Perks for parents, owning your work and stamping out bias in tech

Let’s face it: Getting up for work on Mondays is challenging. But does it really have to be? My name is Caroline Fairchild and I am a managing editor at LinkedIn. At the start of each work week, I’ll bring you insights and motivation from the top minds in business to help you fight the Sunday Scaries and see who is moving the business world forward. Like what you’re reading? Subscribe with the button above and let me know in the comments what you want to see next week. Let’s dive right in…

Wake Up Call

Pinterest made headlines last week for taking paternity benefits to the next level. Moms and dads get four months off, access to parenting coaching, help covering adoption costs and other new tools and perks.

Pinterest is leading the way, but not every company is Pinterest. With more than $1.5 billion in funding and more than $500 million in ad revenue, leaders like Beth Karlsson, head of business HR, have a lot of budget to work with. So when I spoke with her soon after the news was announced, my question was simple: What’s your advice to execs and employees at companies that aren’t Pinterest? How can they make things easier for expecting parents? Here were her tips:

Find a small thread, and start pulling. Identify one issue area, even if it’s small, and start to create more structure around it. As an example, she said expectant mothers at your company might be confused about what to expect around time off. Sometimes just providing more information can make a big difference.

Operationalize flexibility. It’s one thing for your CEO to stand up at a company wide meeting and tout the benefits of working flexibly. It’s quite another to formalize benefits that give employees the freedom to do just that. At Pinterest, they recently formalized a flexible work schedule for returning parents, which allowed employees to feel more comfortable about returning to work at their own pace after leave. Karlsson recommends leaders look for ways to either model flexible working situations or put them down in writing to help employees feel more comfortable.

Of course, creating more robust offerings for expecting parents offers other benefits as well: It helps companies like Pinterest recruit diverse talent. While tech is widely heralded as one of the least diverse industries to work in, offering perks for expectant parents can have downstream impact in terms of the age and gender demographics of your workforce. We also recently sat down with Slack’s Head of Product April Underwood, who explained the benefits of building diverse teams from the start.

Here’s more on how Slack is outperforming other Silicon Valley companies when it comes to representation:

What’s Working

Rethinking bias in tech. The same week that Amazon got outed for using an AI hiring tool that was biased against female resumes, leaders in tech came together to try to solve the problem. The Omidyar Network announced that it is awarding up to $3.5 million to undergraduate computer science curriculums that commit to taking ethics more seriously. [LinkedIn]

Nudging good behavior. Former Head of Google HR Laszlo Bock came out with more details on his startup, Humu. The flagship product, called Nudge Engine, leverages machine learning to give workers personalized “nudges” — such as reaching out to a quiet team member or thanking a coworker — throughout the day. [Quartz]

It’s not all about the top. Just 7% of Fortune 1000 CEOs are women. A new report out from Spencer Stuart CEO James Citrin explains the importance of getting women into leadership positions in middle management to change the demographics in the C-Suite. [strategy+business]

Get a life outside work. Even CEOs have an average of 2.1 hours a day to devote to "downtime," meaning either to relax or to practice a hobby. What are you doing with your free time? [HBR]

What’s Wrong?

Every week, I’ll take a question from the LinkedIn community about a challenge they are facing at work and have an expert answer them.

Dear Hello Monday,

How would you handle a situation where a colleague doesn't deliver, but likes to represent others' work as his/hers and get all the attention from leadership?

-- Chenren Shao, Senior Software Engineer at Apple

Dear Chenren,

There are two issues at play here: first, that a colleague is not only not performing to the team’s standard, and second, that they are taking credit for others’ achievements. These are tough problems to tackle individually, and even more difficult to navigate when combined — especially in a team-centered engineering environment.

Before these problems arise, it’s important to ensure that the team’s workflows and processes are set up for clear communication, teamwork, and accountability. Your process should recognize those that are contributing and make it clear when someone is not. This might include group estimation, individual or pair responsibility for tasks, metrics for task completion and regular retrospectives.

If you’re in a scenario where you are frustrated with a particular team member’s performance (or lack thereof), work closely with your manager and other individual team members to ensure that responsibilities are clearly allocated and communicated on an individual and a team level. It’s okay to bring your concerns to your manager on occasion, sharing specific examples of times where your team member hasn’t done their part and sharing a desire to make your team member more successful. Try not to make too many assumptions about leadership attention — since leaders can’t talk about the performance of your peers, they may know more than they are letting on or have constraints they can’t share. 

To ensure that you’re getting appropriate credit for your own work, make sure you’re setting benchmarks and check in often so you can demonstrate the work you do to reach those goals. You might consider volunteering to write or present regular team updates or keeping a log of your accomplishments to be shared with your manager at an appropriate moment, such as during a goals conversation or a performance review.

-- Kimber Lockhart, CTO at One Medical Group

Have a question you want answered next week? Include it in the comments below using #HelloMonday.

1 More Thing….

Some of us may get the chance to work remotely sometimes, but what if some times turned into all the time? Automattic’s Head of Design John Maeda shares more.

What's your take on this week’s stories? Share your thoughts in the comments, using the hashtag #HelloMonday.