3rd Maternity Leave: here's how I plan for success while I'm out
I am currently planning my own disappearance. Twice.
At my corporate job, I'm the director of customer success, which is a polished way of saying I am the only person who strategically and tactically supports our customers after they sign the contract. At my own company, Career Civility, I'm the founder, which is a polished way of saying I'm also the copywriter, the bookkeeper, the consultant, the designer and the person who (rarely) remembers the passwords. And in a few weeks, I'm going to have a baby and step away from all of it.
So my last two months have not looked like a glowing pregnancy montage. They've looked like spreadsheets. Color-coded account statuses after the kids are down. A shared doc named with my leave dates like a countdown clock. An email to a client re-setting expectations (and invoice schedules).
I do workplace communication for a living, and I have still struggle to communicate such a momentous moment in my life alongside the demands of everyday work that needs to be done.
This is now the 3rd maternity leave I’ve planned for and this is what I’ve learned: maternity leave plan is not a courtesy you extend to your employer (nor is the actual leave a courtesy your employer extends to you). Your leave plan is not a nice-to-have you throw together the Friday before you go. It is the most strategic document you'll write all year.
What is a leave plan, really? It's the written proof that your work is a system, not a set of things that only live in your head. It’s also a way to gut check the very real fear of "will they survive without me?" and worse, the “what if it doesn't all fall apart, and I come back to find I mattered less than I thought?”
Stack the lovely motherhood penalty on top of that, and the real worry becomes an unnecessary stressor on your plate before GIVING BIRTH. Unacceptable and let’s avoid added stress in this season of life.
You can't communicate your way out of every bias. There will be people who say “if you come back”. There will be people who say “how was your vacation”. You can’t control other people’s silly comments but you CAN control a handoff so clean that your absence reads as planning, not a gap.
After doing this twice at once (and 3x over), here are the five moves pulling the most weight.
1. Give every open task/project/account a status and document it in writing.
Do not leave it in your head. For every account, project, and open loop, write one line: where it stands, what's next, and how healthy it is. I literally labeled each of mine like a traffic light — green, yellow, red — so that whoever picks it up knows in ten seconds what they've walked into. A template that works for almost anything:
[Project / account] — Status: Green / Yellow / Red. Where it stands: [one sentence]. Next action: [one sentence + date]. Good to know: [one sentence].
2. Put a name on every single thing. Not "the team." A name.
The fastest way for something to fall through the cracks is to hand it to "the team." When communicating your leave plan make sure you are being direct and asking “if I go out tomorrow, who is handling this?”
"The team" is nobody. Every open item on my plan has one human's name next to it — this renewal goes to Kyle, the newsletter goes to Alex. If you can't name an owner, you haven't finished delegating. You've just made a wish and called it a plan.
3. Document the process.
This is where the majority of the time planning your leave will be spent. For every task or project you handle, create a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) so anyone stepping into cover your work will know exactly how to handle your work.
Create an SOP every each task/project you do on a weekly basis. Cumbersome, I know. But the good news is that you can use THIS TEMPLATE HERE as a starting point.
4. Confirm your availability in writing.
Does your employer expect you to be totally offline, slack, teams, and email deleted entirely? Are you supposed to check in every now and then? What are the expectations of your leave and availability. Then - include those dates and expectations in your leave plan and out of office.
"I'll be out starting [date]. My out-of-office is on and I'll be genuinely offline for the first few weeks. After that I may check in during naps — so don't hesitate to email or Slack me, just know it might take a couple days to hear back. For anything urgent before then, [Name] is your person."
If you're the manager on the other side of someone's leave: the plan is not theirs to build alone. PLEASE support them through this process. The person going out is already carrying enough. Sit down with them, invest in the time it takes to plan, write it down together and make it unmistakable that the leave is a season, not a demotion. How you handle someone's leave is the loudest thing you will ever say about whether it's safe to have a life at your company.
Planning for maternity leave should be a standard process in the workplace considering the fact that women make up 47% of the workforce here in the U.S. and yet… the impending leaves seem to go unnoticed until the due date.
Email me if you want a look at the leave document I put together for both my business and my corporate role - jenna@careercivility.com.
