I have a few honest and open questions as a US-based small business with a handful of women who have recently had children or who are pregnant.
Do you guys have any advice for how to balance the impact to the results that we receive from those having children prior to vs after pregnancy and/or having children?
Example:
One individual is a phenomenal front-end website engineer. Her input has been critical in helping us solve a lot of engineering challenges and more forward in significant ways. When she became pregnant she had debilitating morning sickness so much so she could hardly function on a personal level. This morning sickness persisted for the last 5 months through the present day to the point where she's only be able to come to work (or even work from home/remotely) for perhaps 15 days sprinkled throughout the 5 months. We all value her opinion and expertise highly. We try to schedule meetings around when she might available (to the point of even having spontaneous "she's available" meetings) but even she doesn't know when she'll be able to work or operate productively. Further, her ability to code/design/be productive has plummeted to perhaps 5% of her original capacity. Do you guys have any tips on how to handle this situation? We thought about starting her maternity leave early (during pregnancy), but she'll definitely need that leave AFTER she has the baby. Perhaps we start the paid maternity leave during her pregnancy and then a leave-of-absence (unpaid) after the child is born? Is that fair to her? Is that fair to us? In many regards, we have a paid member of the team but without any of the capacity.
Another example:
We have another woman who is very detail-oriented. For years, her projects always came out flawlessly. She has an amazing talent to see all the different ways a project could go wrong and then she would plan accordingly to keep things on track. However, since her first child was born move than a year ago, she's been a completely different person. Her child still isn't sleeping through the night. She's sleep deprived in a big way. On many days, she's almost a zombie. Previously she was punctual, reliable, and focused. We're not sure what to do. We have offered to pay for sleep training for her baby which she has refused (and that's her right as a mother of her child), but we would like to have some form of productivity capacity from her. We don't want to let her go because we know what she is capable of. For the last 18 months, we've been struggling to balance what we can reasonably expect from her vs the demands/results that her role requires. Letting her go sounds like horrible, insensitive, and possibly illegal. Is reducing her compensation a fair trade? Ultimately, we're paying value to be delivered and that has been slashed to a fraction of her previous state.
Are there any tips, tricks, ideas, or ways of thinking that can help us be fair and equitable with these individuals in their unique circumstances while at the same time allowing ourselves to expect a reasonable amount of value from them in exchange for the compensation they receive?
A few other notes:
1. We offer 4+ months of paid maternity leave for having/adopting children.
2. We also offer paid paternity leave for male employees for having/adopting children.