Do You Have a Staffing Plan for Parental Leave? Read this Article Before it is Too Late!

It should come as no surprise creative talent can take more time to find than other disciplines because creativity is different for an individual, manager, and company. There are deadlines to be met on a daily, quarterly, and annual basis. Products and content need to be created and companies need a dependable stream of people to create.

The question I pose to you and your team is what happens when a creative person needs to use their parental leave benefit?

In the Seattle area companies are pro-family when it comes to parental leave, with Google, Tableau, Facebook, REI, Getty, zulily, GoDaddy and Amazon (to name a few) leading the charge to attract and retain top talent.

Amazon goes one step further to allow an Amazonian to share their benefit with their partner when the partner’s company does not offer parental leave benefit (The Amazon blog: Two years in, our parental leave policy is working for parents).

When is it Too Late to Create a Staffing Plan?

According to the Washington State Department of Health, Center for Health Statistics (08/2017) 90,489 babies were born in Washington State in 2016. King County alone accounted for 26,011 of the total number of births.

Leveraging Tableau Desktop for Mac I set out to understand the seasonality of births in King County, where a majority of the large tech companies are located. Turns out there is significant seasonality that could impact the need for temporary staffing in King County per the graph below — more babies are born in July than any other month! Who knew?

Source: Center for Health Statistics, Washington State Department of Health, 08/2017 (Graph Built with Tableau Desktop 10.5 for Mac)

It was essential to understand the education level of the birthing mother. So, we filtered the data to include birthing mothers with an education level of associate, bachelor or post-grad degree, so we feel confident in the seasonality is accurate for tech companies in King County.

Building a Plan for July

Back of the napkin math is all that is needed. If we know there is going to be an influx of creative talent taking parental leave in July, it is necessary to build a work back plan to account for the following:

1. The amount of time it will take to hire the right candidate: 25–45 days
2. The amount of time it will take to cross train the temporary person: 14–20 days
3. Lastly, account for the risk of the employee needing to leave sooner than expected: 14–20 days

So, let’s look at the work back calculation (worse case) for a parental leave deadline of July 31, 2018, with a 95 (45+20+20) day lead time, which would mean you would need to start the process to find talent beginning on April 27, 2018.

Best case, the total process to find temporary creative talent could take 53 days, which would account for the 14-day buffer.

What is Classified as Creative Talent?

There are five creative areas to cover when building a parental leave plan.

1. Design (Creative Directors, Art Directors, Graphic Designers, Visual Designers, Digital Designers, Presentation Specialist, Digital and Print production, specialist.)
2. Development (Front End Developers, UI Developers, Full Stack Developers)
3. Content / Delivery (Proofreaders / Copy Editors, Copywriters, Content Writers & Editors)
4. User Experience (User Interface Designers, Interaction Designers, UX Designers, Information Architects)
5. Marketing / Project Management (Email Marketing Specialist, Digital Marketing Specialist, Social Media Marketers, Project Managers, Digital Producers, Account Managers)

There are a few key ways to make sure your Creative teams and goals are covered during parental leave.

1. Build a database of team skills to identify gaps within the team and potential coverage
2. Identify opportunities to cross train within the team to groom talent to grow into the future role. The only concern is this may not close the gap and inadvertently create risk.
3. Most importantly, identify an outside agency to bring in talent on an as needed basis. A local agency is a great relationship to have, because an agency can help you build the most appropriate staffing plan because this is in their staffing plan.

Establish a Relationship with Talent Agency (Like Vitamin T)

There is one thing we understand about our clients at Vitamin T, and that is our clients buy for their reasons, not ours. We take the time to learn the needs of each of client, and it is for that reason why we wrote this article.

We believe it is critical to plan for creative talent taking parental leave because at the end of the day our goal is to make sure you reach your goals and your team culture is kept intact.

To conclude, the seasonality for the King County could be different for your county, so let me know if you have any questions about how to find data for your county. I am willing to help, so let me know at dgarnes@aquent.com.

-Doug Garnes