Supporting new parents in the workplace
5 min read
Having a baby creates so much change for a person – particularly in those first five years of life. If it’s your first time (or even your third!) it can be difficult to anticipate what will change and how you will feel.
To support your people, or prepare yourself for this life changing event, we have these three tips:
1. Know that there is no ‘right’ way to do parental leave
Practice curiosity with yourself or your team member becoming a parent to understand how they envisage the parental leave period looking for them.
In the early days of my own parenthood, I distinctly remember suffering from ‘relevance deprivation syndrome’ - a term usually associated with retirees, referring to feelings of incompetence among retired people caused by them leaving their high status or influential jobs. I struggled with suddenly being totally disconnected from the workplace, not receiving any emails and feeling like I was no longer learning. Conversely, many new parents couldn’t think of anything worse than staying abreast of what is happening in their work, but they may well suffer from strong feelings of loneliness in those early days of becoming a parent.
Talk with your team members about how or if you will stay connected and be open to it changing over time.
2. Continue to invest in psychological safety
When you're preparing for an employee to go on parental leave, or you're the one preparing to take time off, there is a lot of uncertainty that can bubble to the surface. Pair this with the high stakes emotions that can follow and sometimes managers or colleagues can say or do the 'wrong' thing and unintentionally cause upset.
Strong team psychological safety can support teams to navigate these difficult interactions effectively. The objective is for the person taking leave to feel comfortable to air their own concerns, thoughts and feelings and for the other team members to have the ingredients to overcome the inevitable ‘foot-in-mouth’ moments that can occur when there is a new baby on the horizon.
To enable this, teams need to operate under the presumption of strong values like kindness and curiosity, hold regular check-ins with one another, and have a widely accepted approach to discussing and troubleshooting differences in opinion.
3. Be an advocate or role model for taking time off
Support your team members to take time off on the arrival of a new child and during their early years of life – be their advocate to help them be available for their family, especially partners. By encouraging more men or partners to take time off, workplaces can actively encourage shared home duties, leading to lasting benefits for individuals, the workplace and society.
Studies show that when two parents are sharing home duties it improves family wellbeing and is a major preventer of parental burnout. More partners at home enables more women to return to the workplace, which drives greater economic outcomes for businesses and the nation. If more women return to work with greater support from their partners at home, it challenges traditional gender roles in our society, reducing drivers of anti-social behaviour and family violence against women.
When individuals and their workplaces begin preparing for the arrival of babies, the uncertainty it creates can be perceived by staff and/or their families as unsupportive. If you are committed to growing and maintaining high performing teams, or being a high performing team member, then a little bit of preparation will go a long way to supporting you through this exciting and uncertain time.
If you would like to learn more about how Simple Nimble can help your organisation grow and maintain high performing teams, to support effective strategy implementation, get in touch today!
