Allison Whalen on Revolutionizing Parental Leave Policy

Hello and welcome to The Balancing Act. This is the show that dives into real stories of people I admire who are balancing creating a successful career with raising a family. I am your host, Sarah Sheridan, Director of Sales and Executive Recruiting at Hirewell and mom to three little ones. I am so excited to welcome our very first guest today, Allison Whalen, CEO and co founder of Parentaly.

Allison is on a mission to change the way companies feel about leave, and today we are going to dive into her research, understand the impact of leave on an organization, and chat through some ways companies can improve that experience. All right, well, let’s dive in. Allison, welcome. Thank you. I’m excited to be here.

It’s fun when I get to be the guest and you have to run the show and I can just relax and yap. So I’m excited. Just hang out. Yeah. Well, we are, I am so excited to have you. I know this is not your first rodeo. You’ve done many a podcast, unlike myself, but for those who aren’t as familiar, if you don’t mind just doing quick intro, would love to just hear more about, you know, both a career journey and then family life.

I became a mother in 2017. I, at that time was an enterprise sales manager at a VC backed tech company was really, really in love with my work and have always been very focused on my career, but also have always known I wanted to become a mother. I was really excited to be pregnant. That excitement very quickly turned into fear as I thought.

And, and it sounds so silly, like it was the first time that it dawned on me, Oh my gosh, I actually have to leave? Like, I’ve never left my job for more than, you know, two weeks on a honeymoon. How in the world do people take time away from work? I did, I did the best I could, I put together a coverage plan, I went on a three-month paid leave and when I returned to work, I just was so shocked by the experience.

And I think it’s because I had expected to struggle with like the identity crisis and the health concerns and parenting and all of that. It’s like you kind of know that that’s coming as difficult as that is to anticipate and picture. But I felt totally like blindsided by the fact that this parental leave, which was given to me explicitly to support my retention and career trajectory actually felt like it had the opposite impact.

And I was really struck by that because I thought, I know that everyone here wants this to be a positive experience of me returning to work, getting back into the work, you know, workplace, being successful. And yet the actions or inaction of every person, including me, we’re totally misaligned to that.

And so I became really obsessed with that problem because I thought, I fundamentally believe that people need paid leave. I also can see that companies are being more generous with paid leave because they believe it’s the right thing to do. And if we want paid leave to be successful, we have to make sure that business outcomes remain positive when people take time away, both for the bottom line for the business, but also for the employee.

And I think that’s sometimes the thing that we, we forget is like, actually, when the business falls apart, like that’s also really bad for the careers of the parents when they return to work. And so. That’s sort of my founding story. It took, you know, two years after that to actually launch the business. I became very obsessed with that problem, started talking to tons of men and women about that experience, and then ultimately launched the business in 2019, which I’m sure we’ll get a lot more into, but that was sort of like the.

Aha moment to create the business. Awesome. Have you always had that like entrepreneurial itch? I know you got your MBA or did this kind of like change your path just because of your experience? No. I mean, in fact, when I was in business school, I remember thinking like, I’m not taking entrepreneurship.

Like there isn’t an entrepreneur like bone in my body. I’m a corporate gal. Like that’s literally like the story that I told myself. I don’t know why I had not grown up around entrepreneurs. I didn’t feel if anything, I’ve always been a worrier my entire life, which you would think makes you risk a verse, right?

And so no, I never thought that I would be an entrepreneur. The thing that actually changed that is I went to a startup and started to dabble in trying new things, but with the safety net of like, Who cares if it goes wrong? Like I have a salary here. This isn’t my company. And so I’m such a fan of working at startups where that’s encouraged and like failure is okay.

And you can start testing that muscle and learn if you’re good at it or not. For sure. For sure. Well, we will dive very much into the company, but, thank you for the introduction. You know, just to kind of kick things off, I mean, I, I launched this podcast and recently coming back from maternity leave with my third grad.

Thank you. Thank you. And my manager, went out as soon as I came back. So we did a little flip flop, which I’ve never quite experienced before, but. You know, really, my first time seeing firsthand, like, what a big impact leave can have beyond just myself, my immediate team, but really kind of like the overarching company.

You know, we work for a smaller company. So I’d love to just kind of get your thoughts. And is there any research? Around, like, the true impact that parental leave has on, like, the broader organization, and like, why should people care? Yeah, obviously, parents who are expecting to go out or just gone out, it’s relevant, but who else should care?

Yeah, I think that parental leaves have a massive impact that we oftentimes don’t talk about. Particularly on, and maybe I’ll just give a few examples of where we see the biggest impact. So the first is the actual manager. So oftentimes what will happen is the manager, the person going on leave feels very alone.

Like, okay, I’ve got this direct report going on leave. I need to figure out how to support them. I need to figure out how to hit the same goals when I’m one or maybe even two people down on my team. I don’t feel empowered to go and renegotiate goals or priorities or timelines. and that’s really bad, right?

And so, It absolutely impacts the manager. It then oftentimes should impact company priorities, deadlines, deliverables, sales goals, but we oftentimes ignore that and act as though we can deliver the same things on the same timeline, even though we’re going to be down. Right. You know, a person or two. Right.

And so that has a huge impact. And then there’s who are we asking to do this work while this person is out? Because what our research found is that two thirds of people when they go out on parental leave ask one or multiple co workers to do their work for them while they’re out. So, okay, that’s actually a pretty good solution.

And that’s something that we encourage in our coaching program, but only if you’re asking people to take on the work and you’re also removing certain things from their plate and that doesn’t usually happen, right? Cause usually it is, Oh. This person will take on this account for me. That person will take on this project, but you’re not actually removing anything from their plate.

So now you have one person going out, but you’re asking six people to take on extra work who are already at capacity. And then when you think about direct reports, I mean, in my personal situation, I had a handful of direct reports. And I didn’t even think for one second about, should I build professional development opportunities for them while I was on leave?

It was like, we were so focused on my coverage plan, who’s going to cover for these accounts, who’s going to do my meetings while I’m out, that I didn’t even think, well, what about so and so who really wants to get promoted or this person who wants to get exposure in the other part of the business? You know, and so my direct reports were really negatively impacted in some ways positively because in some ways they got a lot more visibility.

They got to interact with more senior people. But I think that I can’t emphasize enough that I think a mistake that we make sometimes as we look at, Oh, parental leave, it’s such a niche thing. Only three to 6 percent of a company goes on parental leave per year. True. But it really does impact so many more people than that.

Right. No, I love that. And you’re right. You’re thinking about a quarter of the year and that’s going to have a big impact. Right. Yeah. And like usually, you know, we’re even more than a quarter because there’s like the windup period because you can’t actually have this person working on mission critical work up until their due date, for example.

And so it is, it is something that requires a lot of attention. And I think one of the things that we’ve. A lot of success in is figuring out what things actually matter because none of us on have on our list of to do’s a hundred percent priority projects a hundred percent of the time. And so, so much of like the magic in this experience is figuring out what matters most and how do we get it done in the right way.

And also, how do we pause things that just aren’t super important while they’re on leave? Because. Even transitioning work, in and of itself, the act of teaching someone else how to take on work for me is a lot of work and a lot of potentially wasted time. Right. And I think some people look at a solution as bringing in a contractor, you know, looking at that as like an easy fix, but you’re right, like the training that goes involved.

I think some, women and men going out on leave may even feel a bit threatened if they outperform them. So, yeah, no, you’re right. It’s, it’s definitely a sensitive situation where you have to be thoughtful and kind of pre plan. Yeah. And sometimes contractors are right. A great solution. We have someone.

We’re, we’re a pretty small company, but as you can imagine, we attract a lot of people who are in that family expansion phase of their, of their life. And so we have somebody, she’s not a contractor, she’s a W2, but she is effectively like a floater at this point where she came in, she was covering for somebody, a sales rep on leave.

She had sold for us previously, so she knew us really well. She wanted a more flexible role where she did not want to work for us full time anymore. And we said, okay, well, how about part time and you can cover for part of this sales reps work while she’s out on leave. She did that, the sales rep returned, and then we found another area for her to support in that time.

And now we’re preparing for another sales rep, a different sales rep to go out. And so she’s going to help support with that. And so there’s definitely ways to think about staffing creatively. And I actually think this is a huge opportunity in this like new age where people can work remote. And there are a lot of people looking for flexible work to think through, are there ways to get people who are more familiar or

easier fits for your work to be able to handle some of that while you’re out. And is that even the right solution? Maybe not. Like oftentimes there are people that think what I do is so specialized that it, it’s not worth it to bring someone in and try and hope and pray that they get it done. Right? No, that makes a lot of sense.

Well, I wanted to move on to, you know, and I think this is kind of a natural transition. Parental leave is complex, and I think, unfortunately, oftentimes it has kind of a negative connotation. I think, you know, it’s a time of stress. It’s a time of disruption. I think it’s fair to say employers may dread it.

I think even the employees are grateful, but they have that anxiety you mentioned. So, you know, When we were prepping for this, you shared some, a lot of like success stories, which, which challenged that. So what, could you highlight one of those stories and just walk us through what made it so successful and kind of the impact it was able to have in a good way?

I think there are a lot of ways that parental leaves can be very positive, not only for the individual taking leave, but also those around them in the business. I oftentimes refer to this one example, which is way before I started parental leave, but I had a direct report who I hired onto my sales team when she was like five or six months pregnant and she was shocked because she’s like, you know, I know legally you can’t not hire me because of pregnancy, but like, are you sure that you want to do this?

And of course I said, yes, you’re the best person for this role. And what I was shocked to see is that she actually used her pregnancy as this incredible motivator. She was not wasting time on deals that were going nowhere. She was. Telling people, we need to get this wrapped up because I am due at this date.

Right. And so she was able to use this, the fact that she was going to be out of office to completely rethink the way that she prioritizes how productive she was. And she ended up pulling forward a ton of deals that would have otherwise taken another year to close. And I see things like that all the time where I think there’s this like.

When you have this deadline that is completely immovable, after which point you’re not going to be able to work, I’ve seen it do incredible things to people in helping them understand what actually matters. And at the end of the day, businesses want you to be doing the things that have the greatest impact.

And so if you’re able to use that impending deadline, it doesn’t even need to be that you’re pregnant. Like if you’re adopting or you’re, you have a partner who is giving birth, like that is a real time where you’re going to step away. And how do you use that to be more productive? I also see people use their coverage planning process to document really clearly the impact that you have on the organization.

And that then can be used in your performance review because so often we kind of joke when people start our program, our coaching program. So we take people three months before leave through three months back at work and we help them build their plans, coach them, re onboard them. And a lot of people are looking for, you know, promotions or, you know, big changes in their roles.

And we start with like the most simple exercise, what is your job? No one has their job written down. Nobody actually knows really what you do on a day to day basis. And so the act of simply fleshing out, here’s what I’m doing, here’s what my goals are, we’ve seen so many people use that document to then submit it in their request for a new role or higher pay or whatnot.

And then I would say like, this is tricky, but this, I’ve seen this happen more often than you would imagine. We’ve seen people use their parental leave as a really interesting moment to switch roles. And I think oftentimes we talk about switching role in the negative, like, yeah, well, you know, I came back to a totally different role, like they replaced me or whatnot.

Well, what you don’t hear about, and that happens actually decently often, is Yeah, people return to a new role that’s better. And what do I mean by that? Hey, I would like to get promoted to whatever role or move into this other role that I think is more interesting or more aligned to my career trajectory.

This is a perfect opportunity to fully wind down what I’m doing today. So maybe we find a backfill that’s gonna take over my account management book of business today. I’m then totally off and free while I go on leave, and when I return, the plan is that I’m stepping into this new role that we’ve already talked about.

Now, of course, this doesn’t usually happen. This isn’t like what we see all the time, but this does happen. And people find that it can be kind of nice because then you’re disconnecting and you’re not returning to a role that has been like sort of done messy. You know, a pile of work dropped at your feet.

You’re walking into almost like a new hire, but you have the benefit of having been at the company for a long time and having those relationships and having that, experience within the organization. So sometimes I’ve seen people really use that parental leave as a very positive forcing function. I love that.

I, that’s just like such a creative way to look at it because I know when you go on leave, it’s one of the few moments. You know, once you enter corporate America, like you said, you take off two weeks max for a wedding. You’re kind of, you’ve got time to think and reflect and that, that makes a lot of sense.

Yeah. I mean, it’s really hard. And so yes, it can be positive, but you have to be really intentional with that. For sure. And I love what you said about just like, Prioritizing your time. One of my good friends, who’s a working mom, is like, if you need to get something done, give it to a working mom. Like, they’ll figure it out.

It might be at 12 p. m., it might be off hours, but like, there’s just so many balls in the air, it will get done. Yeah. I’m curious for you. You just had your third? Yes, third girl. Oh my goodness. I come from a family of three girls as well. I love that. Me too. My husband wasn’t as thrilled, but he’s He loves it now.

Yeah. That’s amazing. Did you notice, like, what did you do differently with your third leave than the other two? So it’s funny because when I was reading the big study that you guys had done at Parentaly, one of the findings that I found like the most interesting and that resonated with me the most was I went into this third leave Almost cocky.

Like, I was like, I’ve done this before. I know the company well. I’ve had great sales years. I’m very respected. So I went in feeling like good and I had a handle on things. I was getting excited towards the end to come back. And at no fault of the company or my own, I was quite surprised how challenging that transition back to work would be because my mindset is like, if you’ve done something before, you know what to expect.

And as a result, you’re going to be more successful and it’s going to feel easier. And you’re finding published that it doesn’t matter if you go out once, twice, three times, just because you’ve done it before, doesn’t always make easier to come back. And I was just surprised because I thought I was kind of like the outlier and feeling that way.

So I loved kind of reading that because for whatever reason, it’s when you leave, it’s, it’s a completely new, new situation to come back to. I think people always believe the third time or the second time is going to be easier. That’s very, and even I agree, I felt the same way with my third. I was like, please, I run a parental leave company.

Like, of course it’s going to be so easy. Yeah. And it wasn’t. And the context was different. And even in my case, like I had postpartum anxiety after the third, but not after the second and the first, it was like. I just thought I knew what I was doing and then it turns out we, it’s always difficult to step away from work.

But yeah, I think, and even when we talk to HR buyers and we’re telling them about our program, we oftentimes hear, Oh, so this is really just for first time moms, right? And we’re like, no, I mean, first time moms are very drawn to this, but we absolutely are just as impactful for fathers. As well as second and third time parents for exactly the reasons you’ve described.

I, I love, I was just, I’ve been surprised and I, you know, every baby is different. Every stage of work is different and I wasn’t appreciating that and I was kind of assuming. Why am I not getting up to speed faster? This is so confusing. I did on my second one, like I’m, I’m not understanding. So reading that, I was just like, Oh, I’m not alone here.

I also wonder, cause I felt that the actual act of parenting a baby was so much easier for two and three and that maybe, and I hear that from a lot of people, right? It’s like. Yeah. The first time you’re just like horrified at what the experience of like having a newborn in your home is. Yeah. And then you kind of know what that’s like.

And so that felt easier. The career stuff felt just as hard each time. Yes. That is very well said. And it, it surprises you. And I feel like. Women who, as they progress in their career, very, like, high achievement, a little type A, we like to control things, but that, that has thrown me a little bit. Yeah, I’ve even heard women say, yeah, each time was actually harder because I had more responsibility and made more money each time.

Like, I was older, more experienced, and so the stakes were higher. And less sleep, right? Right. Well, speaking of, this is a great transition. You guys did again, like that wonderful study. Is there any other like, surprising or just interesting takeaways that again, that one resonated so deeply because I was, I was genuinely surprised, but from, from your perspective, any others where you were surprised, I mean, how much time do you have?

Yeah, I know, right? Yeah, we’ll do a follow up on the study. Yeah, well, we, when we got the survey data back, I spent literally days pouring over the results because we asked 42 questions and we had so many ways that we had asked this research firm to cut the data so that we could see how people answered depending on if they’re at a large company or small, if they had a lot of paid leave or less, like, there were so many different ways that you could look at the answers.

I think probably the most surprising, you know, some of the things they, they confirmed what I always expected, but to a degree that I had not expected, like the fact that career progression was the number one concern for women who had paid leave. Of course, I feel that I built a business around that, but that was the number one answer, like more than childcare.

That was really shocking to me. I also, one of the stats that I was surprised and excited to see is that 94 percent of women who have access to paid leave in the US, 94 percent of them do return to work after their parental leave. I feel as though there is a narrative that There are tons of women who take leave and don’t return.

And in fact, what we found is that almost everyone does. And again, we’re only looking at people who get paid leave in this specific cut of the data. 94 percent return, but three fourths of them start to consider quitting within the first 18 months that they’re back. My interpretation of that is. They want to return, they want to stay in the paid workforce, and they give it a go.

But then something has gone wrong, and then about 36 percent of them do quit, but they don’t drop out of the workforce. Only 4 percent end up dropping out of the workforce at that stage. Everyone else goes and gets another job or starts their own business. Which is, kind of astonishing and we don’t know why there aren’t like causal relationships in this survey.

And I think probably even if we attempted to do that, it would be very complicated. People quit for so many different reasons. But I think it’s really powerful for people to recognize that 94 percent of women do return because when we, the sort of capital, we assume that women don’t that deeply hurting the motherhood bias.

Like, it just seeps into people’s pores where they just, you know, the fact that you would ask a woman, well, are you going to return after your parental leave? The answer is yes. 94 percent that, you know. It’s almost like writing you off already. Right. Exactly. And so I think that if everybody really understood that, yes, they’re going to return and stop making decisions or assumptions or having these ideas and that you maybe unintentionally, count them out.

Well before they even go on leave. So it’s almost like having the paid leave is huge. But also that transition back period sounds like it’s almost equally as important. Yeah. Because they’re wanting to come back, every intention, it’s almost like a shock to their system and, you know, not quite seeing it through.

But I guess from your expertise and kind of what you’re seeing, how can companies kind of take that information and even roll out like small changes just to kind of keep those high level women there and then they don’t have to deal with retention issues? Yeah, there are a lot of challenges with the return to work experience, and I think.

Our survey stopped short of giving a ton of causal information, but I think there are a few things that I would recommend companies think about the first that was very clear coming out of the survey is how important managers are that it’s just like how they say you quit a manager and not a company or a job or whatnot, it’s the same thing with parental leave people who said that their managers were supportive, just performed better across every metric that you looked at in the survey.

They had higher retention, higher productivity, higher engagement, like. It was just better, better, better. And their manager, they said their manager was very effective. And then when you look at like, how do they answer other questions, they were more likely to have a coverage, what they called a strong coverage planning process.

They were significantly more likely to have a written re-onboarding plan when they returned to work. Of course, less likely to say that they experienced discrimination. So I think that there’s like, some of the things that we called out in the survey is just like the importance of having a coverage plan.

Re-onboarding actual like document. Even really basic things. Do people at the company know that it’s their first day back? That sends a message. If people have no idea, it’s those little things that I think could go a long way Yeah. And so some of the things feel very like basic and intuitive of like, if the manager is supportive, if you’re communicating well, if they know that it’s their first day back, if you have a re onboarding plan for them.

And then I think that there are a lot of things that unfortunately are out of all of our control if there are health challenges or child care challenges. And so that’s where the whole like flexibility piece comes into play. And ultimately I think what, what’s so hard to give recommendations about that is like everyone’s different and flexibility means different things to different people.

But if you have a manager that you feel like you can discuss your challenges with your boundaries, if you have the ability to try out a different way of working for the first few months that you return to work, we see so many companies, large and small, implement these like part time work, full time pay, return to work periods.

This is especially powerful if a company cannot afford. A really long paid leave. You can give like the first four weeks that they’re back at work as a part time, you know, 50 percent hours, but a hundred percent pay. And that really helps people get back into work and feel much, much better about their situation.

For sure. No, that makes perfect sense. And I love hearing this because again, I think it’s coming up with creative solutions outside of just a long paid leave, which is, you know, very important, but I think that and I hope that this is kind of encouraging companies. There’s even small steps you can take that aren’t a huge financial investment that could probably make a pretty big impact on parents returning.

So, with that being said, you know, just kind of like your expertise and your knowledge in this space, how do you predict over, let’s say, the next 10 to 15 years, how do you think parental leave will evolve? Or what do you think? Well, I really wish we had a federal policy where the government. In quotes, right?

Because we are paying into this system. Where there is guaranteed paid family leave. We’re one of the only countries in the entire world that doesn’t have it. What we have instead is state by state have state, you know, governments have taken this upon themselves. And it’s created this weird situation where some employees just based on where they live, have access to partially funded paid leave and others don’t.

And so for example, I have two people on my team right now who are pregnant in New York. We are going to get about 50 percent of their salary paid by the government that, you know, they have. All employees pay into that system. And they get 50 percent of their pay while they are on leave. That means I pay only for 50 percent of them, roughly.

I don’t know the exact number if it’s 50 whatnot. But that is really powerful for me as a business owner, because we’re going to use those savings then to fund some of that backfill. So it’s just like, it makes it so much easier for small businesses. I think too, at least my personal experience is it makes it.

Much easier for a small business to offer paid leave, which I think is absolutely critical. And so I think we just have to figure this out because the reality is we’re living in a world of haves and have nots right now. The people who make the most money work at the companies that get paid leave and they’re, I would argue, probably like the ones that least need it.

Although, of course, I think everyone needs it. Right. But there are so many people that get not a single day of paid leave in the U. S. and it’s just something that I personally believe shouldn’t be left up to the employer to decide. And I also have a lot of empathy for employers because I am one where it’s really hard to fund it.

And so like, I wish that it was, something that was funded through, you know, the government through all of us to support something because as a society, it’s something we believe we want and need. And I think the stat is like 89 percent of Americans agree that that should exist. There’s disagreement on how we pay for it, but almost everyone, no matter where you come from or your background or whatnot, believes that people should have some level of paid leave when they’re expanding their family.

Yeah. So that’s my prediction is that hopefully, goodness, in the next 10 to 15 years, we will have some sort of solution in that space. And I think that, you know, we’ll see a lot of like interesting solutions. I mean, I personally believe that over the next few years, there’s going to be a bigger recognition of, yes, we need to give paid leave, but also we need to figure out how to operate a business when we’re, you know, paying so many people to be at home.

And of course I hope that Parentaly is part of that solution because we do manager training and we work on the coverage planning and return to work. But I also see a lot of businesses putting together really creative things, like building literal teams at larger organizations whose sole purpose is to cover for people who go on parental leave.

It’s not that expensive in the scheme of things, and it dramatically improves the sort of business continuity. And it doesn’t need to just, they don’t need to just be filling in for people on parental leave, it could be people who go on bereavement leave or have elder care needs and need to step away. So I get very excited about this space. Last thing I would add to this, cause now I’m thinking of more things.

Fathers. Yeah, I think that we have dramatically changed the landscape around what fatherhood looks like. And whereas like a decade ago, it would be almost unheard of to hear that a father took three months of paid leave. I mean, we’re entering this new world where you have so many dual income partnerships, you have a lot of fathers that are in fact equal.

Parents and I, it feels like we’ve just started to scratch the surface on seeing mothers and fathers as equal in importance and roles in caregiving. And I think in 10 years, we’re going to look back at this and be like, remember when like fathers would get two weeks and mothers would get 12 weeks? Like what were we thinking?

Right. So I’m very positive on that as well because I just see this changing so rapidly. I couldn’t agree more on the father front, and I think add remote work into play, you know, if fathers work remotely, they’re going to be part of the on call rotation to pick up kids from school, take them to pediatrician.

So you’re right. I feel like it’s so different from previous generations where, The mom is the default parent and that’s much more equal. Okay. No, that, that makes a lot of sense. Well, Alison, you, you have been amazing. And before I let you go job, you know, before I let you go, I, I love that you got the perspective from being an

employee going out on leave and now, as you mentioned, a business owner who’s kind of in charge of the leave plan. So what is kind of, you know, one thing for both the employer side and then the employee side that you would like to be the takeaway after listening to this episode, if it’s just kind of a piece of advice or, you know, what, what can they take away from this?

I don’t know that it would be different for the employer versus the employee. I think that there’s really like a one two punch, which is paid leave is absolutely critical. It just is. And everyone should be very thoughtful about setting up an intentional plan to off board and re onboard after leave. And that if that’s all you take away from this is.

Yes, paid leave is important and good. And yes, we need to plan for it. And by the way, we can plan for it because we know it’s coming in most cases, then I think that is a wonderful start to some really positive action and impact. Love it. Well, thank you again. Thanks for having me. Yes, thanks for joining us and thank you all for listening.

Tune in next time for more insights on how to balance career and raise family. I’m your host, Sarah Sheridan, Executive Recruiting and Sales Director. If you have any hiring needs, feel free to contact me directly at the link below. Thanks.