policy power moves
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We meet again, Haters 😎
Hope you're having a fabulous holiday week! Happy Thanksgiving to all those who celebrate 🦃 What are you thankful for this week?
I'll start: I'm grateful for the Safe Space community. 🥹🩷
I'm so proud to say that this group of HR and People Leaders is truly a revitalizing source of support and generosity for myself (and hopefully you too).
The constant outpouring of resources, intellect, and humor in times of need is something I can't imagine my workday without. To all my Safe Space members, thank you! You're the coolest. 🕺🏽
So in the spirit of giving (and buying 🤑), I'm offering my Pay Transparency course + a Sunday Scaries baseball cap 🧢 for FREE when you join Safe Space this week.
You can check out more details about Safe Space HERE, and if you have any questions, please reach out!
And if you missed my ATX hangout with Rippling last week, no worries. I'm hosting my final HR Therapy for the year on December 6th! Grab your spot here ❄️
Finally, drumroll please...🥁
Announcing this week's Dear Hebba & Friends newsletter, where all your HR questions are answered by my lovely folks in Safe Space! 📝
If you have an HR question or concern of your own, you can submit it here! 👀
Today we're talking all about power moves, from policy logistics like parental leave to telling your CHRO that their resistance to new policy makes everything 100x more difficult. 😫
What's the final boss power move, you ask? 💪🏽
Telling your family at the Thanksgiving table that we are NOT going to talk about work. Why? Because that's no fun.
Please enjoy today's holiday edition and let me know your thoughts! 🫶🏽
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✍🏽 What are some best practices for writing parental leave policies? Any system or tools you'd suggest for how to administer/track parental leave?
Context: People leader at a series B startup that is progressive in their policies and looking for solutions to fit that.
📣 Cassandra Babilya, Head of Employee Experience Strategy at Amazon:
Here’s some parental benefits I recommend for startups and mature companies alike.
The Basics
📆 Paid parental leave. At least 12 weeks. An additional 6-8 for birthing parents. Available at day 1 of employment. Applied to adoptions and surrogacy as well, of course!
📎 Flexible work options. Reduced hours, flexible hours, remote work. Whatever makes sense for the family.
🍼 Comfortable pumping space and milk storage facilities.
👩🏻⚕️ EAP. Mental health support for employees and their family members.
Level up
🧬 Family planning benefits. Ex: up to $20k for IVF, egg freezing, or surrogacy.
👦🏽 Subsidized on-site daycare or child care credits through a service like Caredotcom for occasional backup care.
A note on pregnancy loss:
1 in 4 pregnancies end in loss. Employers can support their teams through this by applying parental leave (as much as the employee needs) to loss. Loss includes termination for medical reasons, miscarriage, stillbirth, and infant death. It also includes failed surrogacy and adoptions.
📣 Lisa Van Lenner, VP, Operations, People & Culture at Mythical:
What Cassandra laid out is both the dream and super reasonable to expect! Beyond the leave policy and support when the parent returns, it's also important to think about workflow for the parent and their department. Be really detailed about how responsibilities are being delegated while they're gone. Make sure whomever is taking the workload from this person shadows them prior to departure. The last thing anyone wants is to have to call a parent on leave to ask about an outstanding issue. This delegation plan should be accessible to anyone who works with this person - everyone should know the dates the parents is leaving and coming back.
A new parent returning to work (especially to a remote environment) is daunting! Ensure their return is welcoming, that people know how soon to start looping them back into emails and projects. Balance all the info with reasonable deadlines to help them get up to speed — ideally alongside whomever was handling their workload. It shouldn't be a cut and dry offloading of duties the day they're back. Encourage them to have a touch point with HR for the first few months that they're back to talk about engagement, support and professional development as they re-enter the job.
📣 Marcie Chavez, Director of People at Artisight:
The only thing I have to add is that you can ask your benefits broker if they have benchmark reports on parental leave (what other companies your size or stage typically offer) or any preferred vendors to use to help administer/track leave. Many have partnerships with companies that can help out in those areas.
📣 Blake Maurer, Director of People & Culture at NLA:
Yes, to everything already said. Adding to Cassandra's "level up" category: this article is about a nonprofit that secured a paid 40-week parental leave policy. One more thing to think about is looking at how your policy interacts with state leave plans that are already in place in 11 states. 2 orgs that I've worked for offer to supplement the state leave payments because often they are capped out at a certain percentage (similar to unemployment payments).
📣 Rachel Ackerman, Director, People Operations at Barstool Sports:
Literally all of the above is fire. 🔥
Parentaly is a really great org to tap into. They not only support the admin team, but also the managers and employees before, throughout, and after the leave process. They also offer some great free resources.
I’m in the process (in 2024) of developing a leave offboarding and onboarding processes that our team can share with managers and the employees taking a leave to make it the smoothest possible transition when they go out and return.
As for tracking leave, I’ve used both Sparrow and Tilt for leave admin and both were great partners.
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✍🏽 How do I tell my boss the CHRO/company leadership that her constant policy exceptions based on employee longevity/perceived need/likability and her resistance to new policy ideas make it harder to attract and retain the talent we need?
Context: I work for a mid-size company (~200 employees). My boss wants to attract new talent and help keep the staff we have, but her idea of "being competitive" is having the same benefits as similar companies (i.e. PTO amount/use, bereavement, etc.) despite HR suggesting a change that would set us apart or to match current research. On several occasions, she's made exceptions to policies that I think will hurt the company in the long run.
📣 Marcie Chavez, Director of People at Artisight:
This is a very tough situation to be in! A couple of ways to approach this comes to mind.
If you have access to legal counsel, I've found they are a great resource to help persuade executives when there is potential risk to certain decisions or exceptions to policies (and I am not getting through to them as the HR person). Leverage general counsel as much as possible.
Additionally, you can try using a conflict / communication tactic called "verbal aikido" to help communicate between the both of you and have an open dialogue. You can try to make business cases for the policy/benefits changes you have in mind with data or $ to support the changes, or employee/candidate feedback from surveys.
In the end, if you cannot convince the CHRO of trying to limit exceptions based on the potential risks and impact on recruiting and retention, and therefore this does not align with how you want to practice HR, you may have to look at leaving the organization.
📣 Laura García-Courrau, Global Director of HR at Our World Energy:
+1 to everything Marcie mentioned.
To add to Marcie’s comments, if you don’t have access to a GC but do want legal counsel, you can try Littler’s OnDemand product. We have an in-house GC and I still use them occasionally (🥴). Not cheap, but a great resource (not an affiliate lol).
Re: your leadership’s language of persuasion… what is theirs? Data? Comparison to competition? What format/s? Is there a specific way she/they best receive information?
Also, TIL about “verbal aikido”, so cool! Thanks for sharing that, Marcie!
Many more People Leaders had thoughts and advice on these questions...
Find out what they had to say in the private Safe Space forum.
🚨 ON YOUR RADAR
🧠 Mental Health Resources: Safe Space member Lauren Batcheck put together this resource guide for her employees to stay mentally strong during the holidays. Thanks Lauren! ❤️
🎧 I Hate It Here Podcast: I've been releasing new episodes of my podcast with some pretty amazing guests! Check it out on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts!
🔗 Hirefor Partnership: HireFor makes your life easier when it comes to recruiting (and Safe Space members get a HUGE discount).
🎵 Screaming into the Void: I made this Spotify playlist for when you want to rage. Please enjoy (and send me song recommendations)!
SPONSORED BY RIPPLING
There’s more pressure on HR leaders to drive revenue in 2024 than there is for Travis Kelce to propose to Taylor Swift! 🏈🎸💍
Despite this pressure, 28% of tech layoffs in 2023 were HR functions. 🤯🤯🤯
So, how can you achieve these lofty goals with an overworked, understaffed team?
By leveraging better HR tech.
Check out this blog post and learn how to leverage your HR tech stack so you can exceed your 2024 goals. 💥
FRIDAY FUN
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There should be laws against talking about certain topics at the family dinner table, and work should be one of those topics.
Maybe let's talk about fun things, like Travis and Taylor?? Let's all forget about our 9-to-5s and RELAX for once! PLEASE.
That's all for this week! I hope you enjoyed! If you have any thoughts, please let me know. I'm allll ears.
Reminder: Today is FRIDAY. 🙏
