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Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation backtracks on one-year parental leaves

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Re: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation backtracks on one-year parental leaves

#51
post #24

I once worked with a guy who had 4 children in 5 years. He took a lot of parental leave, sick days and often slacked off early. As soon as the last baby was stable he quit for a new job. Companies and teams that are too generous get shafted.

Anecdotes should not form the basis of lawmaking.

Re: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation backtracks on one-year parental leaves

#52
post #34

The fact that after they backed off of the leave they are giving out a 20K bonus for child care is amazing in and of itself. I'm surprised that's not emphasized more. They probably also have very flexible work environment for parents so that when daycare's are closed and other issues crop up the parents can get back in there. I'm a dad of 2, 2 years and 5 year. I don't know if I'd want a year off to stay home with th…

I have to say, the first day at work after 9 months of parental leave is... sublime. To be able to go to the bathroom and close the door is a pleasure you don’t know until you have to go without.

As an aside, what happens to children in the US between 1 month until they start kindergarten (and at what age)?

Re: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation backtracks on one-year parental leaves

#53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you have say, a CFO or a specialist mechanic (that you only need 1 of, but definitely need) and they take a year off, what do you do? Just go without a CFO/mechanic for the year? Or do you start the hiring search, bring in another person as a temp CFO for a year? What do you do if your single point gets sick or quits? As a business you need a backup (plan).

Absolutely. If they quit, of course you go through the long candidate search process and hire a replacement. If they get sick, many companies are on a timer. Specialist work backs up, projects get delayed, extensions are filed, and so on. If a sickness was expected to last a month or a year, I would expect non-trivial problems to arise.

If you absolutely need one for the business to function you need more than one person knowing how to do the job. Maybe not as good as the first guy but beeing so dependant on one person can put a company out of business.

I thought that was basic knowledge espcially in tech.

Re: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation backtracks on one-year parental leaves

#54
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We hire interims or share responsibilities between other members of the team. It happens all the time and we rarely find an issue with this. If any company is run in such a way that bus-factor means the company can't thrive with one person gone you're simply doing it wrong.

This seems like the most obvious dodge. I know plenty of companies, especially small ones, where any person in the company is pretty much the bus factor. When they take vacation the company shuts its doors for a few weeks. This is obviously true for startups and small restaurants, especially ones without gobs of VC funding. Is the solution just to exclude companies that cannot get by without doing this? In other word…

Thats a bit of a strong statement, but I understand your leaning. A couple things:

* The Employment Insurance office pays for it. Yes, the person is going to be on leave, but you're not sitting there paying their salary. Hire a contractor while they're gone?

* If they're irreplaceable, yes you're SOL, but they get to make their own choices just as you did about basing your business's viability on one person that planned and had a kid.

Re: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation backtracks on one-year parental leaves

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. If they quit, of course you go through the long candidate search process and hire a replacement. If they get sick, many companies are on a timer. Specialist work backs up, projects get delayed, extensions are filed, and so on. If a sickness was expected to last a month or a year, I would expect non-trivial problems to arise.

If you absolutely need one for the business to function you need more than one person knowing how to do the job. Maybe not as good as the first guy but beeing so dependant on one person can put a company out of business. I thought that was basic knowledge espcially in tech.

In tech, you do not commonly hire people in pairs. If you need a DBA you hire one. If he quits or dies you hire another one. If he leaves for a year, what do you do?

Re: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation backtracks on one-year parental leaves

#58
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like the most obvious dodge. I know plenty of companies, especially small ones, where any person in the company is pretty much the bus factor. When they take vacation the company shuts its doors for a few weeks. This is obviously true for startups and small restaurants, especially ones without gobs of VC funding. Is the solution just to exclude companies that cannot get by without doing this? In other word…

Thats a bit of a strong statement, but I understand your leaning. A couple things: * The Employment Insurance office pays for it. Yes, the person is going to be on leave, but you're not sitting there paying their salary. Hire a contractor while they're gone? * If they're irreplaceable, yes you're SOL, but they get to make their own choices just as you did about basing your business's viability on one person that plan…

Thanks. I suppose "use temps/contractors" is probably the answer for most businesses, then, and to me feels like a true answer to the question posed.

Re: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation backtracks on one-year parental leaves

#59

> [heading] How do they manage in Canada? > In Canada, companies have had no option but to make 52-week parental leaves work, when requested, since 2000. The question Canadian companies ask isn’t “Can we do it?” but “How do we do it?” Okay, so... how do they do it? They never answer the question. If you have say, a CFO or a specialist mechanic (that you only need 1 of, but definitely need) and they take a year off, w…

First, as sibling comment notes, this is actually quite mild in terms of business continuity planning because unlike actual "hit-by-a-bus" issues, you have many months of lead time to prepare for it. Second, your choice is not "one year of parental leave" or "perfectly performance from the person with a baby at home". Having a young child is a huge life event, parental leave or not. So, you can eliminate the most competent cross-section of the employable demographic (age for having children is usually past the point when someone is junior to the point of being useless, but before cognitive decline becomes an issue). It's a hard problem, so you have companies struggling with it like the Gates foundation, here.

Since Canada is doing fine, perhaps instead of asking rhetorical questions you should read some Canadian HR journals?

Re: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation backtracks on one-year parental leaves

#60

> [heading] How do they manage in Canada? > In Canada, companies have had no option but to make 52-week parental leaves work, when requested, since 2000. The question Canadian companies ask isn’t “Can we do it?” but “How do we do it?” Okay, so... how do they do it? They never answer the question. If you have say, a CFO or a specialist mechanic (that you only need 1 of, but definitely need) and they take a year off, w…

The comparison is a bit flawed here. The Canadian system only pays a percentage of your normal wage, is subject to a wage cap, and the 12 months leave is shared by both parents.

So it’s not like every situation will have a parent missing for a full year.

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