Stop Making Parents Choose: A Smarter Way to Lead Work and Life

0:00 The topics and opinions expressed in the following show are solely those of the hosts and their guests and not those of W FOURCY Radio. It's employees are affiliates. We make no recommendations or endorsements for radio show programs, services, or products mentioned on air or on our web. No liability explicit or implies shall be extended to W FOURCY Radio or its employees are affiliates. Any questions or comments should be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for choosing W FOURCY Radio. What's working on Purpose? Anyway? Each week we ponder the answer to this question. People ache for meaning and purpose at work, to contribute their talents passionately and know their lives really matter. They crave being part of an organization that inspires them and helps them grow into realizing their highest potential. Business can be such a force for good in the world, elevating humanity. In our program, we provide guidance and inspiration to help usher in this world we all want working on Purpose. Now here's your host, doctor Elise Cortes.

1:05 Welcome back to the Working and Purpose Program, which has been brought to you with Passionate Prize since February of twenty fifteen. Thanks for tuning in this week. Great to have you. I'm doctor Releas Cortes, your host. Most leaders are sitting on untapped human energy and I help them unlock that. I'm an organizational psychologist, logotherapist, workforce advisor, and I am the chief ignition officer of the Gusto Now movement. But the title I'm much more, which. Is much more simple and describes me really easily as I traffic and energy. That's my jam. So not the service kind, not that surface kind of level motivation or another engagement sort of initiative, but the kind that really drives engagement and that deeper force what I call Gusto. It's the life force for performance that shows up and commitment, perseverance and genuine ownership of a shared admission in the clients we serve. You call learn more about us and how we can work together at Gusto dashnow dot com or visit my personal site at least Cortes dot com. Getting in today's program, we have this Beth Wanner. She's the founder and CEO of Mother Cover and Agency, offering interim and fractional coverage for parental and other forms of leave. After a very long time and rocky road of parenthood while building a high demand, high stress career as a marketing executive and tech space, Beth founded mother Cover to give individuals the ability to comfortably pause work when they need to, while providing companies with experienced support until their team members return. We'll be talking about their problems in family planning and parent parntal leave, the views an opportunity from both the employee and the company, and learning just really about what the opportunity and the

2:36 promises of addressing this through her lens, she judged today from their prairies and mid Canada. Beth, welcome to its working on purpose. Hi, thanks so much for inviting me. It is so great to have you. When we connected on LinkedIn. You know, sometimes LinkedIn really does its magic right when it's really does. What its mission is is to connect professionals from around the world, and it did that for us and I did it for a post on. Once I found out what you were doing, I was like, you got to come on and talk about this. This is really really important. So welcome and thanks for coming on. Thank you. And I completely agree that there's a lot that social media doesn't help us with but LinkedIn has made some great connections and foster some good conversations.

3:20 I think I agree, if only will just step into them. So I already gave a snippet of how mother Cover was born, but let's get a little bit more detail behind that, your personal story of how this came to be. I think it's always wonderful and my listeners and viewers. I've been doing this for eleven years, so many of them are really looking to try to find their purpose and how they can really serve from a way that really matters to them. And oftentimes it's our own personal experience like it was for you. So say more about where mother Cover came from. Yeah, well, I describe myself as an accidental entrepreneur because this wasn't at all the path that I thought I was going to be on. As you said in the intro, I spent fifteen years as a marketing executive in the tech space, and that's where I thought I was always going to be. All along my journey, I was thinking about when the right time is to start a family, especially in a demanding career, and I was luckily always on this upward trajectory. So I was getting promotions, I was getting more responsibility, and with each time that led to well, now was not the right time to start my family. But Skipboard eventually did decide to start my family, struggled with infertility and.

4:34 IVF, so went through that whole whole journey. Kept that a. Secret from work because I was nervous about what sharing that I wanted to start my family would mean, and especially as I'm going through something really heavy and stressful in my personal life, I just didn't want to take the risk that that was going to put a target on my back that I'm not focused, or any other kind of perception that that might carry. But the way the world, I ended up finally getting pregnant, only to be laid off two days later, so that was not on my Bengo card, and then went on the job hunt as a pregnant woman, landed another VP of marketing job, told them I was pregnant, and I was hit with the worst reaction that you can possibly get. It was not hidden at all how upset they were, and it led to me getting.

5:26 Fired at eight months pregnant. No of getting another job then, So that was, as you said in the intro my very rocky journey into finally becoming a mother. Well, and then you put the story in LinkedIn and the floodgates opened and people were like, yeah, I got a story like. That too, Yeah. And there was no intention behind it. I didn't have the idea for what mother cover would become at that point other than I was just so enraged. To put it lightly or not so lightly, but I was just very taken aback about how blatant the discrimination in my case was. And I shared that story on LinkedIn, and I said, the bloodgates opened. And I heard from hundreds of other women whether it was that same level of discrimination, or how many had experienced layoffs while pregnant amitororney leave or shortly after returning, or just feeling in general like parenthood and their career had collided. And since I was up at night now with a newborn, my wheels were spinning about why this was the case, Because even though I was always nervous about what starting a family was going to mean for my career, it was more, I would say, internal pressures that I was putting on myself of thinking how will I keep up with this demanding career? What will it look like to take any time away and be invisible during that time and then step back into it. I wasn't thinking of kind of all the external challenges that are still evidently very prevalent

6:57 for a lot of parents. And you know what, the crazy thing about all of this whole thing underneath this whole conversation is, last time I checked, the only way that human race survives is that women keep having children. Yeah, I mean, do you want us not to have children so we just go extinct? I mean, it's so silly, right when you look at the root of this thing, like, well, what do you want us to do? Yeah, And there's lots of conversation about natural fertility rates and the birth rates and wanting to incentivize families to grow. But we're doing it, I would say, in a very backwards way, versus looking at the structures that actually make that possible and the fact that we live in an economy that necessitates two incomes for the most part. But then also a lot of women want to pursue a career and not have to choose between whether it's a career or their family.

7:57 So you will notice if you were to look at look at my LinkedIn profile, that the first business that I really started exactly coincides with when my daughter was born. That was March she was born. I started in March of two thousand and three. The reason I did that is because I still wanted to participate in the workforce, but I didn't think the only way that I didn't think I could do it by getting a job someplace. Only the only way that I could I could think that I could do it because I wanted to stay in the workforce, but I need to do it on my terms was to be self employed. And that's how we started my business. And that seems to be a common story, especially now. I think there are stats out there about the number of new businesses that are started.

8:41 Just last year by I by women was over fifty percent. Yeah, and we see the numbers that women are leaving the workforce in drugs because they can't they can't or don't want to try to manage what it takes to be a parent and also meet the demands of having a full time job, at least in the way that it's currently managed in most organizations today. Yeah. And we have headlines just last week or early this week about Deloitte and zoom, cutting, their printal leave benefits, their PTO. All of those things overwhelmingly affect women and caregivers. Yeah, so let's run. I like, I love, I'm an NPR NERD, So let's do the numbers. As they say on that show. I appreciate that on your website, and you have. Your website is beautiful, it's very clear, it's very compelling, it's very easy to understand what you're doing and who's winning. And I love your double mission, which we'll get to here in just a second. But you do talk about how coverage isn't a perk, it's really a business critical strategy, and.

9:41 It really is if you think about this, right. You have people in your organization that are going to at some point probably want to bring a child into this world, so supporting. Them is important. So let's just let me start with the first stat and I have you comment on it. You have fifty two percent of parental leaves resultant team burnout when workloads are redistributed without proper support. Can you speak a bit more to that? Yeah, So that was a study an organization called Parentally did I Believe in twenty twenty four. Really, first one of the first studies looking at the impact not just of the parent going on leave, but the team left covering. So it's not just affecting the individual, but especially now as teams have gotten leaner than they've probably ever been.

10:25 Everybody's operating at one hundred and fifteen percent. So even if it's a twelve week leave that people are stepping in for, that's causing a high degree of stress, of burnout and even turnover on the team, So we can talk about the turnover of the parent that goes on even there's the other stat that a third of women leave their rules within eighteen months of returning from a prental leaf, and not for the typical reasons that I think many have assumed in the past that women are choosing to leave. The workforce and stay at home. There's a fraction of them that do. Bet the majority already are actually leaving to go to other companies that offer more flexibility, or that they felt that they really had to start fresh somewhere new, rather than dig themselves out of the hole that their print to leave caused when there was an adequate coverage, so goals got missed or projects got derailed, or they're dealing with the resentment of their burned out colleagues who were covering for them.

11:25 So in our work developing organizations with inspirational leadership and cultures of gusto, of course part of that process is to help coach up the leaders. To be able to perform at their best. And of course some of those people we've coached through their maternity leaves, etc. Their opaternity leaves, and they aren't dreadfully worried about what they're leaving behind on their team and how things will be run in their absence. I know in the next segment we're going to talk about the employee experience. But because they are so they're so committed to the organization and they wanted to go well, but they also know their tribution to the organization, so they know that when they step out of the organization there's going. To be pain in that process.

12:06 And yet there none of them that I've never worked with over the years, has ever had this kind of support that you offer with your mother cover. Yeah, so maybe that's a good spot for me to explain what mother cover does. So the idea for mother Cover. Was when I was on on well, I'd say my maternity leave though I was not on a leave from any thing since I was let go, but my wheels were thinking about why it is still felt like such a disruption when somebody goes on leave. So if somebody in your organization comes and tells you. You're pregnant hope, or they're pregnant hopefully, you say congratulations, But then the door shuts and everybody goes. Oh, no, how do we handle this? Or worse yeah yes, or letter expletives yeah yes.

12:53 But the idea for mother Cover came from there being this rise in individuals that are pursued contract infractional work, many of them parents themselves, so they don't necessarily have to be But how do we marry those types of individuals with companies that have upcoming leaves? Make it all that we do so that we're thinking of the pinch points, we're thinking of the transition. We're thinking about how the work actually gets covered itself, whether that's full time, whether that's fractionally, and what the re onboarding period looks like, so all those critical parts that are required when you're stepping in for somebody versus taking on a vacancy or project work, and how to make this feel seamless, so that the parent does not feel like they're bringing forward a burden to their team. The manager isn't covering for that oh no moment while trying to just be happy for their valuable team member, but also not put the work on the rest of the team as well. So really trying to create this seamless experience. So, like I said, just feels like normal workforce.

14:01 Brilliant. So one of the other things that I have to situate as both a social scientist and a workforce advisor is what's so evident for me is when we don't support parental leave, and a lot of that, of course really is maternity leave. It's also increasingly more paternity, which is great. What happens is now organizations are missing the known contribution that women and women leaders especially bring to organizations. If so we get to a place where you don't support this and so your organization is predominantly comprised of men, that's a very different outcome instead of results. And when you have that nice mixture of men and women. So thinking about really the fallout of what you're getting in terms of the diversity of your workforce, the combined intelligence of your workforce, combined contribution of your workforce, and you're really not supporting that parental leave.

14:55 And it hurts men too. We have more and more men who want to take print to leave themselves too. They want to be partners in raising their children. They want to be present there too. And the more men that we have taking print leave, the more career opportunities we have for women. So it hurts your entire workforce when we don't support and acknowledge the real life things that happen outside of work, and whether it's print to leave or caregiving as we have aging parents, mental health leave, medical leave, say, we all have things that matter to us that require flexibility, care and support. But the way that we've approached the model is that it doesn't have to be out of charity, as we want you to do the right thing for the humans on your team, but you don't have to sacrifice the performance of your company at the same time, and we just have to think of a different way of covering Network Beautiful.

15:54 I'm going to comment more on what you just said there. Bed. Let's take our first break of your host, Doctor Really Courts. We are on the air with Beth Warner at the founder and CEO of Mother Cover and agency offering interim and fractional coverage for parential and other forms of lead. We've been talking about their problem of parents in the workplace and how to support them. After the break, we're going to talk more specifically about the employee experience and what that means in terms of having coverage for their leave and being supported as parents. Will be right back.

16:39 Doctor Elise Cortez is a management consultant specializing in meaning and purpose. An inspirational speaker and author, she helps companies visioneer for a greater purpose among stakeholders and develop purpose inspired leadership and meaning infused cultures that elevate fulfillment, performance, and commitment within the workforce. To learn more, or to invite at least to speak to your organization, please visit her at elisecortes dot com. Let's talk about how to get your employees working on purpose. This is working on Purpose with doctor Elise Cortes. To reach our program today or to open a conversation with Elise, send an email to Elise A Lisee at eliscortes dot com. Now back to working on Purpose.

17:30 Thanks for jaining with us, and welcome back to working on purpose. I'm your host, doctor Elise Cortes as I am dedicated to helping create a world where organizations thrive because there are people thrive. They're led by inspirational leaders that help them help their people find and contribute their greatness, and we do busines set better. For the world. I keep researching and writing my own books. So one of my latest came out called The Great Revitalization, How activating a meaning and purpose can radically and liven your business. And I wrote it to help educate leaders as to today's discerning workforce. What do they want and need to give you their best and want to stick around? And that I provide you twenty two best practices that you can use to equip your organization through your culture and your leadership to provide that for them. You can find my books on Amazon and on my personal site at leastcore test dot com if you are just now joining us.

18:14 My guest is Beth Wanner. She's the founder of mother. Cover, whose mission is Twofold for companies to protect performance, prevent burnout, and ensure continuity for employees to save our careers, reputations and a smooth return after leave. Brilliant by the way love that. That's just very, very, very direct and intense. I love it. So what I wanted to comment on it as we were speaking about before we went on break, is this notion of when you think about today. The best companies today, the ones. That are really winning, the ones that have literally a seventy to eighty percent employee engagement rate instead of the US AT rate which is thirty percent, or the global rate of twenty percent. They are supporting their workforce as full humans, people that have full lives in the way of recognizing that they recognize that there are things beyond.

19:05 What they do for them at work. They have this other full life, and they want them to be able to realize. The full potential of what they can become in life. And you can't do that if you ratchet them down into very very strict schedules or prevent or don't support them for these key life transitions and the things that really make life worth living. Yeah, and we think of the way that the workforce or working model was built is so outdated, especially when we start thinking about the impacts that AI is going to have. How we measure performance is based on time and seat and it's based on quantity of outputs, and that doesn't work for parents, and the best employees, the best teammates that I've had have been working parents who know the value of their time. They know how to prioritize, and they know how how to get stuff done. And we're seeing productivity be the most important way of measuring we're just measuring it in such.

20:09 A like I sa an outdated way. So listeners and viewers, what she's talking about is the difference between the old school way of managing by presidenteeism. Can I see you here physically? Therefore, I believe you're working versus managing by productivity. The actual output of what they produce. Much more reliable, much more, much more qualitative for you and quantitative for you definitely. So speaking of numbers, back on the quantitative here. One of the other very interesting stats on your website is that sixty eight percent of parents worry about career setbacks, that anxiety that can affect performance and engagement even before the leave begins. And so, you know, when that goes back to what we were talking about before, that choice of should I become a parent or just you know, will that hurt my career?

20:56 Do I have to choose between those two. I sort of did choose between those too. Yeah, and I actually feel that that stat is probably very low. I have not spoken to a single woman or parent who have not who has not felt anxiety around starting their family or sharing the news at work that they're or pregnant, or how much of that burden that they're taking on, that sharing that news means something negative for my company or my team members who are now going to take on some of my work. Yeah, I just I think I and you know you talked about just how much you tried to hide your pregnancy until you know, you just couldn't, couldn't any more.

21:39 You were terrified that it was coming out, and such what a what an awful thing. I know, when I was pregnant, I told everybody, you know, I shout at it for a little push. You could tell. I gain fifty six pounds, so you could tell. But I know I didn't have that. I was also at that time, I was finishing my PhD. And I was working in a you know, more of a part time contracts support role in recruiting A long time ago, so it was a different time for me. I knew that I could get to the of the contract. If I was working in a full time job, that would be totally different. Yeah, when I was going through infertility and IBF treatments, I distinctly remember answering slack messages from a procedure table.

22:23 I remember getting devastating news at one moment and then going down to the coffee shop in my clinic and hopping on a zoom call as if nothing had happened. In that being the first time where I was almost nervous for myself of like, it's a weird switch to be able to flip almost like you're living too parallel lives. But that's how strongly I felt, I need to overperform. I need to make sure that I'm not showing any cracks, because any cracks will will then make somebody either confirm biases or stereotypes in their minds that she's not focused, she's not dedicated, she's changing her priorities, and can't hold two things to be true. So that was all weighing on my mind while it was going through this. At the same time, m H.

23:14 I have had people tell me over the years, women especially, I don't think I've heard from men yet that they were actually during their interview, they were asked, you you plan on having a family. Yes. Actually, my first interview at a tech company, I was newly engaged and my mother gave me the advice rewarding to not wear my engagement ring. And at the time I just couldn't understand why she. Was giving me that advice and thought, again, that's quite outdated. But now as I've seen how biases are still showing up, how discrimination is still showing up in our workplace, that's not afar out there. Warning to give somebody, you know, and I can appreciate if when I look at you know, let's just look, let's just you know, look at the other side of that perspective. I've heard several men over the years say, well, gosh, you know, then we have to pay for their leave, and we you know, then we have to have to have to and I it's a both there's a business problem there, right, and I understand that part. So speak a little bit if you could, to that bit of it of you know, what's behind this concern when people say that when they ask us kind of questions are you planning and having a.

24:27 Family, It's really about seeing it as this destruction. So yes, there's a. Cost to it, but I'm going to invest and train and bring this person on board, and they're just going to leave. And then there's that feeling that they're not actually going to come back, where I highlighted that yes, a third don't come back, but not for the reasons that we think. If they feel supported, if we've been able to meet them where they're at and support the type of work that makes parents good employees, they do come back, and they come back fiercely and loyal and highly motivated. Unfortunately, because we know that that support.

25:07 Is so rare, so when it's given to a parent, you'll get that back in space. And space absolutely absolutely over the many years, there's a couple of people that I have just that they just kind of hung on to me well after the client engagement was done and they asked me to continue to coach them. And there are two women in particular that I've been. Coaching up for nine years and I've watched both of them have families, and I've watched both of them just soar in their careers within one company. They're both them with the same company, and this whole time, very dedicated to this organization. One of them, especially, and I know this is very common, is feels that she's been penalized and overlooked for promotion.

25:53 Against her non leave peers. You can get it. Yes, I guess several examples almost weekly. So the types of individuals that typically reach out to us that want to join what we call those who step into leaves, we call leave partners. So they joined our roster as lead partners, but they often come to us with reasons for wanting to join. Above and beyond the skills and experience that they bring, it's that they really resonate with our missions. So they've typically had not a great leave experience themselves, and they want to provide better to those who come after them or their their career has been impacted in one way or another, so they share those stories with us.

26:34 So I hear that frequently. Just the other week, I had a woman telling me about how as soon as she shared that she was pregnant, she felt a shift of decisions. She was left out of meetings. She was no longer invited to, and even people openly saying, well, she's. Not going to be here for that, so why we include her? We should start acting as if she's not here already, so that hurts our careers are our visibility has already reduced, our voice is already reduced. We had another that was furloughed on maternity leave and the reason that they gave her was because she hadn't been here. Well, she hadn't been here because she was on leave, So that doesn't doesn't make any sense. And then we get stories that with their their Sarah Williams who wrote Careless People, she was an executive at Facebook. She talked about the discrimination and all the things that she faced where she got a performance review when she returned from printal leave out from maternity to leave, saying that she wasn't responsive enough while she was on printal leave. So we kind of have all these bars that get raised for women of almost almost that self fulfilling prophecy of we expect them to be not as engaged, not as motivated, and we

28:06 make decisions ahead of that almost almost a feeling like we're protecting ourselves, protecting our business from them saying that they're not going to want to take on that promotion, not going to want to do that travel before we actually talk to them and see how parenthood has probably changed them to feel more connected to things that are worth their time that they want to pursue. And then there's the. Whole notion of what we learn as parents that makes us frankly more effective managers and leaders too. Right, there's no way to duplicate that experience of what it gets to bring somebody else into the world and take care of them. Yeah, there's no better multitasker than a parent, So there's no better prioritizer. It's not that our ambition has diminished, it's potentially that it's shifted. So everything that we're looking at is through the lens of this worth time away from my family and the things that matter most to me in the world. And that's not a bad thing.

29:07 That's a great characteristic in an employee. You want somebody that's going to look at to do list of ten things and tell you to the three things that are the most important that are actually going to move the needle versus that busy work. And we talk about time constraints because they parents typically do have more time constraints. That actually makes them focused and want to deliver more within that constraint versus having an endless amount of time to work on into the evenings. I did not understand time until I have my daughter, did not understand time until then. Right, Okay, So we really created quite a story of visual of what it's like from the employee experience. Anything else that we've missed out on tell our listeners and viewers understand the employee experience of trying to be a parent in today's workforce.

29:58 I think the other is so we've talked about the experience when there isn't proper coveragent and the burden of putting the work on their team members, and then the potential burnout that comes from that. There are organizations that do bring in in backfields or other countries that do have longer leaves, but there's a way that that can be fumbled as well too, particularly if the person coming in is actually looking for a permanent job. So that can feel like a threat to the person going on the bus. This person actually going to replace me? What does this look like? It can also be a headache for the HR or the people manager if that person is actually looking for a full time job. Do they leave before the contract is ended? Did we try to save budget and we went to junior and we bring in somebody that actually causes more headaches for the team and kind of pick up the work quickly enough, because if if it's twelve, you don't have a month to spend ramping somebody up. So getting that coverage right is critical from so many different angles, the person going on the team and the people manager.

31:13 Really that appreciate it. Admire how well you thought through this service offering and the model to support it. I think it's brilliant. As somebody who started her career in human capital space in recruiting and then of course had moved over the years through employee development and leadership development, etc. Now of course leadership transformation, etc. I just really appreciate the thoughtfulness of your offering and how you really it's that there's a seamless integration. Here that I think is really smart. Thank you, Yeah, you're welcome. Let's grab our last break here while you think about what it's like to be if you are an aspiring parent, a current parent, or you know others who are think about that. Will be going on our last break. I'm your host, doctor Relie Cortes.

31:54 We've been on the air with Beth Wanner. She's the founder and CEO of mother cover and agency offering interim in fractional coverge for parential and other forms of leave. We've been talking in this segment about the employee experience of trying to be a parent into these times. After the rak, we're we're going to get into what the pain points are for companies supporting parents and what the benefit is when they do. We'll be right back. Doctor Elise Cortez is a management consultant specializing in meaning and purpose. An inspirational speaker and author, she helps companies visioneer for greater purpose among stakeholders and develop purpose inspired leadership and meaning infused cultures that elevate fulfillment, performance, and commitment within the workforce. To learn more, or to invite at least to speak to your organization, please visit her at elisecortes dot com. Let's talk about how to get your employees working on purpose. This is working on Purpose with doctor Elise Cortes. To reach our program today or to open a conversation with Elise, send an email to Alise A Lisee at elisecortes dot com. Now back to working on Purpose.

33:23 Welcome back to Working on Purpose and your host Doctor E. Release Cortes. As you know by now, this program is dedicated to empowering and inspiring. You along your journey to realize more of your potential. And I mentioned my last book, The Great Ribalization, came out with the twenty two best practices to help you elevate the culture of your organization for today's discerning workforce. What I did for you is I created a simple three page assessment that you can pull off my website. It's free and it will help you understand the extent to which your organization is needing those discerning needs. It's at gustodeshnow dot. Com and you can find it on the home page or any other page as well if you are just now joining us. My guest is Beth Warner. She's the founder of a mother cover Who's new is twofold. First for companies to protect performance, to prevent burnout and ensure continuity, for employees, to safeguarded careers, reputations, and sneeth returned after leave.

34:11 So let's talk next about the experience of the employers. And so certainly we need to recognize that the trip of the matter is the companies feel that pressure when someone goes on leave and today especially more more time than I can ever know that I've ever experienced in my life. Every single human really matters today. They need that performance. Yeah, absolutely, And this. Was part of as I said, when I was coming up with the idea for mother Cover, and what was keeping me up at night was putting myself back in my shoes as a former executive and thinking through the supportive companies that I had worked at, and even those feeling like when somebody shared that they were pregnant, that was that oh no moment, and feeling that myself as a leader when people would share that on my team.

35:02 So I knew that a solution that would support parents actually had to start with the company and thinking and acknowledging that their real logistical challenge is when a key member of your team goes on leave, and if we don't solve for those, we can't actually help the parents and help them feel like their their roles and their careers are secure. Until it feels, like I said, like just a seamless process. Somebody comes and tells you you're pregnant, you say congratulations, and that's the end of the sentence. It's I've got you. And now we bring in a leave partner for you that works with the team, covers that work, and we don't have to decide between are we going to support our human being or are we going to pursue the goals and objectives that we've laid out.

35:50 M but we've already hinted at this. But just you know, in today's organizations, there's no slack and lean teams either, So every single human counts. We've been saying that, but I think especially and you think about the burnout today is just overwhelming. People leaving in droves because of the burnout. There's so much going on with the uncertainty and all of the technology transformation and the running hard after that transformation, and so now we have that also in this world. Yeah, so it's it's not a small issue, and it's unfortunately it's harder to quantify or doesn't show up as neatly on your P and L as it does to invest in coverage for an employer the costs for doing paid leave, but I assure you the numbers are there, and they are staggering. When you think of replacing a burnt out employer or employee who didn't feel supported on leave can cost up to two hundred percent of that person's salary. And then if you start kind of mapping out how many leaves that you have within your company depending on the size of your company, but also all the individuals that touch that role. So, as we talked about, it's not just the individual going on leave, but when you burn out the team that's covering that work. Even even a three month leave really leads to that burnout, that resentment and feeling like I'm not supported as a whole human being.

37:19 Well, and then that leads me to something else that I thought was very sobering on your website when it came to stats and numbers and what you're offering here. When you situate that a lead is generally twelve weeks, well that's a quarter. And many organizations, as you point out, you know, they are run by the quarter, they produced by the quarter, they report. By the quarter. This is an important time period we're talking about here. Yeah, it's not. An unmeaningful amount of time these days, when everything is measured in quarters. You fumble a quarter that's hard to come back from in the years. So, depending on the type of role that's going on leave, if it's a customer facing role if it's a revenue generating role, but even roles that support those types of roles, So it doesn't always mean that you have.

38:06 To cover that role full time. That's where we talk about fractional being really beneficial of even just creating some breathing room on the team to cover critical functions. So that's where we'll meet with clients, will consult on how. Best to approach covering that role. It can be up to full time that maybe it's thirty hours a week, maybe it's twenty hours a week, maybe even down to fifteen depending on again, what that specific role is. There doesn't have to be a one size fits all, but it just it has to be critically looked at. What is the work that needs to be done, who can take on pieces of it? About how do we do so in a way that's thoughtful to the person on lead, that's thoughtful to the team.

38:49 And I said, doesn't result in missing goals and performance because we're all talking about optimizing for outcomes, optimizing for. What's the word that I. Missed my other word that I was looking for there, but basically that we're all very outcomes driven right now, and the bars are getting higher and higher or for that performance, we can't have a fumbled order m h. Well, and then for those longer leaves right that you mentioned this too is you know what if they're if they're off for six months or so or may even the world can't sit vacant and you can't bring in the wrong backfill or the wrong contractor which can cause confusion or churn.

39:36 So that's really critical. So having having really a good strategy and a good resource to be able to help someone who's taking out longer leave. Yeah, and that's it's a great problem to see where we see leaves getting longer and longer. And then we can look to other countries. We can look to Canada, we can look to Europe to see that. Like it is very common in almost all instances to bring inn backfill. When you're talking about now leaves that are upwards of a year, you have to bring in a person for that role. You can't have it set vacant. But it still needs to be done thoughtfully. It still needs to be in a way that I said doesn't threaten the parent and not having it necessarily be full time as well too, still gives opportunities for others who maybe want to step up within the organization, but again not doing it in a way that stretches somebody who's too junior.

40:28 Or burns them out. So one of the things that is really. Obvious to me because of the work that we do helping to really develop what we call destination workplaces. These are organizations where people they have a reputation of word on the street for leaving their purpose, for improving their communities, for growing their employees, for caring about their employees, and serving all of their stakeholders. And there I've had many people in my podcast over the years who represent those kinds of companies. They are amazing and they outperform all their other peers. So one of the things that is stirring up for me is we talk about this whole concept of parental coverage, parental leave and covering. That is, when you do that really well, you really foster the notion of trust and trust is the currency of results.

41:16 And so if you know somebody, if a parent is on leave, it doesn't really trust that they have a place to come back to, that you have their back, that you're going to support them. You know, they don't trust how they're going to leave when they go off on parental leave and when they come back, they don't know how to trust. And now you've lost such a critical component of performance. Yeah, and how much that trust is that leads to productivity, leads to getting the best out of your workforce. And again, it's not just the individual that takes leave themselves, even if only five percent of your workforce takes leave. Everybody within your company.

41:57 We see this in and the types of questions that people are asking in the interview stage that they might be asking about your print to leave policies even if they don't intend to take print to leave themselves. Because we're really seeing this as a marker of what culture in practice looks like. And it's a good way to judge a company when everybody says the same kind of things on their websites, the same value statements. Seeing how printal leave is supported, how caregiving leave is supported, really, like I said, shows policy and action puts that into real practice.

42:37 Just a note on that that is really important for me that I've that I've been following. Several pop will come back on the podcast talking about one return to office mandate which completely don't serve caregivers anybody that has to get a child to and from school in a day, that whole that that that very rigid time frame whatever might be eight to five, or there isn't that flexibility to bring a loved one in for their hospital care or healthcare or whatever. You really shut off so much of the population who wants to work, who needs to work and is happy to work for you, but needs some support to do so more a little bit more on their terms.

43:18 Yeah, it goes back to what we were talking about earlier about presenteeism and measuring the wrong things. And I do believe that there is value to in person connection, but it doesn't have to be a force five days a week just to be working alongside somebody even probably still on Zoom or team meetings when you've got dispurse teams around the country or around the globe. Bringing people together thoughtfully is way more important than those mandates, and those mandates, as you said, disproportionately hurt women and caregivers. So just to try to be a little bit more complete here or what else have we not talked about in terms of the employer pain when it comes to supporting or you know, when, when when when parental parntal leaf is necessary, or caregiving is necessary.

44:11 What else does a pain What other pain points are there for companies? I think the pain points that we hear from companies who maybe have tried bringing in a contractor or backfill before is that they go about it the same way that they maybe hire a permanent employee. So they put together a job description, they post it, and they go through their full recruitment cycle, and then they bring on somebody like I said, that might be just at that level or junior, and it takes them too long to be able to ramp up and provide value. And that isn't actually taking away the burdens or the challenges for the team. They're just now shifted to and now I've got to train and onboard somebody.

44:55 I've got to teach them x y Z. That's why we tell clients that you we really want to over hire for parental leave. So everybody on our lead partner roster has to have at least ten plus years of experience. I think we average closer to fifteen, even if the role itself doesn't require that much seniority. And this is again where we're fractional versus full time. Can be helpful of if you can't necessarily afford that more senior person full time. Here's what fractional looks like. But you want somebody who knows how to integrate with the team, get the lay of the land quickly, and get to impact in a matter of days, not weeks or months because you don't have that much runway. So working with either an agency like Mother cover that this is all that we do, or individuals who are very experienced at introm type work that can get that lay of the land. So going to junior does not save you the budget that you think that it does. You'll just pay for it in other ways.

46:00 And then let's just anything else. In terms of how organizations win when they do this, well, we haven't already covered. We just see phenomenal feedback from both sides of the parents who felt like We had one mother say that she just was taken aback. It was not a request that she of her manager to backfill her role, but when she found out that we were contracted in coming in to support her, she's just felt like, Wow, they actually really value me as a human being, but they also value the work that I'm doing. They see that this is too important to pause or disperse amongst others.

46:41 So that was a really great feeling. And then the company on their side as well too felt how have we not been doing this all all along? So our goal really is to make it feel that seamless and supported for all the stakeholders are involved, a great experience for the lead partner that's stepping in, a great experience for the parent and a great experience for the team members. So this feels like that triple win all the way along. Sounds good to me, And I think I remember that you serve Canada and the United States? Is that right? Yes? We do? Okay, great, Okay, So we're coming to a close here about that goes by so fast and you know that the show, So just know why people are by people around the world who.

47:23 Are interested in developing themselves as better leaders. They want to become in steward better organizations, and they just really want to improve themselves. What would you like to leave them with. I would like to leave them with maybe challenging some of their preconceived notions of what parental lead might mean for their teams and check their own biases off. If somebody has. Come to on your team and let to know that they're they're pregnant and taking leave. What was your true emotions that maybe you didn't articulate that we're kind of running through the back of your mind, And how can we address those feelings so that you really can just say congratulations and truly mean it and not have those things going in the back of your mind, because those are the things consciously and unconsciously that do lead to bias and then in the worst form discrimination, even for well intentioned leaders.

48:23 So if you're not sure where to start, and you're not sure why you're. Kind of feeling those things, look at the logistics, look at ways that we can be more proactive in supporting our team members. So, Beth, I want to thank you for a couple of things. I want to thank you for serving the world in a. Way that betters the world through your company, and I love that you're doing it with what we call gusto. So thank you for both of those things, and thank you for coming on working on purpose to. Talk about it. Thanks for the impact. Most welcome listeners and viewers. You are going to want to know more about Beth Wanner, the work that she and her team do at mother Cover. You can start by visiting their website. It's Mothercoveragency dot com.

49:05 You can also find Beth on LinkedIn. She's Beth b E t H and her last name is w A n n e R. Last week, if you missed the live show, you can always catch a via recorded podcast. Who We Are on air with Norman Wolfe, the founder and CEO of Quantum Leaders and the creator of the Living Organization, which is a framework that replaces machine thinking with a leadership model grounded and how organizations actually work. The author of a. Soon to be released book he co authored with his wife Jane called Leading the Living Organization Transform How you lead to deliver extraordinary results. It is a playful case study illustration of how a leader can grow into becoming a living organization leader, evolving themselves as they go and taking their organization to new dynamic heights. Next week, we'll be on the air with Michael Yang talking about his new book Coming Alive on the Ride a Member, a memoir of motorcycle travel, self discovery and Korean heritage. C Then let's continue leaning into discovering how to elevate your operating system as a leader and create destination workplaces where legendary business takes place.

50:08 Let's work on Purpose. We hope you've enjoyed this week's program. Be sure to tune into Working on Purpose featuring your host, doctor Elise Cortes, each week on W four CY. Together, we'll create a world where business operates conscientiously. Leadership inspires and passion performance and employees are fulfilled in work that provides the meaning and purpose they crave. See you there. Let's work on Purpose.