It’s comundo conversation time, and this month we’re talking about babies. Well, parental leave to be more precise. 

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We’ve sat down with Natalia Rogaczewska, founder and CEO of VÆRDBAR [translation: Valuable], a leading consultancy specialising in DE&I, leadership development, strategy, change management and strategic parental leave management.

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Not heard of strategic parental leave management before? Neither had we. But we wanted to. As a people-first company, we want to ensure we are a forerunner when it comes to employee benefits and care. And parental leave is one area that needs more attention – and not just by us, as it turns out. 

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Let’s get started. 

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Tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do.

My name is Natalia Rogaczewska and I’m the author of Barsel på Bundlinjen [translation: Parental leave and the bottom line] and the founder of VÆRDBAR, a consultancy that advises companies on DE&I and leadership strategies – like strategic parental leave.

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It’s such an interesting subject area. How did you end up here?

The starting point for the company was looking at parental leave and how it can increase diversity and inclusion in the workplace. The reason for that was because of my own experience as a mother returning to the workplace. 

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It was especially after I had my second child that I experienced just how difficult it is to come back to work. It was hard to talk about, almost as if we lacked a language around it, and it felt like there was a lack of understanding from colleagues and my superiors. I felt it was invisible and thus impossible to explain how I felt, and I turned it inwards thinking I needed to do better or try harder. 

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There had been a lot of changes to the organisation while I was away so I had to figure out where I belonged in a lot of new situations. I felt left out and estranged and started distrusting relations at work. Add to that two kids, a management position and a lot of work-related travel and it started to have an impact on my mental health and my self-esteem. 

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Luckily, I began sharing my experience with people outside of work and started to meet all these women who had similar experiences, from direct discrimination to a lack of focus on reboarding people coming back from leave. 

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The more stories I heard, the more it grew to something bigger than my own experience and after all these women trusted me with their experiences, the more I felt I had to do something about it. The magnitude of this area being a structural issue, something that really fuels the gender gap, dawned on me. 

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It should be obvious to us by now that we don’t become worse at our jobs because we get pregnant, give birth and become a parent. We become better.

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And that was the starting point for the book; this realisation that we can do better and doing so would increase diversity, equity and inclusion at work for both men and women. From the data I collected researching for my book, it became evident that there was this huge business case to try to help companies manage parental leave because they’re losing a lot of talent, primarily female, during leave, or in the period directly after leave. My research shows that 36% of people on leave consider leaving their jobs during or after the first six months after their leave. But it also shows that good leave experiences can decrease the risk of people looking for a new job in connection with their leave by 50%. 

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The three areas that so many companies are trying to improve or build upon today, better leadership skills, retaining and attracting talent and increasing diversity, can be addressed directly by strategic parental leave. We just needed to start that conversation. 

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Why haven’t we had that conversation before?

One of the reasons is that parental leave at work, historically, has been a women’s thing. So,  a lot of men in leadership positions – the positions that have the authority to say yes to change, implement a new procedure or invest in new training – they’re from a generation where they didn’t take leave. 

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Most of them have organised their lives in a way that’s quite conservative with normative gender roles. It’s very important for me to say that this is not a blame game. It is just the way it is, and this is why we have to increase awareness about the importance of managing leave. It is just an obstacle that we have to overcome together.

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And when more and more employees take leave – both men and women – it becomes easier to have that conversation because it’s an experience they’ve both had, instead of just one having it. 

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On that note, it is interesting to observe how parental leave has become a competition parameter for many companies now that men (in DK) have a right to leave. That wasn’t even part of the discussion or collective mindset when it was just women taking maternity leave. It shows the gender biases surrounding parental leave and our labour market in general. Why is the male workforce worth competing for more than the female workforce?

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Are men impacted in the same way as women?

No. There are both differences and similarities. The biggest difference is that even though both men and women now have a right to parental leave in DK, it is still a choice for men, while it is a non-negotiable term for women if they want to work and give birth.  Also, women take longer leave than men, even though the numbers are slightly improving.

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Before the earmarked leave to men entered into force, women took 92% of the total amount of leave, and a year after, women took 85%. Men are taking a total of 24.5 days more of leave, and women are taking 34.1 days less. It’s going in the right direction, but looking at the total amount of leave, there is still a huge difference between men and women.

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There are also biological differences and differences around when the leave is taken. Women get pregnant, give birth and breastfeed if they can and want to, so even if a woman comes back to work after six months, it’s still a totally different experience than a man taking six months at a later point, where the child is older. Apart from the physical aspect, there is a big difference between taking care of a newborn and a 6-month-old baby, which can also have quite a huge impact on mental health.  

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What I’m really curious about is how more men taking leave affects inclusion in the workplace going forward, especially since men still hold more leadership positions. What will be the effect of these men taking leave, coming back and being managers and leaders to women (and men) with a better understanding of the leave experience? More inclusion of working parents, for sure. That’s how diversity works, it’s not just about gender, it’s also about experiences and perspectives.

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Another important aspect is the narrative around parental leave. We rarely talk about what happens with us mentally and physically during and after leave and when we do talk about it, it’s negative. We need to change this narrative. 

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We rarely talk about what happens with us mentally and physically during and after leave and when we do talk about it, it’s negative. We need to change this narrative. 

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I think we’re losing a lot of potential because the existing mainstream narrative of parental leave is that it’s a burden. I want to change that so that we get to explore and harness the value that parental leave creates; human value and emotional value on an individual level and a societal level. Parental leave is not a burden. It makes us better people and better colleagues.

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It can be controversial to say but there are huge parallels between good parenting and good leadership. 

How so?

It should be obvious to us by now that we don’t become worse at our jobs because we get pregnant, give birth and become a parent. We become better.

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We send management teams on courses and teach them about empathy, emotional intelligence, personal development and time management, but we get so much of this for free when we become parents and during leave.

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I used data from almost 300 individual parental leave experiences in my book, and 67% responded that parental leave has strengthened their personal competencies. The top five competencies that they highlight are efficiency, patience, self-awareness and self-control, flexibility and the ability to adjust to changes. 

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I also saw an interesting tendency where men pointed to developing more of the stereotypical feminine competencies like empathy, while women pointed to competencies stereotypically identified as masculine like, for example, drive and decisiveness.

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We send management teams on courses and teach them about empathy, emotional intelligence, personal development and time management, but we get so much of this for free when we become parents and during leave.

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However, this is not part of the conversation on leave. Instead, we see a lot – mainly women – coming back from leave, experiencing being undervalued and feeling like they have to prove their worth and compensate for the fact that they have been away on leave. 

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And that is gender bias doing its work. 

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For example, research shows that we view fathers more positively at work than we view mothers. That has a direct impact on pay and career opportunities. A man at work, being a father, is viewed as more likeable. Fathers showing empathy and vulnerability are positively rewarded socially and economically whereas mothers doing the same are punished. We think of them as too emotional, and not strong enough, and as a consequence, we don’t see them as fit for leadership positions as men. The same skills are viewed differently just because of gender bias towards men and women.

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Addressing parental leave, not just in the individual relationships between a superior and employee, but also from an organisational and company value perspective, is therefore a very effective way of tackling gender norms and biases. 

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We can free, both men and women, from a lot of the gendered expectations on how to act, how to be a parent and how to be a working parent - and by doing that increasing our talent pool, creating a more diverse and inclusive workplace with equal opportunities for both men and women to be who they are and to reach their full potential. 

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The lesson we need to remember is that it is possible to change.

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COVID was a great example of how we can change, especially in regards to working parents. 

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We saw how being away from your family and in the office from 9 to 5 isn’t necessary to get work done. It forced an evolution in the way we work – and it didn’t have the huge negative impact on productivity that we feared.

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The lesson we need to remember is that it is possible to change, and change isn’t always negative. If we have to or want to, we can change the way we work very quickly and effectively – if we just agree on the direction we want to go in. 

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We need to remember to always have that reflective mindset and ask ourselves, is it true when we say we have to do things a certain way? 

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That mindset, that open, innovative and inclusive mindset that says ‘yes’ instead of ‘no’, is what enables us to discover new possibilities and new ways of doing things. It’s so important. It’s a growth mindset as it drives us away from keeping the status quo doesn’t serve us. 

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Is the potential value of parental leave something of a surprise to companies?

Yes. The links between parental leave and DE&I, leadership skills, talent development, the S, and to some extent the G, of ESG, lack maturity and are not yet clear. So, the understanding of how we work with it, how we measure it, what data is needed and how we use parental leave and DE&I in a broader sense to create actual value – that’s all something less developed than the discussion surrounding for example the E of ESG.

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Another barrier I experience when talking about parental leave is that a lot of people still view it as administrative, something that HR takes care of, so they don’t see it as a potential for developing an inclusive organisation and leadership. 

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But as soon as we do address it, people react in such a positive way, like, ‘Why didn’t we think of this before?’ 

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Again, it’s about changing the narrative and making something that’s been invisible for so long visible. 

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Do you think this is one of those things we’ll look back on and wonder why we didn’t change earlier?

Yes. Parental leave management has been in the dark; it’s just been something women have done and nobody has thought about the impact, also from a business point of view or a management point of view. In the future, we will wonder why we haven’t dealt strategically with something affecting more than half of the workforce. 

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In general, I think the consciousness about the importance of operating inclusively and holistically, in a way that you understand the cause and effect between several bottom lines, that realisation is going to push things in the right direction. 

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What would be your advice to companies looking to have an impact in this area?

If improving diversity and inclusion is your goal, restructuring parental leave is a very good way to start. 

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Don’t just think about the period during leave; think about what happens before, what happens during and what happens after, where mental health is an important issue to address as well.

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Create a clear process, train managers and HR. Expectations of the employee, employer and any impacted teams need to be managed and the reboarding process needs to be examined. Have a timeline, where you meet and align expectations. 

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It’s about facilitating a dialogue that digs a bit deeper, and questions some of the things that address the concerns people have about going on leave and coming back. 

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Leave cannot be avoided. It’s part of everyday business.

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People, women especially, worry about the consequences of going on leave and being taken off projects, so the descaling of work has to be considered carefully; do we include the person going on leave in the hiring process for her replacement, do we have contact during leave, and what should the reboarding process be – should we meet a month before you come back to talk about the tasks that are waiting? How do we prepare the team for that? 

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It’s a lot about psychological safety both for the person on leave and for the other team members because there’s a lot of insecurity for the team that comes with a colleague going on parental leave and coming back from leave.

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Leave cannot be avoided. It’s part of everyday business. So what you can ask yourself is; how can we do this in a better way? How can we create more value from the way we’re handling it? And then ask yourself what that value is. 

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Much like the digitalisation of tools for neurodivergent people, we’re wondering why we haven’t addressed the narrative surrounding parental leave before. 

Want to know more? You can reach out to Natalia and check out her book at VÆRDBAR.