Maternity Leave for Start-Ups: Why maternity leave matters and how start-ups can get creative to offer time off

By: Jess Porta

“You can have it all, just not at the same time,” Romi Neustadt, mother, author and entrepreneur, tells us of being a mom and a career professional. But what if you can? In honor of Women’s Month, I wanted to talk a little bit about maternity leave for start-ups. As many of you know, I am currently on maternity leave with my second son and as the Director of a start-up, I’ve had some time to think about this from that lens.  I want to speak specifically to start up maternity leave, because I know that start ups have limited funds and resources, yet offering maternity and paternity leave is a modern day necessity.  So I’d like to outline a few reasons why maternity leave is so important and offer a few suggestions on how start-up companies can offer leave, even if their resources are limited, so that women can have it all, at the same time, and companies can be better for it. 

Why Maternity Matters: The Human Case

You don’t want to employ zombies 

First, I want to make the human case for honoring maternity leave.This most simple point is that sleep deprivation is a real and unavoidable part of having a newborn, no matter the circumstances. If you bring back an employee before the 12 week mark, just know that you’re getting an actual zombie. It’s widely discussed among pediatricians, that babies' stomachs are typically not developed enough to sleep fully through the night until they’re 12 pounds or 12 weeks. And I don’t know about you, but I am foggy, distracted, and cranky when I don’t have sleep, so if you bring an employee back before they are getting those restful nights,  it’s going to be frustrating for you,  exhausting for them, and you may even need to hide the brains and break out the anti-zombie spray!

Women need to physically recover

Having a baby is like recovering from a car accident, and then being asked to immediately care for another helpless human being within minutes. It's rarely discussed in society but those postpartum days and weeks are ugly, painful, and among the most emotionally and physically vulnerable times in a woman’s life. Postpartum symptoms can include: severe pain, blood loss, intestinal issues, swelling, dehydration, hormonal shifts, difficulty walking or getting around; the list is endless; and all that while you’re suffering from sleep deprivation. Women who have had c-sections cannot even drive or exercise for at least 6 weeks, and need time beyond that to fully return to normal.  So, once again, if you bring someone back before the 12 week mark they really haven’t had a chance to even physically recover, so unless you plan to make special accommodations, you are asking a new mom to silently suffer while they work for you. 

Women need time to adjust mentally

Another important consideration is women’s mental health. About one in five women suffer from some form of postpartum depression, anxiety or OCD. I had the unfortunate opportunity to experience all of those things. Especially if a mother has gone through some type of traumatic birth or loss, such as myself. And even if a woman does not suffer from PPD or PPA, having a baby is a life altering event. Sudden, constant care for another person takes some adjusting, and if women are expected to go back to work before that 12 week mark, you might create burnout or at least a very high stress environment for that employee. It's also worth mentioning that up to 1 in 4 pregnancies result in miscarraige, 1 in 160 births result in infant death, and regardless of the outcome of the pregnancy, time off should be offered. Very few companies provide leave for miscarriage other than time off for procedures. I personally suffered a loss with my first pregnancy and had physical symptoms of that loss for 54 days! Most women have to go back to work immediately. 

The Business Case for Maternity Leave

If you weren’t moved by the human case for maternity leave, perhaps it's worth considering the value of supporting new moms in the workplace and the benefits it can have on small businesses. 

Hungry Minds

The first business case I can make for women is what I like to call “tired bodies, bored minds”  syndrome. And that’s where you are at home, you've just had your baby, you're recovering,  and it takes 24/7 time and effort to take care of your newborn baby (before I had a baby I thought you could just lay them down to sleep to walk away - haha, silly me) and when you do have a moment, you need to sleep too. But what that causes, is what I’m experiencing now, which is a very exhausted physical state, but a very very hungry mental state. I’m coming back to the workplace hungry for information, hungry for success, hungry for everything that you want in an employee. And that kind of hunger is worth investing in.

Efficiency

The other business case for investing in mothers and offering maternity leave is efficiency. Multitasking is a myth! Right? Well that’s not true of mothers. Multitasking is literally a survival instinct when you have a new baby. You have to manage a baby's sleep schedule, feedings, and change them at the same time as managing your household. You rock your baby to sleep, as you make yourself a sandwich, shop online for your groceries and order more diapers on amazon. If you don’t multitask nothing will get done because that baby only sleeps for so long. I am literally voice dictating this entire article while I walk in circles and get my baby to sleep. New moms become the masters of multitasking even if we weren’t before. So when you think about what that means for your workplace, it’s almost like getting two or more employees for the price of one and that to me is money well spent if it means covering a few extra weeks of time off for maternity leave to keep that person engaged in your company. 

Attract talent

And finally, it goes without saying that offering good benefits is a great way to attract and retain talent. If you can’t offer the best pay, beefing up your time off could help you. And I don’t think I have to make a lengthy case for why attracting and retaining talent is important in this market, especially after Covid. Turnover is costly, and offering maternity leave can offer a much needed benefit to some employees, enticing them to join your company and to stay. And it makes a statement about how you value your employees to your staff, customers and clients. If you have great company values written on a wall in your office, but do nothing to back them up, then you don’t have company values, you have artwork. 

How can start-ups offer Maternity Leave with limited resources?

Now if you stuck with me so far and you run your own small business or start-up, there’s a good chance you’re thinking “okay it's important, but I just don’t have any money to offer 12 weeks of paid leave.” I hear that. Here are a few suggestions to help you provide those 12 weeks or to come up with a different plan for paid leave. 

Get creative to provide coverage

Assess the work and assess if you can afford it. You might think that you can’t afford paid leave, but the first thing I would suggest is that you look to see if you can lean on your processes and your team. If you have a good employee there’s a good chance that they have a system or process in place that really just needs a few extra hours a week to stay alive. You can ask them to build up work on the front end, before they take leave, and put a process in place for other employees to plug-in while they are out. If you do this, you likely won’t have to pay any extra funds to replace that person or you may pay a few people to do those little extra tasks but it shouldn’t equal the salary of a full person. You can get creative. You are a start-up. You do this all the time.

Give project based work or offer time for strategic thinking

Women on maternity leave have an incredible amount of time to think and be creative. As a company, you can take advantage of this. If you’ve got a big project coming up, give that to the expecting mother just to ruminate on to be creative to come up with new ideas. We have plenty of time to use our brains while doing tasks with the baby. And while deadline work is not feasible, we’re hungry for problem-solving and adult conversations and so a lot of these creative, strategic-thinking moments can occur while we’re taking care of our babies. So if you are looking to solve for projects that are on the horizon, give that task to a new mom, and do a call with her once a week and have someone take notes and brainstorm with her. You will be glad you did. 

Fund a Postpartum Doula or other care

If you really can’t afford a full, 12 week paid maternity leave, you can offer something else instead: funds to provide childcare or postpartum doula services. A postpartum doula is a woman that comes into your home and helps you with tasks around the house or helps you hold the baby and let you get some sleep or let you go and get some work done. I personally used a postpartum doula from Doulas of Raleigh; they are wonderful. And this is one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. It gives me about 8 hours a week to work on projects during my maternity leave. It’s something that does cost money, but it would be well worth the investment if you needed some tasks done by that employee while they are on leave. Alternatively, if you need that employee to return early, consider providing a stipend for daycare. Both options are certainly less expensive than a full time salary and would at least offer some support. 

8 weeks and 8 weeks 

For many young start-ups it's difficult to provide a full 12 weeks, but they want to offer some time off. To make that enticing, consider offering more time off but in a hybrid model. Especially in post-Covid society, it's easy to do some remote work, so consider offering eight weeks of paid time off and then eight weeks of part-time remote work where the employee can just check in with the team, do some emails, and just get up to speed before fully jumping back in. This gives the employee more time with their baby but you get your employee back a bit earlier in a part time capacity. This is a model we use at Raleigh Founded and it has worked well for me. I initially had time off and now that my baby is older, I can use my brain to write something at 3 am when I’m up with the baby. For me this works great. And I think other start ups might find it useful as well.

Don’t hire us 

And finally if you’re really unable to provide 12 weeks paid leave and you’re unable to do any of the suggestions that I’ve listed above, then my ultimate suggestion would be don’t hire mothers. Mothers are incredible. We survive the equivalent of a car accident and then produce nutrients to sustain human life within an hour. I personally spent 10 days in the hospital after nearly losing my life and undergoing two blood transfusions to have my first son five weeks early. I then watched him fight for his life in the NICU for 21 days. In that time period, I pumped 120 hours to provide milk so they had enough to pump into his stomach to keep him alive. Then I spent 9 months silently recovering while I got back to work. Do you understand the strength and tenacity that takes? Who wouldn’t want to hire that person? We know our value. So if you don’t want to offer anything for women, anything for new mothers, we don’t need you. You need us. We will go somewhere else where there’s more respect and value put on women who provide life and sustenance on a daily basis and then go and give themselves fully to a job. 

So consider honoring maternity leave for your company, and if you struggle to provide paid leave, please think about my suggestions above or talk to a new mom to get some other ideas on how you can be supportive. Happy Women’s Month to all the new working mamas out there. If we support each other, we can have it all. 

As my son approaches the 12 week mark, I have to give a big shout out to Raleigh Founded and my team for giving me the gift of being with my new family for my own maternity leave. Especially to Jason Widen and the ownership team who always look for ways to turn their passion and their privilege into ways to support others.