Work It Podcast: Is taking childcare leave hurting my career?

The government has been providing more parental benefits to encourage people to have more children. But what do these increased benefits mean for companies and their bottom line? Will taking more parental leave affect promotion prospects?

Derrick Teo, CEO of human resource firm Elitez Group and senior professional at the Institute for Human Resource Professionals, explains.  

Here's an excerpt from the podcast:

Gerald Tan:
If an individual uses a lot of parental benefits or takes a long maternity or paternity leave, then how would they be viewed by management? Would it affect their career progression?

Derrick Teo:
I do have some good levels of confidence in most managements of companies out there, that they acknowledge that this is part of the deal when we employ anyone.

That naturally as the person stays on with the company, they may enter into a different phase of life. There'll be other phases of life that they enter into, where they have elderly parents, they have other commitments that come their way.

I would say most companies worth their salt, they would already be preparing, or they already had prepared, perhaps concepts like job redesign, about how they are able to support parents or caregivers.

They're able to support them through this process, but yet at the same time for them to continue meeting their work-related KPI.

Tiffany Ang:
I actually spoke to a manager, and this manager told me that it was so hard for her because her kids are older, but then all of a sudden she realised that her team was filled with parents with young kids.

So everybody was just taking time off, and she was understanding, but at the end of day, she had to take on the workload because everybody was just going off to take their childcare leave. I mean, that's a very real scenario, right?

Derrick: 
Yes naturally, I fully agree with you, and I've seen this happen in my clients' companies as well, where there are many concurrent members at the same stage of life having children of a similar age group.

So that for whatever reasons that each different member has to take their leave or has to take care of the family, then there's still resources available for the team to achieve their intended output.

Tiffany:
So I can tell you what this manager told me, whether jokingly or not. I'm not actually sure.

So this manager actually said that, "Okay, I know that HR is not going to increase my manpower, so what I'm going to do is, the next time I get to hire I'm going to hire somebody who doesn't have children."

So that was actually her solution. But I guess what she's trying to say is that now she's even clearer. She wants diversity in the team. Basically, I can't have five parents in a team of seven.