Parental Leave in the Workplace Jungle

From the employee's perspective, expanded parental leave seems like a beautiful thing. But is it really possible for these programs to ever actually work as planned?

By Peter Cappelli
September 8, 2015 - Human Resource Executive

The news these past few weeks has been dominated by HR developments in the tech world. (Have you noticed, by the way, that seemingly every HR story is about some tech company?)

The biggest stories have been, on the one hand, the fallout from the New York Times piece about what it's like to be a manager at Amazon; the other about new programs to expand parental leave (Netflix, for example).

There are a lot of interesting things about the Amazon story, such as the fact that Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO, was shocked that many of the employees found it a very tough place to work. Maybe the story had such legs because of the noticeable contrast between the workplace depicted in the NYT story and the happy face Amazon presents to its customers. But I doubt anyone who follows management was surprised that the jobs there were very demanding - perhaps even brutal - and that people who cannot keep up with the pace were pushed aside. In fact, a common response to the story was, "So what? It's like that at lots of places."

That takes us to the other story about parental leave. Tech companies have several problems in this area, all focused on women. One is the growing realization that they just don't seem to be able to hire - and especially retain - women employees. That seems to be particularly so in the most-visible positions, which puts them out of step with many trends in society.

The second is their general scramble for talent, which is a particular concern at these companies because of two key factors: many of them don't develop much of their talent from within, so they are always hiring to fill vacancies. They also have retention problems, which lead to even more hiring. Put these two factors together, and the companies have to do a lot of hiring. When they find themselves at odds with half the population from which they'd like to hire, it's a real problem.

I suppose there is also a third factor, which is the tendency to commit faux pas in dealing with women. Witness the PR nightmare that was created after Facebook, Apple and others offered a benefit that allows their female employees to freeze their eggs in order to put off child bearing and keep working.

Hence, we see the move to expand leave for people having children, in some companies offering five months of paid leave. Yes, these programs usually apply to men as well, but make no mistake, these are aimed at recruiting women. The fact that several companies announce them more or less at the same time is just a reminder that they are all in competition with each other for similar candidates.

From the employee's perspective, expanded parental leave seems like a beautiful thing. Here's my question: Is it possible these programs can actually work as planned, even with the best of intentions by the employers?

One issue, which the press has already jumped on, is the role of organizational culture and the informal norms about actually taking leave. Consider the just-released announcement by Marissa Mayer at Yahoo (who seems to get disproportionately more attention than any CEO on the planet) that she is pregnant with twins - always out-performing others! - and that she really won't be taking time off her job. Yes, she has money and support to manage both jobs in ways that are impossible for others to imagine. And yes, it makes it much harder for all other women in the company to actually take time off after they have a child. But what else could she do? Wall Street and investors' heads would explode if she actually stepped out of her role.

Of course it would be interesting to watch if she did, indeed, take time off - and it would make a nice role model for other women. But would we ask a male CEO to take such risks with investors and company share prices?

Here's the big problem going forward: Given the way these companies operate, with unbelievable demands on managers and executives who are on-call 24 hours a day and constantly fighting fires, it is very hard to see how anyone who really cares about his or her career - and one can't get these jobs without caring - could step out of them for any length of time and expect to come back.

Why not? Because someone else took over the project you were leading, and now they are onto the next one.

Can't you keep doing the job from home a few hours a day? Really? In companies where the rest of your team is working 70 hours per week? Can't your co-workers take up some of the slack? When they are already working 70 hours per week? Doesn't this start to be a little unfair to co-workers with no children who are continually taking up the slack for those who have them? 

In big companies, it is certainly possible that they could find you a new job someplace else, especially given that they have so much turnover. But it's unlikely to be the job someone would want. For executives, it's unlikely to be a job at the same level.

These are also companies that don't expect to give new hires any ramp-up time, so they are not good at letting people transition into jobs gradually. Evidence from studies suggests most employers won't look at someone who has been out of a job five months for fear their skills have gotten rusty.

None of this suggests that these companies must operate the way they do, i.e., lean, with no spare resources and expecting their employees to absorb all the demands and stresses created by business. But operating that way - while also expecting that people will be able to get off the roller coaster when they want, and then get back on it - seems like a pipe dream.

Peter Cappelli is the George W. Taylor Professor of Management and director of the Center for Human Resources at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.