A perspective on work / life balance
As someone who takes both my professional life and the business of “momming” very seriously, I’ve historically bent myself into a pretzel so that my work (and my work reputation) never suffered and so that no one was inconvenienced by my pesky personal life.
In the “new” work / life balance continuum I believe that, most often, work gets to lead. But since joining Strava I’ve been asking myself, does it have to be that way? It certainly doesn’t seem to be how I find things here at this remarkable company. When I walk out the door at 4 o’clock each day so I can spend afternoon and evening time with my kids, I say to my team, “See you tomorrow!,” instead of slinking out the back door hoping no one will see me (and if they do, making up some excuse for why I have to leave.) At Strava when I give my daily goodbye, my new team says, “Have a great night!” And when I say, I’m going to take Monday off so I can drive some 5th graders on a much anticipated field trip, my boss (our Founder + CEO) says genuinely and with no passive-aggressive vibes whatsoever, “That sounds like fun!”
This week at Strava we rolled out a new parental leave practice that lets us put policy behind our belief that people should come first when it comes to balancing life. Not only do we now offer 16 weeks of fully paid leave, but we also added a formal “transition back to work period.” During this transition, parents can work part-time at full-time salaries or work from home while they navigate this massive life change.
And because we believe that the era of distinguishing between “primary” and “secondary” caregivers is in the past, our policy is available to everyone: moms, dads, and all raisers of the little human beings who will make the world a better place.
Even more noteworthy? In creating this new parental leave practice, I encountered literally zero pushback and nothing but wholehearted support from our entire leadership team. Like most growing tech companies, we have high expectations for our team and are asking our people to perform at their very best. Yes, we have the palpable buzz of high performance. But we believe there is a give and take to it all, and if you want to build something sustainable where people can stay it means giving them the space to bring all the parts of themselves to work each day.
I’m grateful to work aside leaders who share the belief that people’s lives include, but are much more than the hours they spend with us in the office each day. When we start from that place we get to introduce new ways of how work and life can coexist sustainably, and we can toss some old benchmarks on their heads along the way.
