Preparing for Parental Leave as an Executive
PS: Written by Ushahidi CEO, @natpmanning, but published by @angelalungati, because Nathaniel went on paternity leave just as he finished this before he could post it :)
The exciting news, is that my wife and I are expecting our first child any day now. Preparing for parental leave as an executive has been both a terrifying and incredibly helpful practice. On one hand, it feels like letting go of a family member, albeit only for a short time, to be able to welcome in a new one. I don’t think I have gone more than a week, at most two, over the past seven years with Ushahidi without having answered email or lurked on Slack.
Preparing for my parental leave, my goal has been to make sure every decision, every little task that I do, every digital account that is linked to me, is accounted for and has a clear owner. I started my parental leave handover document a month ago, and it has grown to be over ten pages long. This has been a practice of letting go, empowering our team, and communicating clearly.
In Ushahidi’s early days, there were at most two or three parents out of the first 20 or so employees. Ten years in, we have welcomed at least 15 Ushababies into the world, and 50% of our current 30 team members are parents. Ushahidi has a progressive parental leave policy, that gives employees flexibility to take time off to take care of their new family members, confident of their job safety and security. Previously, we offered 12 weeks paid maternity leave to mothers, and 4 weeks paid paternity leave to fathers, with the option of an additional month unpaid. But after team members spoke up about making our policy more equitable, we made updates. Now, all employees being able to take 12 weeks paid parental leave, with the option of one additional month unpaid leave. Several employees have taken this time off. During a leave, team members step in to support while they support their new children. In short, we have each other’s backs.
The Ushahidi Operating System, our Holacracy based model of organizational governance, is built around this concept of having functions and accountabilities for each person and circle. What this looks like in practice is currently a 440 line spreadsheet of functions and accountabilities that need to happen for Ushahidi to run with a person’s name next to each line. They are all broken down by circles, or teams, such as “engineering”, “finance”, and “implementation.” Every quarter, each circle has a governance call to review their list of functions and ask, “Are we missing anything, is someone doing something that isn’t accounted for here? Do we need to delete anything that is no longer relevant? Does anyone want to change their functions, are they burnt out or want to try something new?” And so, we evolve.
This document has been the most helpful document ever for me while preparing for parental leave. I went through and pulled every function and accountability that had my name next to it, “do interviews with interested press”, reassigned, “maintain funder relationships,” our partnerships team has my back, “sign agreements,” our CFO can step in there, and so on and so forth.
What I didn’t expect from this process, was how useful it would be. It required me to sit down and figure out everything else I do on a day to day that happens to live in my brain and seven years of being with Ushahidi, and put it down on paper.
At Ushahidi, we document our work to foster resilience, so that if anyone decides to go meditate on top of a mountain, the next person can quickly pick up and keep running. As a key decision maker in the organization, I needed to provide clarity in what will need to get done and by who, for continuity’s sake, in my absence. Preparing for parental leave has taken me from a generous 3/10 rating to a self-measured 9/10 in having clarity and documentation showing what it is I do every day to help Ushahidi go round (but the real test — let’s see how the team rates me after I get back).
