EP112: How Not To Ruin Parental Leave, If You're A Manager

Interview With Dr. Amy Beacom / Parental Leave Expert

HOSTED BY PAUL SULLIVAN

Companies can have the most generous, equitable parental leave policies - plans polished and perfected to allow mothers and fathers time to bond with their new baby and return to work feeling valued. And then a manager ruins it all with a snide comment. Or calls during leave. Or has no plan for return whatsoever. Enter Amy Beacom, founder of The Center for Parental Leave Leadership. Listen to her tips on how not to be that manager and learn to lead a better way. 

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Transcript

00;00;05;12 - 00;00;27;24
Paul Sullivan
Welcome to the Company of Dads podcast, where we explore the sweet, silly, strange, and sublime aspects of being a lead dad. In a world where men who are the go to parent aren't always accepted at work, among their friends, or in the community for what they're doing. I'm your host, Paul Sullivan. Our podcast is just one of the many things we produce each week at the company that we have various features, including the leader of the week.

00;00;27;27 - 00;00;58;03
Paul Sullivan
We have our monthly meetups. We have a new resource library for all fathers. The one stop shop for all of this is our newsletter, the dad. So sign up today at the company of dads.com Backslash the dad. Today our guest is Doctor Amy Beacom, founder of the center for Parental Leave Leadership and the author of The Parental Leave. Like Amy started in the field, really started the field of parental leave coaching when her first child was born 17 years ago.

00;00;58;06 - 00;01;27;17
Paul Sullivan
She started the center and a pre-COVID pre equal leave world in her out of maternity coaching business, where she worked with both companies and individual parents. And while she's been doing needed serious work for nearly two decades, this post-Covid hybrid work world seems tailored to what she's been building around her consulting and coaching in this space. She's also a mother of two teenagers with her husband of 20 plus years.

00;01;27;20 - 00;01;30;07
Paul Sullivan
Amy, Welcome to the company Dads podcast.

00;01;30;10 - 00;01;35;29
Amy Beacom
Thank you Paul. It is a pleasure to be here. I am thrilled to get to talk to you today.

00;01;36;01 - 00;01;42;28
Paul Sullivan
How does 2024 compare to 2020? 2014 when you started the Center?

00;01;43;00 - 00;01;49;20
Amy Beacom
Oh wow. That's a great question. Night and day. Night and day.

00;01;49;23 - 00;01;52;25
Paul Sullivan
Which one's in the light? Which one's in dark?

00;01;52;28 - 00;02;24;04
Amy Beacom
That's a different question. That is a different oh, man, in so many different ways. So in 2014, nobody was talking about parental leave. I was trying to educate around what do we even mean by those terms? Some people are talking about maternity leave. Very few people are talking about paternity leave. Nobody was saying about parental leave. It was a lot of hitting my head against a brick wall.

00;02;24;06 - 00;02;50;11
Amy Beacom
Just really trying to get the conversation to change. And for companies to really understand that this wasn't only about a policy benefit, a paid leave benefit, which was the very beginning of that conversation. Starting California was the only state at that time, if I'm remembering correctly, that had a paid leave program and so most people were just barely starting to talk about paid leave.

00;02;50;11 - 00;03;25;17
Amy Beacom
And I was coming in and saying, okay, yes, paid leave isn't a critical part of what we need in this country to support working parents, but it's only one part of it. It's how that's the policy about time and pay. I sort of think of it this way every new parent needs three things. They need to know how much time, how much pay and what what and what forms their support come in and so as we're paying attention to pay in time, which nobody was really getting in 2014, I was coming in and saying, well, let's pay attention to the person too.

00;03;25;20 - 00;03;30;05
Amy Beacom
And what else was different in 2014?

00;03;30;08 - 00;03;53;06
Paul Sullivan
But let me drill down there in those three things, you know, how much you going to get paid and how much time you're going to get off. Those are things that can be codified in an H.R. Handbook. They could say, okay, this is what, you know, birthing parents get is what non birthing parents get. But the other part, is more nuanced and more interesting to me in you're talking about support and leadership.

00;03;53;06 - 00;04;12;13
Paul Sullivan
But you know, as I look at that, I think of as it happened with, you know, a lot of dads today, you know, 30 something dads, they want to go out, take some parental leave, and if they're lucky, they have a manager who's supportive of them taking whatever the company, allows. But not all of them are not that lucky.

00;04;12;13 - 00;04;35;19
Paul Sullivan
Some of them have those managers who want to sort of, you know, sit back and say, I remember what it was like when I was a young dad. I took a day off. And then I miss the following, you know, 17 years. And, you know, these are these absurd stories that we hear and they're often told by those managers, you know, not remorse fully, but almost like nostalgically or boastfully.

00;04;35;21 - 00;04;55;12
Paul Sullivan
How do you come in at the center and, you know, train those managers to realize that, you know, their life experience is just that, their life experience and that perhaps that's not the best way to go about, managing both men and women. When it comes to parental leave today.

00;04;55;14 - 00;05;18;04
Amy Beacom
I think what is interesting in there is you're asking, how do you convince people that this is worth paying attention to? And it's it's by giving them a process and a structure, which goes back to 2014. There was nothing. And I'm coming in and I'm saying this is our most overlooked leadership development opportunity. How how can we need to start paying attention to it.

00;05;18;04 - 00;05;43;29
Amy Beacom
And so there's elements of human development to pay attention to. And there's then practical structural pieces. So when you go into a manager and you say, hey, you need to support this dad as he goes out on leave, you're talking about the emotional support, which is much trickier for most people to to put their heads around if they're a dad who did leave 20 years ago, 30 years ago.

00;05;44;02 - 00;06;01;28
Amy Beacom
You know, they're they're they're like you said, nostalgic. They're proud of that. They're sort of a boast in it. But but when you go in and you say, how do we structure this for the company? So this becomes easier on the team, this becomes easier on you. This becomes easier on the person going out on leave and coming back in.

00;06;02;04 - 00;06;22;20
Amy Beacom
What are the elements they need to navigate through this very common process? This this, you know, it happens to 80% of people in their career life cycle. They become a parent. How do you move in and out of work to make room for that? And structure it? So that's how I started the conversation. Like, what are the element?

00;06;22;20 - 00;06;48;26
Amy Beacom
Because through our research here and in Australia, we discovered that there's ten what I call the ten touchpoints, which is what the book is about, which everyone, no matter what their situation is, navigates through at some point or another. And so we broke the parental leave down into three phases of preparing for a leave stage at during for during leave stage and are returning from lead stage.

00;06;48;26 - 00;06;58;12
Amy Beacom
And when you do that, it starts to become something you can navigate with clarity and structure. And that's really attractive to managers.

00;06;58;15 - 00;07;15;03
Paul Sullivan
Does that structure take some of the emotion out of it? Does that structure take out some of the sort of the, you know, influences from behavioral finance and sort of our biases that we have that structure make it something that's easier to follow and replicate across a company who, whatever skills those managers may have.

00;07;15;06 - 00;07;35;02
Amy Beacom
So it absolutely makes it something that's easier to replicate and, and have across the company. Yes. But I don't think it takes the emotion out of it. I think it creates space for the emotion. So instead of saying, here's this nebulous thing, you got to go figure out on your own. And oh, they might be sleep deprived. So good luck with that.

00;07;35;04 - 00;08;02;18
Amy Beacom
Right? Thank. You're saying, hey, in preparing for leave phase, you're going to navigate through an announcement, through an assessment, through an, you know, acknowledging the transition in some way. Right. You're going to do these very structured things. And in those things you have opportunities for conversations that need to happen, which may include emotions. And this is how you deal with emotions that may come up during these very specific things.

00;08;02;18 - 00;08;17;10
Amy Beacom
So it moves it away from feeling like this tsunami of unknown and that risk right, to something that's easily navigable with education and training.

00;08;17;13 - 00;08;40;08
Paul Sullivan
I'm probably wrong here, but I'll ask the question. Anyway, I think, you know, personal experience. There are few people in this world more overconfident than a first time parent before he or she becomes a parent. And so, thinking of this structure, preparing for the leave okay checklist followed by the announcement, you know, the list together work we do.

00;08;40;08 - 00;09;07;00
Paul Sullivan
Got it. Go out on leave X number of weeks. Hopefully the company isn't checking in with you beyond sending you food or something like that. That you might need, but it's the coming back. Which is so sort of idiosyncratic. Everyone is going to return, in a different way. You know, one of our daughters was an easy sleeper, another daughter, you know, didn't sleep, at all.

00;09;07;03 - 00;09;29;27
Paul Sullivan
The third daughter, you know, had a different experience from that. And so you come back as a different version of yourself. That's really hard to understand when you go out. So how does the manager, how does the structure support that mother or father when she or he returns?

00;09;29;28 - 00;09;34;09
Amy Beacom
Parents, it's, you are absolutely not wrong.

00;09;34;12 - 00;09;34;26
Paul Sullivan
I think that.

00;09;34;26 - 00;10;00;24
Amy Beacom
That is that is a very true statement. The way that I often talk about it is a short little phrase. The best way to plan your, I'm going to blow my own quote is the best way to prepare for leave is to plan your return. And so what we're doing in that preparing stage is we're helping them imagine that future state and to plan for it.

00;10;00;24 - 00;10;24;22
Amy Beacom
And that does not mean that the plan will go according to plan. Right. So the third touchpoint is action plan, which is the leave planning process. We have templates and tools that walk you through all three of those phases, and you're frontloading it. You're doing all that planning with your manager, manager, and the parent and the team are working together to afford, you know, to figure out what's the best plan.

00;10;24;22 - 00;10;56;10
Amy Beacom
And then they're making contingency plan and contingency plan B, you know, however far down they want to go. And what that does is when that parent then welcomes that child into their life and realizes, oh, wow, I really thought it was going to go this way. But here we are going this other way. They're already primed to have those conversations, to have created the whole set up as a conversation with their manager, as something that is going to be unknown and flexible.

00;10;56;10 - 00;11;10;15
Amy Beacom
So that gives them, gives everybody involved the opportunity to say, oh, look, none of our contingency plans are what we thought, but we already were thinking there might be a contingency plan to let's create this other version, right? Or yay! Great.

00;11;10;17 - 00;11;15;21
Paul Sullivan
Let's give me an example of that. You know, not theoretical Excel, an actual example. Yeah.

00;11;15;21 - 00;11;46;11
Amy Beacom
So so, for example, you're setting up your leave your return plan, and your ideal plan is you're coming back on March 3rd on Monday, full time, not your ideal plan. And your contingency plan is coming back on Wednesday. And then Friday that first week and for half days. And then I'm going to ease into it. Right. So that's often what people are thinking as a contingency plan is sort of a phased return.

00;11;46;13 - 00;12;05;26
Amy Beacom
Like to be able to grapple with something, but then all of a sudden the child comes in and they came a month early and they're in the queue, and that parent needs to drive to the hospital twice a day and they might be able to do work on their laptop, but they're going to be distracted. So what do you do in that scenario?

00;12;05;26 - 00;12;32;00
Amy Beacom
And in that scenario, they've already been set up to be able to have a conversation with their manager and team and say, hey, I might be able to do two hours a week this this week, next week, hopefully more. I can try and log in when I get home. Whatever that conversation that needs to happen is they're already set up to have it because they've created that relationship in that structure with their manager and team ahead of time.

00;12;32;02 - 00;12;33;25
Amy Beacom
And that's specific. And what do you.

00;12;33;26 - 00;12;49;06
Paul Sullivan
Who do you coach more? The managers. So they know how to respond to that conversation or the individual employees so they know how to, you know, be proactive enough or to to to asset.

00;12;49;06 - 00;13;16;24
Amy Beacom
Yeah. And I actually really love that question because it talks to where we are as a country right now. And the answer is we coach more parents because they're the ones who still they're the drivers of this. It's happening to them. It's personally important. We have not yet moved into the time in our country where it is seen by managers or companies who are paying for manager support as critical for them.

00;13;16;26 - 00;13;42;24
Amy Beacom
So we have less managers. I think that is going to be changing this year. We do more manager training where we're teaching them outside of an experiential learning of it happening in real time with the parent. So they're learning the basics. But in the coaching side of things, we're doing more parents and there's a lot of cons to that because, yeah.

00;13;42;27 - 00;14;00;19
Paul Sullivan
I just think of an example that has nothing to do with, parental leave. It has something to do with parenting. And and that is, you know, one of my daughters, the, the teacher said, yeah, I'd like you to come, for extra help and talk about this. And please come on this day and, you know, so she, you know, scheduled it and got everything ready.

00;14;00;19 - 00;14;19;20
Paul Sullivan
And then she showed up and, he's like, oh, yeah, sorry, I got somebody else here. I screwed this up. And she went away feeling really deflated because she's young, very young. And it took her a lot to to go there and put herself out there. And so that was a moment where, you know, I called up the principal and said, look, you know, I don't want to you got to have a conversation here.

00;14;19;20 - 00;14;40;24
Paul Sullivan
This is not good. You got to manage this teacher. This is not good. And I think of this the equivalent of this. You've coached this parent. The parent is super prepared. Is prepared as she or he could possibly be with so many unknowns, gets up, the gumption to call the manager and the call, and the conversation doesn't go well.

00;14;40;24 - 00;14;53;28
Paul Sullivan
Now, the manager's manager may have had, a different conversation. She had she had had a different manager. There may have been a different conversation, but there's one manager is not fully equipped to to know how to respond. What do you do in that case?

00;14;54;01 - 00;15;15;04
Amy Beacom
We're trying to educate the manager. So we're giving the we're educating the manager through the parent. If we're not working with the manager, we're having to do that. And it is not ideal. I our, our entire model is a manager parent aligned model. Yeah. It's the it's the only way to do it. We believe that when that man.

00;15;15;06 - 00;15;41;27
Amy Beacom
So everything in this Ted Ted touchpoints we have a manager version and an employee version. So for example, the training on the announcement is for that parent is about how do you set the tone for your leave, by the way you announce how do you talk about this? What are the considerations you want to put into when, how you know what order of people, etc. and to your announcement for the manager we're teaching them.

00;15;41;27 - 00;15;48;20
Amy Beacom
How do you respond to announcements? How what is what do you say? Do you say, oh crap, this is a horrible time, right?

00;15;48;21 - 00;15;51;17
Paul Sullivan
I'm going on vacation. You screwed up my vacation.

00;15;51;20 - 00;16;01;28
Amy Beacom
Exactly. That's what I'm golfing. What do you say? Congratulations. Let's get it at time on the calendar and figure out the next steps. Right? Like right.

00;16;02;00 - 00;16;06;02
Paul Sullivan
So that's always a good answer. Just say congratulations.

00;16;06;04 - 00;16;39;22
Amy Beacom
Congratulations is the only answer. So. But, you know, it's very rarely the answer because we are not setting up our managers to know what to do here. It's this gaping hole in their development at in fact they're told told by not telling them anything. We're making them assume they can't say anything at all. And so they don't because they're they're worried they're going to have a pregnancy discrimination lawsuit or, you know, step or even just say the wrong thing and feel awkward or embarrassed.

00;16;39;22 - 00;16;57;15
Amy Beacom
You know, it's a very, very tricky time for managers because the employee expectation is changing so quickly around what they feel entitled to in their jobs, around leads and managers are aren't keeping, aren't given the tools to keep up right now.

00;16;57;17 - 00;17;21;06
Paul Sullivan
You've got it. It's, you know, robust, locked in, amazing offering. You know, was there a tipping point for you when you realized, okay, I may be passionate about it, but it's apparent. And people leaders, they're finally starting to you know, I get what I'm telling them. Was there among natives. So tell me what it was.

00;17;21;08 - 00;17;48;16
Amy Beacom
I think you can guess at this moment was the, the year of the pandemic, when they realized what was happening around retention of moms and how when care became visible to the workforce was around the, you know, 2020, 2021, literally when people were sitting on zoom calls and kids are running, you know, that one clip of the data that BBC calls amazing?

00;17;48;21 - 00;17;50;21
Paul Sullivan
He's got a he's got a whole website. That guy says.

00;17;50;23 - 00;17;51;23
Amy Beacom
He oh my God, I'm.

00;17;51;24 - 00;17;55;05
Paul Sullivan
And and the kids and the mom pull and the kids, and oh.

00;17;55;05 - 00;18;22;01
Amy Beacom
My God, I mean, I, I, I laughed, I still laugh led to that was the if there was a turning point, if you could point to a cultural moment, that would be when that video went viral because it was a dad. And, you know, he's trying to work and the mom's like trying to pull up her pants and chase the kid in and the, you know, the you can imagine her trying to go to the bathroom and they got away from her and the, you know, they're interrupting and here's oh.

00;18;22;01 - 00;18;31;22
Paul Sullivan
But it's not even like she's trying to pull them out. It's like these are like little assassins and they're going to kill the man. She must save the father from his own children because they they have poison.

00;18;31;29 - 00;18;32;28
Amy Beacom
And steam.

00;18;33;01 - 00;18;37;02
Paul Sullivan
Poisoned his hands. If if they touch him, he's going to melt. Yeah. Oh, it's me, but.

00;18;37;02 - 00;18;40;19
Amy Beacom
It's worse than that. It's that he. They can't.

00;18;40;19 - 00;18;43;19
Paul Sullivan
Oh, he doesn't even flinch. He just keeps looking straight ahead. Yeah.

00;18;43;21 - 00;19;03;23
Amy Beacom
And the cultural moment that is, is, oh, we're ignoring this entire backdrop that is allowing this man to be on this call. And and and we're pretending this life doesn't exist. Right. So that was the turning point. And companies started to get it from there.

00;19;03;23 - 00;19;25;14
Paul Sullivan
Which is why, for those watching some video, I have a deadbolt lock on this door behind me, so there's no way a child is. And a retina scan, to that as well. But, you know, pre-COVID, we had this fiction that people came to work a kind of Milton Friedman or Chicago model worker, and they worked their time in the office.

00;19;25;14 - 00;19;46;05
Paul Sullivan
And the personal life was something that we. Sure, sure, they had, but we didn't really care because they were workers. A little bit of an exaggeration, but not too much. That's 2020 happens. They're like, oh my goodness, they're kids everywhere. People are like, what's going on? This is is chaotic where we go like sort of here there's another wave of Covid.

00;19;46;05 - 00;20;07;21
Paul Sullivan
People are still not, you know, in and out. I get where you have this moment where okay, we got to figure this out. How do we hurt? But then, you know, companies have such haphazard and ill defined return to work plans, hybrid plans. You know, you must be here x number of days. And now there's so much, you know, variability.

00;20;07;21 - 00;20;41;06
Paul Sullivan
And we've seen with, you know, pretty workforces that have three or 4 or 5 generations in them now so many different, you know, life experiences how does that work. I guess to your advantage or, you know, you know, how do you see that as a way like, okay, here's the opportunity. But in that opportunity, how do you make sure your conveying best practices to managers and employees when there is so much, you know, variability about how people are working?

00;20;41;08 - 00;21;20;13
Amy Beacom
I think that is one of the benefits and brilliance of our model is it's not variable, it's across all generations. And, and needs it's built in flexibility into a structured model, and we don't have that anywhere else. It's literally the only evidence based parental leave framework to exist in the world. It's not, and so as we get further down the path, I mean, we're in a time of transition in our country around this.

00;21;20;13 - 00;21;52;20
Amy Beacom
This is not something most companies are doing. This is something only the top companies are doing. When we started working in the U.S in what was it, 2013, 14? It was with Microsoft and they were one of the first companies to say, hey, we have to do this better. And they did not stop at a simple coaching program or you know, they they brought us in to transform the way that they do leads.

00;21;52;20 - 00;22;19;16
Amy Beacom
And they were expanding it. And the fathers, they were creating AA1 stop hub for all of the resources they were creating manager training based on our methods for 80 countries around the world. You know, so it's it's not a small thing. And I think when companies are approaching this right now, it's still through HR as it benefits. And that's not what we're talking about.

00;22;19;16 - 00;22;57;17
Amy Beacom
Parental leave is a strategic opportunity for the company, and it should be part of leadership. It should be part of, you know, dei H.R. But really it's when the leader of that company or the C-suite decides this is impacting us on multiple levels. It's retention, it's productivity, it's health and wellness, it's suicides. It's, you know, all of these things can come down to this very critical time point, that we call parental leave, which is really that year of time.

00;22;57;20 - 00;23;09;15
Amy Beacom
That's such massive transition for that employee that if it's done right, great. They have a career, they're engaged, they're everybody's happy. If it's done wrong, they're falling out. There's lawsuits. It's a mess.

00;23;09;17 - 00;23;18;22
Paul Sullivan
So and if it's done really wrong, they put it all on TikTok. And then people buying like the little baby bag thing and that. Yeah that CEO looks really.

00;23;18;23 - 00;23;25;13
Amy Beacom
And the company goes down. Yeah. The company goes brand. It's a it's a branding issue and a culture issue.

00;23;25;15 - 00;23;45;20
Paul Sullivan
So you know, you've been doing this at the center for ten years, 17 years overall thinking about lead leadership. You know, I'm sure you know the work of Stu Friedman. At Wharton, we love serving those two kids of the Stu. But but to get into this work in the 80s, around gender equity and how the workplace was changing.

00;23;45;20 - 00;24;01;20
Paul Sullivan
And when he got into it, his colleagues at Wharton were like, Stu, what are you doing, man? Like, you know, on the tenure track at Wharton like this, a big deal job. I don't don't screw it up. You're not in it. You know, XYZ, the central north eastern state, you know, and, it is a big deal. Now this is important.

00;24;01;20 - 00;24;17;08
Paul Sullivan
And it's and he's right and he's been right. And he had you know he took a this is like Nick bloom at Stanford, you know, did all this research on, you know, remote work and what it meant. And if you really toiled and like, who who cares about what this guy's doing and now he's, he knows at all.

00;24;17;10 - 00;24;19;12
Amy Beacom
But Brad Harrington in there too, shout out.

00;24;19;12 - 00;24;27;06
Paul Sullivan
To oh yeah, we know Brad. Brad's been on the podcast Brad at Boston College. The Boston College Center. Brad is remarkable. He's trained some other good people.

00;24;27;08 - 00;24;38;00
Amy Beacom
You and Brad, like, started the damn recession. And thank goodness for them, because that's what gets listened to. And they have done more for.

00;24;38;04 - 00;24;42;01
Paul Sullivan
And why do why does that get listened to? Tell us why gets us into.

00;24;42;04 - 00;24;48;11
Amy Beacom
Because of sexism. I mean really it's it's it's that simple misogyny and patriarchy.

00;24;48;11 - 00;25;17;18
Paul Sullivan
And when you say misogyny and, patriarchy and, you know, I agree with you, but it is it that you drill down, is it that the expectation has historically been in the workplace that, women will have children and have to then balance their careers and figure it all out? Whereas dads who were obviously, part of creating the child and parenting the child, they'll just go back to work like nothing happened is that, you know, a dumbed down version of of how what the view has been.

00;25;17;20 - 00;25;38;06
Amy Beacom
It is. But I think there's more nuance in that. It's that we haven't allowed dads to be caregivers in this country. We haven't given them an opportunity to be equal at home. And so because of that, early on, split between the home is the woman's work and the paid work is the man's work. We just haven't recovered from that.

00;25;38;06 - 00;26;08;15
Amy Beacom
We have, even though that's not really what happens in most families. And so it's the more men we can get visibly taking their parental leave, advocating for structured processes so everybody support it. The more it's going to help the women, the women are going to sit here and say this till they're blue in the face, but until it's more visible through the dads, we we aren't going to have the progress that we need.

00;26;08;15 - 00;26;16;18
Amy Beacom
And that's, that's why I'm so grateful to Stu and Brad. I mean, they've really brought that conversation to the forefront.

00;26;16;21 - 00;26;39;27
Paul Sullivan
And, you know, brass band on the podcast. Listeners may have heard this, you know, Brad's work as I do, he tells a story where ten years ago, when you're you were starting when you started and he was starting with he started at at Boston College. They floated the idea of giving equal leave, to moms and dads and these top companies that were back in the center said, sure, you know, let's do it.

00;26;39;29 - 00;27;00;17
Paul Sullivan
And and only after the fact did one of them have a conversation. Brad said, you know, this has been a really great policy. These dads are taking their the if they come back more productive, happier. There's also not the disparity between, you know, women going out for 20 weeks and men going out for two weeks, so we can, you know, bake into more equity, into the workplace.

00;27;00;17 - 00;27;14;24
Paul Sullivan
But, you know, I'm going to be honest with you, when we propose this idea of giving leave to dads, we didn't think any of them would take it, and we thought it was a giveaway, and now they took it. And that was to me, it's such a great story when Brad tells because it was a tipping point.

00;27;14;26 - 00;27;29;12
Paul Sullivan
How is that, like, worked into the the work that you're doing where it's not just moms after you've just birthed a child, you're not going back to work then two days later. But you know, how is that the rise of dads? Or to the way you either work?

00;27;29;15 - 00;27;58;23
Amy Beacom
It's it's one of my favorite things to see, because as soon as you change the policy to allow for it, it takes about a year until it's normed into the culture of the company. But at first those dads are nervous. I mean, we did a big culture change project around leave at a big oil and gas company, and they had two days of leave for dads when we started, and they increased it consecutively.

00;27;58;25 - 00;28;02;16
Paul Sullivan
Could you take them one can take it.

00;28;02;18 - 00;28;07;02
Paul Sullivan
But did you have to spread them out?

00;28;07;04 - 00;28;26;14
Amy Beacom
I I'm just glad they had to at that moment. But because they had a lot of, you know, they have a lot of oil rig dads, they had a lot of dads. There was a whole spectrum of jobs that that they had in this oil and gas company, of course. And, and they thought, we have a tough man culture.

00;28;26;14 - 00;28;53;01
Amy Beacom
None of these dads are going to take it. We're not going to nobody's going to do it. And I and two other women in the company, fought for it, built it, created it, changed the policy and then started to educate around it and train the managers. And within the first six months, it was a little dodgy. It was like, oh, I can get X number of weeks, but I'm only going to take one.

00;28;53;03 - 00;29;14;09
Amy Beacom
I don't, you know, they're they're Tesla workers. Are they going to be burned by taking their full leave or are they going to be made fun of. Are they going to be, you know, whatever it is that, was likely and at first there was a tiny bit of that, but as soon as it started to become the norm, like, why wouldn't you take it, you're getting it.

00;29;14;11 - 00;29;33;14
Amy Beacom
Then within a year, when I had a conversation with the team again, they didn't remember that it had been an issue and that everyone had fought against the length of time that we are proposing. They were like, oh, of course the dads take the full time and I've been waiting for six months for the answer of, like our dads taking their full time.

00;29;33;17 - 00;29;51;13
Amy Beacom
And I when I asked it like on pins and needles, like, please, are the dads taking their full time? Like, what do you mean? Of course they're taking their full time. I was like, oh my God. The fact that this isn't even a question to you just shows how quickly, that culture can change and how important it was to the entire structure of that company.

00;29;51;15 - 00;29;53;08
Amy Beacom
Everybody was happier.

00;29;53;11 - 00;29;55;09
Paul Sullivan
How long was it? How long was it that.

00;29;55;11 - 00;29;58;06
Amy Beacom
I don't want to embarrass them by telling you what it was, but it.

00;29;58;06 - 00;30;15;09
Paul Sullivan
Was fine. Let's get it in the moms, it was less than a month. But look, baby steps, we're getting there. Here's the question that this is. And, Doctor Amy Beekman, the company has podcast. Amazing conversation. Here's a question I want. I just think of that, you know, you're not a rig worker. I'm not deeply knowledgeable about this, but you can make a pile of money.

00;30;15;09 - 00;30;38;10
Paul Sullivan
You you're out there and you can make a pile of money over time. And it is a dangerous job. And you know, the whole fucking thing goes on, sets on fire, and it's full of oil. It's dangerous. And, but, you know, companies that I've talked to, I'll sort of say in a sort of, okay, in a little whisper to me, like, you know, this is easier to do with salaried workers.

00;30;38;18 - 00;31;15;21
Paul Sullivan
Like, we can have somebody come in and fill in. But, you know, I don't want to say this out loud. It's really hard to do with hourly wage workers, because then we're paying double as opposed to taking one person to work and spreading out among 3 or 4 people. How do you, you know, help people who are in companies with the preponderance of hourly wage workers come up with, a parental leave plan, that is equitable and, and still allows those workers to contribute tremendously to the company to, to benefit from something that, you know, the executive of the salary get.

00;31;15;24 - 00;31;55;18
Amy Beacom
Yeah, it's of course different by company. I mean, that's like a grocery store hourly worker versus a rig worker. Those are different things. Like a rig worker, you've got skilled labor that is in high demand, and there's not a ton of skill for that. So it it's part of the conversation. One solution for companies as they're considering how to do it is create rotating in-house like sub teams that come and fill in for different people when they're on leads and, and and just as a plug because you you mentioned that they're paying double because then they're paying the person on leave and the person going out.

00;31;55;20 - 00;32;21;22
Amy Beacom
I just want to put a plug in. That all goes away when you're you have a state league program or a federal paid leave program. Like the only reason companies are in that position is because we've set ourselves in the foot by creating this patchwork of paid leave issues. So advocate for paid leave. If you're in a company and that goes away, and in some ways, so.

00;32;21;25 - 00;32;36;05
Amy Beacom
Your point is valid, though it's more difficult. It just is more difficult. That doesn't mean there's not solutions. It just means you need to get creative about what the solutions are for your particular company. And I guess is my short answer knowing we don't have a ton of time.

00;32;36;07 - 00;32;49;15
Paul Sullivan
Yeah, this is awesome. Doctor Amy Beacon, founder of the center for Parental Leave Leadership and the author of the Parental Leave Playbook. Thank you so much for being my guest today on the Company Dads podcast.

00;32;49;17 - 00;32;52;23
Amy Beacom
Thank you Paul, appreciate it.

00;32;52;25 - 00;33;18;07
Paul Sullivan
Thank you for listening to the Company of Dads podcast. I also want to thank the people who make this podcast and everything else that we do. The company of dads possible held there mirror, who is our audio producer Lindsay Decker handles all of our social media. Terry Brennan, who's helping us with the newsletter and audience acquisition. Emily serve in who is our web maestro, and of course, Evan Roosevelt, who is working side by side with me.

00;33;18;07 - 00;33;35;26
Paul Sullivan
And many of the things that we do here at the Company of Dads. It's a great team. And we're we're just trying to bring you the best in fatherhood. Remember, the one stop shop for everything is our newsletter, the dad. Sign up at the Company of dads.com backslash. The dad. Thank you again for listening.