Netflix. They have a 1 year policy, but I doubt any engineer will take the full year, but kudos to them if they do.
[+] [-] throwaway5752|7 years ago|reply
Since Canada is doing fine, perhaps instead of asking rhetorical questions you should read some Canadian HR journals?
[+] [-] jseutter|7 years ago|reply
While that probably happens, in Canada this is parental leave that either parent can take advantage of. I would imagine this decreases the amount of gender discrimination.
It also worked out really well for me. As a father I was able to take several months off after the birth of our twins to help care for them. My wife had quit her job earlier due to a toxic workplace and medical issues.
[+] [-] ninth_ant|7 years ago|reply
So it’s not like every situation will have a parent missing for a full year.
[+] [-] chefkoch|7 years ago|reply
What do you do if your single point gets sick or quits?
As a business you need a backup (plan).
[+] [-] sandworm101|7 years ago|reply
Women should get the time. I have no issue with them, and men too, taking the time. But given modern family planning, pregnancies are most often not a surprise. I don't like seeing an employee who plans and executes a multi-year campaign to extract as much money as possible from a program with the goal of then walking away once the tap runs dry.
There is no answer. Employers cannot interfere with family matters. Patents get the legally mandated leave. And they are free then to walk away. It only gets horrible when people start to leverage the program beyond the original purpose.
[+] [-] aprdm|7 years ago|reply
What do you want out of life is a great question, I prefer the more social view of the world Canada has, even if I am paid less than in the individualist culture of US.
[+] [-] beat|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NikolaNovak|7 years ago|reply
My wife is a store manager for a major international hardware store chain, and much of her senior leadership team up and down (assistant store managers working for her, as well as her district manager she reports to) are female as well, so in their neck of the woods at least there's no passive selection. Due to nature of pregnancy, maternity leave is something that lends itself to some heads-up, so as far as I have observed the company handles it through careful, productive and communicative planning. This may include contracted positions, but also internal temporary/trial opportunities - role only being available for a period of time is not necessarily a bad thing, if you know and plan for it. Additionally, while people will fall onto a curve and experience counts (so we're not all fully replaceable blocks or cogs), nevertheless you can build an organization that has documented procedures, overlap, and shared collaborative knowledge.
I absolutely have seen people who are "irreplaceable" (and have occasionally occupied such a position), but it's all too frequently just a gap, that is addressable if you're forced to address it and need to do so ahead of time.
Similarly in my line of work, both the functional and technical experts as well as middle managers or senior leadership, happen to have a majority of female team members, and while as IT/BT projectized organization we are less proceduralized than my wife's organization, again - you see it coming, and you prepare for it.
Bottom line - I really think the combination of seeing it coming and having to deal with it, makes it far less of an issue than it might seem from the other side :-/
[+] [-] Spooky23|7 years ago|reply
I worked for a place where the CFO was diagnosed with cancer and was out for nearly 6 months. You know what happened? The Comptroller was appointed interim CFO and the CFO resumed his duties on his return.
All of these what ifs reflect a profound missing of the point. Instead of babies, think about injuries or extended jury duty or whatever. Any institution, whether a corporation, government agency or school, needs to be able to function independent of the individual employees.
If the magic mechanic or money lady is that critical, you already have a much more serious internal controls problem.
[+] [-] lliamander|7 years ago|reply
There's the rub, can you (at a population level) have a birth rate at or above replacement if both parents are expected to find employment outside of the home? I don't think that's realistic.
[+] [-] xorcist|7 years ago|reply
> bring in another person as a temp CFO for a year?
Yes, that's bascially how things are done. Either a temp hire or, more commonly for specialised roles perhaps, a consultant. There's a whole job market for doing these one year stints.
Of course, you can't force people into parental leave. Some doesn't take any at all. Some take as much as they can. It may very well be the case that specialists and business leaders take less time off than others, but it's not a general trend, especially not with the working class which is perhaps the opposite of what one might expect.
> Is the person entitled to their old job back?
Generally yes, but these things are hard to enforce.
> Do you fire the new person or the old one?
Not really since replacements are hired for a specific time period.
> if someone is definitely necessary in the near-day-to-day?
Then you have a problem but usually you know about it half a year before it's too late.
> things like passively selecting against women and younger people for critical roles. Is that how they manage?
There are plenty of data available on this. Comparing data from different countries is problematic, but countries with more social insurance tend to also have more women in leading positions. This is probably due to confounding effects of course but should be indicative that if the above effect exists it is comparably small.
> the women already did half the corporation's work for them.
I didn't quite understand this part.
[+] [-] pjc50|7 years ago|reply
Most of the West is below 2 and the world is now at 2.5 average. And one of the main factors helping reduce it is .. the availability of employment outside of parenting.
It's not unusual to employ people on 1-year fixed contracts as maternity cover.
[+] [-] KorematsuFred|7 years ago|reply
There is a definite cost to this which is paid for by the other employees,share-holders and economy in general. It also makes age an issue in hiring decisions and employers would be less willing to hire potential new parents. Secondly, people figure out clever ways to avoid this through contractual employees, outsourcing and other methods.
Without such law Canadian society would have been more rich, more innovative and ensured welfare of all in the society.
[+] [-] patmcc|7 years ago|reply
What generally happens is the firm hires a person on a one year term, and then at the end of the year the original person comes back and the replacement person is either kept on (if they were good) or not (if they weren't). It's a decent way to hire new people, actually.
>>What if the person takes parental leave again after 1 month back? Do you accept that you've torpedoed some role? Do you try to slowly phase out this person's job description and offload their work onto their coworkers?
In Canada you can't take parental leave simply at any time, it's tied to the birth of the kid (wth leeway). It's very unusual to have a child 13 months after the previous one, and there are rules about how often you can take the paid unemployment insurance (tied to how much you've worked over the last year). But yes, you'd be entitled to leave from you job.
>>More succinctly, what if someone is definitely necessary in the near-day-to-day, and does not do work that is interchangeable with other employees?
A well-structured organization typically doesn't have very many of these people, because it's a ticking time bomb. That person will leave; they'll quit or get fired or get hit by a bus or get cancer or take a three week vacation and the business has to figure it out. And babies don't really sneak up on you that much - there's plenty of time to train someone, etc.
>>I suspect that firms have learned to deal with it, but by doing things like passively selecting against women and younger people for critical roles. Is that how they manage?
I've never seen any data that Canada has poorer gender equality or more age discrimination than the US.
Overall I think that the parental leave laws in Canada do make things marginally more difficult for businesses but significantly easier for new parents. That's a tradeoff I consider reasonable.
[+] [-] 8ytecoder|7 years ago|reply
(Honestly why is this any different from someone leaving an org or being generally unavailable for any reason? In fact, in this case it's much better since a baby doesn't pop-out just like that - it gives a nice few months to train a temp.)
[+] [-] erentz|7 years ago|reply
In the context that they are doing this while few other American organizations do it, and not that many other countries do something this generous.
[+] [-] bargl|7 years ago|reply
I'm surprised that's not emphasized more. They probably also have very flexible work environment for parents so that when daycare's are closed and other issues crop up the parents can get back in there.
I'm a dad of 2, 2 years and 5 year. I don't know if I'd want a year off to stay home with the kids. I'd have loved to get 3 months instead of the 1 month i did get but a year... That just sounds like a lot of cabin fever to me. I'm sure a lot of people would appreciate it, so I'm 100% not knocking it at all. This new benefit is more attractive to me at least.
[+] [-] fastbeef|7 years ago|reply
In Sweden, where 400+ days of parental leave has been mandatory for years organization have adapted and learned patterns and ways to deal with people dissappearing for around a year.
It’s a shame the Gates Foundation didn’t research this better before diving in.
[+] [-] alkonaut|7 years ago|reply
Well it’s not an employer deciding whether it’s done so organizations just deal with it. And yes it does give effects that last years and disrupt organizations three layers deep. But it happens to all organizations, so it’s not a competitive disadvantage.
[+] [-] rb808|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chrisco255|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] beart|7 years ago|reply
With 260 working days a year, you could work 4 days a week for the first five years of your child's life.
[+] [-] rb808|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] randyrand|7 years ago|reply
Should it really be the case that if you're unemployed when you give birth that you have go a significant time without work?
Or if you start you 1-year leave 5 weeks into a new job that the company has to pay you for a year?
[+] [-] sergers|7 years ago|reply
First 12 months you are entitled to employment insurance which is a certain percentage of your income.
The next 6 months are unpaid.
Our recent company ethics training had a interesting scenario on maternity leave discrimination and comments.
Some work places if you are key employee in some aspect entice you with pay, more flexible working conditions or provided daycare for coming back early.
My company deals with it by hiring contract workers.
Some content could take years to learn, so we recently shifted the core duties to remaining members and gave the contract worker remedial/administrative tasks which we all hated any ways.
Overall things still function smoothly
- however we have an interesting scenario coming up in the next few months where one employee is retiring and two are going on paternity leave (me being one, but only taking a month off using vacation as my wife plans To hog the paternity leave lol... it does make sense financially.
It will be interestinghow my company handles losing 3 key members of a 7 person team(atleast I will be gone a month only)
[+] [-] bradlys|7 years ago|reply
Personally, I can't imagine having kids here in the bay area unless I finally hit big startup riches or get a job at FAANG. A month isn't enough time off and unemployment is going to be severely financially draining when state benefits won't even pay half my rent (And the financial burden of health insurance will probably devour most of that before it even gets to paying rent anyway). C'est la vie.
[+] [-] maaaats|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sampo|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zaroth|7 years ago|reply
I suppose there are two problems. One is paying partial or full salary during the leave, and the other is getting a job when you’re ready to return.
The first problem is easy to solve just like unemployment, except that in this case it’s paid based on voluntary leave. Since companies don’t make the decision, companies wouldn’t be penalized for having employees take the leave like they can be with unemployment though.
The second issue of finding a place to work when you’re ready to return is tricky. It’s absolutely unfair in certain situations for the company and particularly the specific team for someone to take a year leave and have to hold their spot. But I also understand you want to minimize friction of returning to work.
In many cases the person taking leave isn’t doing anything particularly specialized and it’s a complete non-issue. I don’t know how you might try to codify how specialized a position is other than a salary cap. For example, if you’re paid less than $X and the company has over 50 employees, your position is guaranteed. Over $X or 50 and under employees and you have a job search at the end of the paid leave.
[+] [-] groestl|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bpicolo|7 years ago|reply
This seems to be the key in countries with similar policies. You wouldn't see that system grow in the US as it stands, because companies pay for leave.
[+] [-] throwawaysea|7 years ago|reply
Thinking more broadly, I am not sure it makes sense to subsidize having more children. Sustaining the standard of living we expect today with the population numbers we have is simply not viable, since those standards carry heavy externalities.
[+] [-] nottorp|7 years ago|reply
If the company has to pay the parental leave and the replacement, it's of course more difficult.
Easy enough...
[+] [-] torpfactory|7 years ago|reply
I feel like most people could still make valuable contributions at 50% time, at least for knowledge workers. Maybe like build up from time off back to full time over many months?
[+] [-] wittedhaddock|7 years ago|reply
How do we create a culture that totally celebrates the process of experimentation even if the results from the result test aren't the pie in the sky we hoped for?
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] tathougies|7 years ago|reply
More worryingly, what kind of incentive does this set up? Obviously, it would force companies to adopt policies that overall reduce the reproduction rate of society. This can hardly be said to be a good thing. The number of children my wife and I have should be determined by our ability to support them and our willingness to have them. I am perfectly able to support children with my salary, and I'd prefer to spend my time making that salary, rather than having it handed to us.
Nevertheless, the main reason I am against them is that it removes all incentives from employers (and government, by extension) to make things better for parents that are actually working. I'd rather have a more flexible schedule and more vacation than one year of parental leave. Or to live in a society where only one parent has to work.
[+] [-] perfmode|7 years ago|reply
It seems like you're starting from a conclusion and providing all of the things that support your conclusion. Instead, consider all the data and see what conclusions are revealed.
You haven't conceded a single merit to the counterargument.
[+] [-] danans|7 years ago|reply
You are an outlier in terms of how many children you want. This sort of benefit is intended to help with people who have the median number of children (1.9 in the US today) [1].
The way to deal with outlying cases like yours is to rapidly phase out the benefit as you move far above the median, so you only get the benefit for the first N children.
We already do this today with income-based tax-credit phaseouts for tax mechanisms like the investment and education tax credits.
That's not at all to say that you shouldn't have that many children, but rather that after a certain number of children, it's only in your personal interest to have them, and not in society's.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/718084/average-number-of...
[+] [-] foolfoolz|7 years ago|reply
and no one has any incentives to make things better for working parents. the only incentives are to make things better for top talent. it just so happens that more experienced people tend to be that top talent. and more experienced people are older, and older people tend to have more kids. the company should try to make things better for top talent and if that is being more flexible on schedules, or vacation, then they should do it (and most companies do both of these)
[+] [-] e12e|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] recursive|7 years ago|reply
I've heard that said many times. I'm surprised to hear someone imply the opposite.
[+] [-] Aloha|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pjc50|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] garyrichardson|7 years ago|reply
Maybe it wasn’t working the foundation because the US has such a pent up demand for parental leave that people who want to have families target working there. My company recently rolled out some pretty sweet parental policies and lo and behold we have a bunch of people taking advantage of it.
Here in Canada, there is always someone on parental leave. You just deal with it.
Generally speaking, execs and c levels operate at a different financial level and parental leave is not as life changing as it is for your typical middle class worker.
America, get it together and start treating your people with dignity and respect. You’re a first world country. Your people deserve better.
[+] [-] randyrand|7 years ago|reply