Women's Career Post Maternity Leave: Is it a challenge? How could organizations deal with it in a better way?

INTRODUCTION

The time has come and Sita was thinking deeply, standing in the balcony of the 5th floor of her apartment. She has mixed emotions and could not do anything but to face what’s there for tomorrow! It was the end of her maternity leave and she has to join back to work from Monday! Past couple of months, Sita went through the most precious moments of her life: delivering her baby! It all started when she realized that she was carrying. Sita started to do maternal yoga, eat right and healthy food, take medicines required all to give her baby the best in her womb. But what about the stress, anxiety at the workplace? This factor has played a crucial role in her maternal journey!

BACKGROUND

Sita was a dynamic consultant with on-time deliveries, client appreciations and high-performance appraisals in her organization. She was one of the top 30% performers.

Mr. Sundar, the manager to whom Sita reports as a consultant is very demanding. He was a bit neutral and not very positive towards Sita. He treats everyone equally independent of the situations they face. So, he always continued to include her in the early morning 7AM client meetings even at her 6th month of pregnancy. Once she tried to explain her morning sickness, he then asked her to be in zone or out of zone by resigning, but this is how things work in the corporate world! Sita always tried to keep up with her deliverables, but the kind of pressure she went through had a bad impact on her growing fetus. In the routine scanning the doctor has warned her but she neglected and placed herself in the toxic work environment, now she has a low-lying placenta which demanded her to take complete bed rest till her child birth otherwise would lead to abortion which is also a threat to mother’s life. Then at 8th month of pregnancy, Sita has taken maternity leave for 6 months. Mr. Sundar though unwilling and hesitant to support her approval, the HR manager looked at her genuine situation and approved her leave.

However, Sita has already faced multiple complications. Now her baby just gets preferential blood supply. Now she seemed to be more careful and always thought about the kind of work environment that brought her down these situations. Finally, after a strenuous journey, she was able to successfully deliver her baby and take care of her baby for 5 months.

CURRENT SITUATION

Now to return back to work, Sita has multiple questions cropping up in her mind: “Did I not lag back by almost 6 months-9 months in my career?”, “My performance appraisal will be not up to mark!”?“Will I be able to catchup the expertise, knowledge and experience that I have missed all these days?”, “Will I be placed in a project that demands heavy working hours?” “Will I be able to look after my baby?” With all these questions in mind, Sita started her day one, post her maternity leave.

THE PROBLEM

To her surprise, days passed, but she was not given any enough opportunities to showcase her potential/skills. Even if she was called for a support work (for a day or two) on a project, she was often picked up for small timings, little late issues. She was on bench! (This means company would put her into a PIP -Performance Improvement Program that would slow down her career growth), no more opportunities come her way and finally leading to a lay off! Sita feared of this! Often people used to ask her sarcastically “how is your second innings?” which made her feel guilty as if she has committed a crime! Sita connected with her career counsellor, who even supported Sundar but never listened to her. This kind of unsupportive environment at workplace brought her to a decision to resign. However, she thought, she should explain her situation to HR before the final big decision to resign. Sita then wrote an email to HR manager, stating her condition on instances of how she was being ill-treated and not given an opportunity because she was back from a maternity break.

The HR manager looked into her case, called her for discussion on situations she faced. After long discussion, HR agreed that Sita could not get enough opportunities. HR connected with Mr. Sundar. Now, Sundar has put Sita in a project which demanded almost 17 working hours per day! as the project required deliverables to be built with relatively new technology where there were no SMEs in the team. She had to work very hard until 3AM every day. Despite her hard work, Sundar always compared Sita with her peers and degraded her stating that “You donot have the previous work speed and quality now!” She could not take care of her baby. She had to learn and deliver. She was promised one role and unfortunately, she had to do another role additionally also. All this has taken a toll on her health.

Sita again met HR manager, but this time she was not welcomed because of the prior talk HR had with Sita’s manager Sundar who portrayed her as someone who is unsatisfied and always complaining about work. So, Sita was not able to confront the situation. Unable to balance work and life, Sita had to quit her job.

THE AFTERMATH-SITUATION ANALYSIS

Who was responsible for Sita’s Resignation? Was it situations? Was it Sundar? Or the HR Manager?

When this situation is carefully studied, not just one but multiple factors are responsible that have led Sita to resign. But the crucial one is stereotyping women to be less capable to work post pregnancy. Not giving them enough opportunities! Considering parenthood and child nurturing to be just a woman’s work and thinking that fathers have no role to play!!

What could have been done in a better way?

• The orthodox belief “Maternity leave is an end to the women’s career” need to be changed. People need to recognize maternity leave as just a brief break but not as a major disruption for women's career.
• Gradual onboarding could help the returning mothers. This includes phased returns where 3-day workweek for initial 1 month, then slowly increase work to 4-day workweek and then to a full -fledged week.
• Arranging informal buddy systems, where experienced care giver employees can give informal sessions to returning mothers.
• Make a specific PMW (Post Maternity Work) plan starting from maternity leave that includes how to approach leave, the individual’s communication preferences while on leave, and the return phase.
• Manager Sundar could have understood her situation and staff her initially in a role where there is lesser work load and not crucial deliverables. Instead Sundar has done two extremities: No work or High Work. Managers need to position returning mother's into low-medium work demanding roles for couple of weeks at least till mother's settles back to the flow.
• Giving returning mothers, a training of 2-3 weeks for any new projects that require to build certain expertise without directly pushing her into roles that demand learning new skills and high amount of work load.
• Increasing duration of paternal leave: In India many organizations offer paid paternal leave for just 2-3 weeks maximum. Many enlightening instances of top male leaders in their firms who provide main or shared care for their families. Supporting these activities on a cultural and organizational level could be a big step in reducing the negative effects of maternity leave on mothers' employment and increasing gender equality in terms of time off for child care. There could be a paternal leave of at least 3 to 4 months, which can be allowed to take in phases rather than once not affecting any projects/organizational outcomes. This paternal leave could be granted to father until child turns 5 or 6 years.
• In few countries like: Sweden, first-time parents are entitled to 480 days of paid leave per kid, which they are free to divide however they see fit and each parent is required to take at least three months off. Top American businesses are increasingly providing paternity leave as part of a global trend towards enhanced paternity leave.
• It’s time we adopt these paternal leave policies that would reduce the load on the working mother and would help her to give a comeback.

CONCLUSION

• When we talk about gender diversity and gender equality, it is not just about hiring more women employees to achieve 50% diversity in the organization or providing with equal pay, but the actual equality and diversity will be achieved when organizational support has been extended to the same women employees post their maternal leave by giving them a smooth transition and opportunities to continue to grow further!
• Being a parent involves much more than just giving birth or adopting kids. The most accommodating businesses are aware of this and continue to provide working parents with numerous innovative supports.