> disgruntled towards the person taking mat/pat leave
If management are worth their salt, this sort of behavior won’t be tolerated. If it’s tolerated, you have poor managers.
Not much more to say about that.
If management are worth their salt, this sort of behavior won’t be tolerated. If it’s tolerated, you have poor managers.
Not much more to say about that.
1) increase the workload for who remains
2) decrease the workload and delay the deadline (which could affect other parts of the company, the pnl)
3) find a contractor or two to pick up the slack, this may take a while and can still fail or cause the rest of the team to stall while that person/people onboards.
Depending on your situation money can be tight or deadlines can be tight or both. Meaning the only appreciable option may be #1: which is part of why it’s harder to work in startups where both of the above may be true.
I don’t think it’s entirely fair to blame management, but it can be arbitrary limitations imposed by management for sure.
Otherwise Company, Inc. shouldn’t have offered the benefit in the first place.
A manager and everyone else should be establishing that as much as their contributions are missed it's not a problem that they had a child or took the leave they are entitled to.
I’m not sure how I feel about that honestly.
On the one hand it makes people feel more free and feel less bad in themselves.
On the other it will become an open secret among everyone including those who may eventually take leave and then be aware of it, passive aggression may ensure even if it’s not permitted, and of course on some level it’s dishonest.
You are reading it wrong.
It's not just about the individual taking the leave, it's about spreading discontent throughout the entire team because someone is taking advantage of a benefit they are entitled to.
Basically, you are advocating for the idea that someone using a benefit they have is bad.
i.e. I'm allowed to spread discontent on the team and make you feel bad for taking a salary.
It impacted the business having him be absent for two weeks - I was forced to attend two meetings on his behalf and had to answer a bunch of email.
He could have chosen to man up and not take a vacation, or could have taken his laptop and attend meetings remotely and answered email. What a jerk.
Plus, benefits are often "unfair" in that they help some employees more than others. A sickly coworker gets more out of the health plan than someone who is as fit as a fiddle. Not needing glasses, I get literally nothing out of half of the "vision and dental" package. The tuition benefit does nothing if you're unable or choose not to take a course.
Because you do benefit from those benefits even if you choose not to have a child. The people working there would most likely not work there if these benefits didn't exist.
> it's impacting everyone else at the business negatively
Clearly it's not. The companies offering this clearly prefer the type of people that benefit from this. And you do as well, as the people taking advantage of this are clearly important to your job satisfaction.
Isn't his point that the asymmetric benefit is unfair for non-parents and thus contributing to a lack of job satisfaction for everyone left picking up the slack?
At the end they could choose to let the team be less productive. Business should already assume that they may lose an employee at anytime, or roadblocks may come up, so if they're assuming the teams are always going to be at 100%, that's probably not realistic.
The business could also: hire another manager, or promote someone whose been looking for an opportunity to learn to manage. If they do want to shift the load to other existing employees, ideally the business is structured so that other managers aren't at 100% capacity and can help fill-in temporarily. That's still a form of "picking up the slack", but if it's planned for, it's usually less an issue.
Solution: work somewhere else, where another benefit structure is offered
They need to do prep work before leave so that the team doesn't become disgruntled to begin with.
If the behavior is exhibited at all, you have poor managers. If not tolerating it takes any other form than helping to ease tension, you have very poor managers.