Ask HN: How do you handle maternity leave for a critical member on a tiny team?

Well, anyone on your time could fall under a bus or experience a catastrophic medical emergency, so why not start with a general contingency plan for unavoidable absences? Maternity leave is a limited and more predictable absence, so if you have a plan to deal with the unexpected then accommodating maternity leave should be comapritively easy. Brainstorm with everyone for a few weeks, you don't have to mention right now that you're planning around someone's pregnancy unless everyone already knows, but make sure you're not putting your pregnant employee on the spot in a way that could be construed as discriminatory/hostile work environment, if some other member of the team started making disparaging comments about it.

You should have some sort of disaster preparedness plan in place anyway. There is such a thing as key person insurance but I think that's designed to address permanent loss of a team member and I have no idea about the economics. It probably wouldn't cover this situation but it seems like something to be aware of anyway.

It's nice that you are taking this issue seriously rather than waiting until the law says you have to do so.

I'd ask this a slightly different way: how do you mitigate the risk of having a critical person on a small team? Maternity leave is just one way in which having a small 'bus number' ( http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?BusNumber ) may smite you.

I think this is a good (but hard) opportunity for building the rest of your team. You're finding a real vulnerability in your team's structure, and being proactive like you are is a good way of fixing it.

First, figure out exactly what makes this person so critical - it may seem obvious, but break it down into specific tasks and skills. Maybe get them to write down the things they do for each of these that took the most time to figure out. Second, evaluate who else on your team can pick up a specific skill or task, or who would best be able to grow into that particular role element (rollette?). Finally, spend some time and sweat encouraging the rest of the team to grow into these areas - make sure to show them you appreciate their taking on the challenge. If no-one can step up for a specific rollette, you may need to start recruiting.

Kudos, by the way, (as anigbrowl pointed out) for wanting to do the morally right thing. Good luck

have you looked into finding a contractor for the work that needs done now. Also, your kidding yourself if you think someone with a new baby is going to pop right back into things with out missing a beat in a month.

What you do is have them do proactive documentation, arrangements, etc. ahead of time, and then, as able, have them do a small amount of work from home that is most critical and irreplaceable. This shouldn't be more than 10 hours per week if you've planned for it.

The founders should be willing to take on the extra critical work if her minimal contribution during the period isn't enough. If this takes more than a small amount of their time or she will not be able to do anything (hospitalization, complications), then you should be hiring another person or a contractor for the role anyway.

1 month mat leave? Leaving aside the fact that this seems really short, people often take 1 month holidays (I certainly have), i.e it seems a short enough time not to fill it, as a contractor will probably not be that productive in a month, and will cost you a lot. That said, a new mom coming back to work after just a month is probably not going to be firing on all cylinders just yet, so be patient :)

As for whether you should offer mat leave even if you don't have to - absolutely, it will leave a bad taste in your teams mouth if you don't, and will probably make anyone considering having children resign

I was relatively recently involved in a similar situation: my wife's former employer said they will not offer her paid maternity leave of any length, despite them mentioning in that they would accommodate her when she was getting hired. After she used all her vacation days and sick days to take just barely 6 weeks (about half of what you really need to recover from childbirth with no complications), she started looking for a new job. Found one quickly, and with a nice salary increase too.

The moral of the story is that you should accommodate your team member in any way possible or this critical person will leave after their maternity leave for good. If they are so critical to your team that you feel you cannot lose them for a month (about 1/3 of what you should give them), then can you really afford to lose them shortly after they come back?

As for how to handle this in terms of salary: you should offer short term disability insurance to your employees that covers maternity leave. It's too late now, since you typically have to hold the policy for over a year before maternity leave is covered, but do this for the future. Good luck!

> critical member on a tiny team?

Have you talked with her to get a sense of what she's thinking and what an ideal future work scenario might look like? Be sure to communicate her importance to the team.

Cover the salary on-leave, it buys tremendous goodwill. But be fully prepared in case she doesn't return from maternity leave. If you haven't been there yet, it's a life changer on a variety of levels.

If retention becomes an issue-- consider allowing her to work virtual office and/or shift to part-time for the next several months.