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Startups and Maternity Leave

A female colleague at my startup recently informed me about her wedding plans later in the year. After congratulating her and assuring he...

A female colleague at my startup recently informed me about her wedding plans later in the year. After congratulating her and assuring her of my commitment to attend, the costs of this news began to dawn on me.

As the business leader, I am responsible for the financial management of the firm and so I deal with costs everyday. Aside from the cost of buying her a befitting wedding gift, I began to think long-term about the other costs.

Her upcoming wedding means approximately nine months from that time, we are likely to expect her to turn in a request for maternity leave. Now this is where things get tricky.

Asides the fact that a key member of our team would be away for a long time, this maternity leave is also a paid leave. With startups, policies get formulated along the way. They are never all in place from day one. We did not have a maternity leave policy so we needed one!

I must confess, the thought of one of my staff members needing maternity leave never crossed my mind till this moment. I resolved that this issue needed to have a standardized solution even as we seek to bring more gender diversity to our firm,

I made a decision to adopt a fully paid maternity leave with job protection. The only question left was how do we afford this extra expense. As I sat to think about a solution, I realized that she could actually help us earn the resources needed to pay for her period of absence in advance.

This thus is my solution. We need to find a way to increase her productivity to earn an extra 3 months income.

I still have about 12 months to make this happen I hope.

Wish me well.:)

Notes: Do you run a startup? Have you ever had to deal with maternity leave? Has this issue crossed your mind at all? Share your thoughts in the comments section.

1 comment

David said...

Thank you Gerrard. Points noted.

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