Pregnancy in the Workplace
A Note by James U. Jensen, CEO
ClearWater
© July 23, 2012
Many have noted with interest that the new CEO at Yahoo, Marissa Mayerbegins her stint as boss during her 6th month of a pregnancy. After years of working and contributing to the success of Google, Ms. Mayer’s credentials made her the perfect candidate, according to the Yahoo Board of Directors, pregnant or not. Mayer reportedly plans to work during her maternity leave—Move over Pearl Buck and “The Good Earth.” The work-balance of the working parent has long been a juggling act, but most particularly for a working woman, who is alone tasked with pregnancy, child-birth, and if she so-chooses, nursing. The willingness of Yahoo! to hire Ms. Mayerand her willingness to take the position combine tobring into hyper-focus the issue of work-life balance.
ClearWater and our employees have made similar commitments to both work and family. ClearWater favors maternity leave; and our employees value their work. Recently, our associate, Leah Bennion gave birth to her second child. ClearWater was determined to accommodate her needs and offered her continued full compensation for three month’s maternity leave. How did a small company like ClearWater find the resources and determination to accommodate a working woman in child-bearing years? We like this description from a recent Boston Globe article about Mayer and Yahoo:
“Victoria Budson, the founding executive director of the Women and Public Policy Program at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, sees an opportunity here to promote a larger agenda. She states, "The question isn't how is [Mayer] going to balance her work-family life, but it's how do we ensure that companies are fully using the talent pool [including women of child-bearing years] so we can have an economic engine that will deliver a strong economy?"
ClearWater was determined to accommodate Leah’s maternity because she is too valuable to us to not. The rest of the firm had to step-up, and did so because we are committed to allow women who chose to work, real workplace support for an effective work-life balance.
Additionally, Ms. Bennion, who has returned to full-time work, began coming into the office when her son was only 4 weeks old, working a reduced schedule to alleviate the strain on the firm and ourclients, while still supporting her small family at home. “When your workplace makes accommodations for you, you feel obliged to make accommodations for your workplace. I was appreciative of the time off, but knew that I, personally, could handle a reduced schedule. It helped me to slowly ramp up to a full load.”
And this wasn’t the first time for ClearWater. Shortly after we started ClearWater 4 years ago our business and administration VP, Rebecca Maw, also took time to have a baby. For Ms. Maw, a reduced schedule has continued to work well for her and the Company has conveniently accommodatedher shorter work week. So, as you may expect, our work place is now fully stocked withcrayons and toys.But these small accommodations have allowed us to retain two great minds while enjoying an increased dedication from our employees to our work and our clients.
It is likely no secret that these women are my daughters and thus these youngsters are my grandchildren. You might think that an emotional commitment made maternity accommodation a no-brainer. But not so. On a personal level I was torn between wanting to see my girls stand on their own and wanting to make life easy for them. In the end, it was up to ClearWater to make the business case for maternity accommodation. ClearWater needs a reliable and competent work force to provide complex and demanding services to our clients in a cost-effective manner. And ClearWater needs trained and committed employees. ClearWater has demonstrated to my satisfaction that a working mother can accomplish these ClearWater needs. Such an employee can be an important and contributing member of a dedicated work-team.
And we are very appreciative of our many clients who have also accommodated the work-life balance requested from our key employees. Just one word of caution: if you find yourself negotiating with one of these iron-women, ask first how the baby slept last night. You’ll want to adjust your negotiating strategy accordingly. People who nurse at 3AM may not suffer fools gladly at 3 PM.