My mum is a programmer

May 26

How do we enable parents returning after a longer leave easily integrate and thrive in the workplace? What can we do before, during and after the leave that will set the returnees for success? In the next paragraphs we’ll explore all that and will take a closer look at creating meaningful part-time conditions and enabling company wide policies that support this mission.

This article is taken out of the “My mum is a programmer” talk that I gave at the Herding Cats meetup in Berlin. Slides.

Framing the problem

Why mothers in the title instead of parents? While we do have fathers that also take longer leaves, they are very statistically unlikely. The whole experience of becoming a parent and its long-term systematic consequences are also drastically different in both cases. The lack of (quality) childcare powered by the existing pay gap and the persisting inequality when it comes to household and care work additionally burdens mums when it comes to reintegrating and thriving in the workforce.

This is a really big topic, and to not crowd the article, I have prepared a list of links for you to skim with extra info and statistics on the topic if you are interested. There is a small section at the bottom.

If we move back into the statistics inside the tech industry, we know that every second woman drops out of tech after 10 years in. I highly suspect that has something to do with many of them becoming mothers, despite the rest of the things pushing them out that we won’t address.

With this being said, what we’ll discuss here is absolutely not just applicable to mothers, but to all parents, transferable to people taking longer leaves because of chronic or battling a terminal illness, being caretakers, any employee that needs reduced work hours or is dealing with a big life changing event.

We desperately try to hire for the opinions lacking and the different life experiences that can lead to new markets for us, new ventures, new products - while letting these professionals leave our organisations. We are losing trained, experienced professionals, experts in their own fields and our companies. We are losing money.

By keeping women in the workforce, we get to have those women in leadership and senior positions that we currently say are impossible to find.

Placing the problem

Why are private companies, and especially managers themselves the key actors to move this forward?

While the government places a lot of the building ground for this change like laws that support families and companies, invests in accessible childcare etc, the change is slow and only moves to the pace that the ingrained culture allows.

This is where the private sector can jump in as an agent of change:

Can implement progressive internal policies that aid societal progress.
Can offer support where the state is lacking .
Can help with the overturn of general societal trends.

Managers themselves also embody the cultures and values they were raised in. We all default to taking opinions from our own experience of the world unless we explicitly question them or we are educated to be critical. This is why I propose to keep a process in mind to let us step out of our own mindset. As people responsible for the success and development of other people, we have the unique position and possibility to amplify voices rarely heard and make a big difference in someone’s life. Being attentive during a phase of a woman’s life that can make or break her career, our influence can be felt for generations to come. And I really mean it when I say this.

So, what can we do as managers?

The before

Taking the time to have a meeting that is specific about career and personal goals before the leave will be the staple of the easy integration after.

The person going through this experience will have a big part of their life circumstances changed, but they will be the same person, with the same(if not enhanced) qualifications, the same expert on your company and in their field. My friend Marija mentioned that the experience a parent goes though is an Epistemically transformative experience - without living the experience itself, it is impossible to know what awaits you. This means that we have to treat this conversation as partially temporal and have it again right after the leave is over.

Despite that, giving some longer term perspective of possible growth is reassuring to the person taking the leave and can do wonders for their mental health, at the same time helping your company keep staffing and projects in check.

So, what can we do before?

Have a GOALS meeting. The meeting should ideally focus on career and personal goals for after the leave.

Some questions to consider:

Are they happy with their career course? Would they like to grow into a different role?
If they are not sure, how do you see them grow? What kind of skills they need to address upon their return to get there?
How do they envision working after having a child? Will anything differ from the current arrangement?
Do they think the existing team is the right fit to support these expectations? Do you think it is the right fit? If you both are not sure, how can you find out? As a manager, this is definitely your job, please don’t task them with it.
If it doesn’t seem to be the right fit, can you agree on what might come next? Could you start making organisational moves(consult hiring, staffing, project management) to make this happen at the right time? Time moves really fast and once someone is out of sight, it is really easy to forget about them.

2. Make a resilient handover plan. Could you make a handover plan that is resilient against unforeseen circumstances popping up, but doesn’t hinder their professional growth?

Some suggestions on how to do this:

Start as early as possible.
Assign the right tasks. Be attentive to size, deadlines and ownership.
Please keep assigning challenging projects! Just create fall-back safety nets. The best way to do this is keep someone in the loop about the project so they could easily take over. Making sure the whole team doesn’t write code in silos is a good preparation for this.

3. Find a Wiedereinsteig buddy. While a person takes a longer leave, the life at the company carries on. Both the company and the person will in some way be new when they arrive, or they would need a certain kind of support to find the rhythm again. I haven’t seen the Wiedereinsteig buddy done anywhere, but it resonated the most with the women I shared the idea with. Maybe if you take one thing out of this text, make it this.

What would a Wiederensiteig buddy do?

Help with coordinating the leave
Be the main contact person during the leave and during the reintegration phase.
They could be from the team, or from outside of the team, depending on what the output of the goals meeting(s) are.

If an employee leaves that was a Wiederensteig buddy, don’t forget to loop the new one in and substitute them!

The during

Keep them in the loop.

The buddy could send occasional curated emails that require no answer or immediate attention. Before the leave the buddy and the person on leave can discuss the terms so no one feels overwhelmed.

These emails could look like a forwarded detailed message with a very short summary that puts it into context.

What kind of information is relevant?

Recorded All-hands links.
People joining or leaving the team.
Major technical decisions or changes
Major changes in the way you work: team reorganisations, new rituals, new positions and promotions etc.
Informal team meetings like dinners and lunches and outings - might be a great idea to keep the connection if they could make it.

The buddy should make sure that the person on leave will be able to attend important gatherings like offsites, meetings or workshops that require prior notice for people with dependents upon return. Could even advocate for some to be postponed to include them.

Please award the Buddy accordingly. This is a tough and a very responsible job. Don’t force people that don’t want to do this to take this on.

The after

Have the GOALS meeting again.The time elapsed and the huge life changes that happened during the leave could result in a person that’s the same expert that they were, but with completely different habits and needs. Or not. You need to find out as soon as possible so you know you are on course.
The team will need extra attention from you. If you are familiar with the forming, storming, norming, performing stages of a team, we know that every time we add a new person to the team we go back to the forming stage. I’d very insistently argue that once we have a person coming back from a longer leave, especially after a major life change, we should absolutely treat the team as being back into the forming stage. Extra attention and support will be needed to find a flow once again.
Onboarding. Depending on the situation and how it differs from before, getting the returnee in some kind of organised onboarding is a good idea. A mother suggested having the returnee be involved with the onboarding of a new hire, thus getting that smoother start themselves.
Do checkups as you would do with a new hire.

How are they (really) doing?
Is the arrangement working?
What can you do to help?

5. Be flexible. This might not work out, even after all the preparation. I would also urge you to be more open for a person looking at the same processes and environment as you are, but having a completely different take on all of that. Your needs and situation are very different at the moment, and what might seem to you like an amazing situation, it might not be like that for them. You can find understanding and a way to work together if you are open to listen.

The long-term

Check-in, Check-in, Check-in

The most important thing is to keep checking in. Of course, this will automatically merge to the 1on1 routine, but keep up with the caring questions.

Make sure they are seen and heard and moving forward. I think this sentence applies to everyone and it is the core of how I see management. Of course, moving forward has to be aligned with the company’s goals. This is really not a small feat. Just stay curious.

Meaningful part-time work

Many parents need to work part-time and the reasons for that might vary:

available childcare or amount of support/help in the home
physical or psychological exhaustion of the first year(s)
emotional and personal reasons.

The most important thing to remember about part-time work is that part-time work is not just a reduced version of full-time work.

From what I have personally experienced and from what I’ve heard from other parents is that it is often left on the employee and the team to figure this out themselves, starting from the assumption that part-time work is just less hours.

I find this absolutely untrue.

Part-time work needs special planning, and this planning needs to fit with the rest of the planning.

The skill development and career progression need to be factored in:

What tasks are being assigned
Are they the right size? The right collaboration opportunities?
Are they taking this person’s career forward?
Are they enhancing skills that the person needs or will need soon?
How does all of this affect salary, reviews and promotions?

In this case, we need to be proactively asking ourselves if we can still assign projects that lead to promotions and more responsibility? If that is not possible in our current framework, maybe we could change how we execute projects to make room for this? Are there any ways we can make this work?

We are too often scared of the communication overhead that bringing multiple heads together might lead us to. Oftentimes we just need to find the right pairs, and trust people a bit more. To make leadership or bigger challenging projects more accessible to people who cannot spend 40h a week at work, most of the time we just need to make leadership a collaboration.

There are many important questions here that need some working out:

We have team meetings(Scrum meetings are plenty and long) that take a big part of the week, how do we make sure the part-time employee’s voice is heard at the right times? While being mindful that they are here for a very limited time and that they hopefully are not spending all in meetings.
What they must attend, what can we open for a different input?
Can we consider other ways of sharing opinions(commenting on a document, writing proposals etc.)?
Consider remote-first practices. While improving overall communication, this might also enable to have parents back from leave much earlier, or make working during taking care of sick children more bearable.

I think there is so much to say about this, and especially when applied to programming. I am hoping to do more research and write a longer guide on this. I hope this helps for now.

On a company level.

At first, I had this section divided into “the big” and “the small”. It felt wrong to belittle effort that is highly limited by financial and organisational capacities. Then I thought about naming the categories “the expensive” and “the cheap”. That didn’t seem right either. At the end, you might be a very small org, or a big one. Your budget might be roomy or tight. Some of these suggestions cost money and some are just a change of mindset. Whatever your circumstances, you can do something. Everything counts.

What can we do on a company level?

Help with childcare. There are kindergartens that make arrangements with companies and keep places for their employees. There are many companies that have their own kindergartens. If you want some advice specific to these questions, you can find some information here.
Help with finding childcare/parents bureaucratic papers process. Applying for a Kita in Berlin is a gruesome process and often futile. There are thousands and thousands of places missing, not enough staff and the fight is brutal. If you have just immigrated to Berlin, it will be almost impossible with a very small one. I ended up complaining to the journalists about it. Some people you can hire to help: Julia Cares, Maternita.
Emergency childcare. There are coworking spaces with childcare that you can make contracts with as a company. One that is currently being built: Little Village and The Juggle Hub as already established as an example. These can enable your employees to be back earlier at work, and be there when the Kitas are closed etc.
Pumping/Breastfeeding rooms. Could you set up a designated private space for mothers, however small it is? Breastfeeding mothers have the legal right to breastfeeding/pumping pauses. While a company must have some way to provide for this, many don’t or have assigned uncomfortable(and sometimes degrading) solutions as an afterthought. Pumping in the toilet is unsanitary and yuck.
Eltern-Kind zimmer. A child friendly room where the parent could come and take some meetings/work from in time of need. I’ve seen the ones from Zalando and Babbel. I also know a mum that this helped be almost 6 months earlier at work while waiting for childcare.
WHM club. I was part of it, and the community of women understanding exactly what I am going through was priceless. The prices are very affordable and if you don’t have the cash for the big things, little things like this could help a lot. There is a special program for companies, and Melanie that runs it also is a great resource for consultations.
Parent friendly company parties and celebrations. Day instead of night, no afterwork but during work etc.
Parent friendly offsites.
Strongly consider making a rule for having no meetings after 4pm. Most of childcare institutions in Berlin close then or even a bit earlier. While the very flexible times are attractive for everyone, making core hours helps the people that have external time dependencies and removes conflict about this from the team.

Recap

Doing work that enables people different than us to thrive is work that feeds into our values and culture as organisations. Being curious and receptive that someone might be struggling in ways unique to them, and being ready to intercept and help will come back in many ways to us, 10 folds.

As managers, we are here to set people up for success, and drive people’s careers and our company forward. There is no easy way to do this, but we can lay good foundations to rely on in difficult times in the shape of processes and rituals. Take the process above as general guidelines and adjust it to your situation.

If you need any help, I offer a free call

The current crisis is a specifically challenging times for women, especially for mothers. If you are having a issues around reintegration after leave or any related topics, if you are preparing, maybe struggling to ping part-time work down, anything that is creating discomfort in the team and the mother/parent returning I would like to offer a free call.

If there is a conflict somewhere and we can keep a mother in the workforce at this crucial moment, the engagement is very well worth it. I know too many programmer mums at home at the moment. I promise to be curious and understanding. Happy to sign any NDAs.

I offer this as a support call for managers. I hope companies hire professionals in this area if they need more in depth consultations.