For Pregnant Nonprofit Employees, Negotiating Time Off Takes Careful Preparation

JOB MARKET

By Alison Stein Wellner

Leeann Doherty had just started her new job last year as a communication specialist at the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests, in Concord, when she got some unexpected news: She was pregnant for the first time.

“I was really nervous about telling my boss,” she recalls. As a new employee, she says, she hadn’t yet had a chance to prove herself — and she worried about what her pregnancy would mean in light of the society’s mission. “As a conservation organization concerned about the effects of overpopulation, there are lot of people here who either refrain from having children, or have very few,” she says, noting that her boss at the time was childless by choice. “I was even more wary of having to tell them that I was adding to the ranks.”

For nearly five months, she kept her pregnancy to herself — and wore lots of baggy clothing.

For many nonprofit professionals like Ms. Doherty, pregnancy can have an unsettling effect on a career. Even at a charity that may pride itself on being family-friendly, workers expanding or starting their own families can raise a series of tough questions: How much time can employees take off for maternity leave, in an already resource-strapped organization? How should the subject be broached with an already harried and hassled supervisor? How do dedicated employees keep up with what’s happening at the office when they’reat home changing diapers?

Start Talking

The first step is to get the conversation started with the supervisor as early as possible. But like Ms. Doherty, many women greet these conversations with a fair amount of trepidation, says Deborah M. Kolb, author of The Shadow Negotiation: How Women Can Master the Hidden Agendas That Determine Bargaining Success (Simon & Schuster, 2000, $26) and a professor at Simmons School of Management, at Simmons College, in Boston. “Many people don’t feel like they’re in a very empowered situation going into a negotiation,” she says. “They feel like they’re asking for a favor.”

In many cases, though, employee fears prove to be unfounded. For example, when Ms. Doherty finally did broach the subject with her supervisors, she was pleasantly surprised: Far from being upset, her supervisors were more concerned about her not wanting to return to her job, post-delivery. (Ms. Doherty says she had no doubt that she’d return.) They worked out a 10-week paid maternity leave, and allowed her to work from home during the last month of her pregnancy. In addition, she found her co-workers very supportive. “In fact,” she says, “many were excited to have a baby around.”

In retrospect, she wishes she would have broken the news to them a little earlier. “Giving your boss time to get a plan in place, as well as get used to the idea is important,” she says. “Being away for that long can really throw an office for a loop if you don’t prepare — especially given the size of a lot of nonprofits, where few people are doing many different tasks. Ultimately, it’s important to get involved with your boss in coming up with solutions for who will do what and what will get put on the back burner while you are out.”

In fact, there’s no need to wait to become pregnant to raise the question with a supervisor. Kelly King, a public-relations specialist at Community Hospice of Northeast Florida, in Jacksonville, broached the subject with her supervisor during the job-interview process. “I left my advertising-agency job to go to Community Hospice, hoping to leave that dog-eat-dog atmosphere behind so my husband and I could start a family,” she says. She found out that she’d be able to take a three-month maternity leave, and when she had baby Eleanor, now nearly a year old, there were no maternity-leave-policy surprises.

Taking Stock

For the best possible outcome to maternity-leave negotiations, it’s smart for employees to do some preparation, says Ms. Kolb. “The first thing I tell people is to be very clear about the value you bring to the organization,” she says. “You have to make sure that’s part of the conversation.” Second, employees need to determine how much time off they would like and what would be a suitable work schedule on their return. “Often people don’t know what they actually want,” she says, “so they go in and say, I’ll take whatever you give me.”

After determining personal needs, it’s a good idea to find out what comparable organizations are offering to comparable employees. There’s no industry standard: Every organization offers a slightly different combination of paid leave, unpaid leave, options to take vacation in lieu of leave, and so on. At the same time, investigate what legal rights pregnant employees have, even though these matters rarely result in court battles, says Lori Rosen, a lawyer at CCH, in Riverwoods, Ill., a human-resources consulting company that works with nonprofit clients.

Although state laws vary, employers that are covered by the federal Family and Medical Leave Act must allow qualified employees of either sex to take up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave to care for a new child, without a decrease in their benefits, rank, or status on the job. The catch is that some nonprofit organizations are excluded, either because they have fewer than 50 employees, or because of the mission of the organization. (To learn more about the law, see the Department of Labor’s Web site. For more information about discrimination against employees generally, as well as referrals to legal counsel, see the National Organization for Women Web site, or try the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.)

Of course, few parents of infants find themselves able to jump right back into their work routines without making accommodations in their schedules, something that also may be negotiable, say nonprofit professionals. For example, Courtney Clarke, state director of marketing and communication for the March of Dimes’ Ohio chapter in Cleveland, was able to arrange flextime. “That just makes it easier to arrange child care, so that my husband and I can split up drop-off and pickup times,” she explains. She also arranged to telecommute one day a week.

Getting Ready for Time Out

After the deal is set with the employer, it’s important for employees to make sure that things will run smoothly in their absence. Rachel Garbow Monroe, chief marketing and operations officer at the Jewish Community Federation of Baltimore — and a veteran of three maternity leaves — says getting ahead on projects is critical.

“I wanted to make certain my workload was covered, that major upcoming projects were well under way, if not completed, and that my colleagues were not left with a burden in terms of executing the projects in my portfolio of responsibility,” she says. “In each instance, I drove colleagues a little nuts as I pushed them to work on projects well in advance of when we normally would to accomplish as much as I could.”

Employees should also strive to ensure that work will continue in their absence, says Maya Houston, director of development at Rice University, in Houston. “Line up your replacements in advance, and give them clear instructions or modes by which they can seek the info on their own,” she advises.

Some women choose to keep up with some of their duties while they’re out. Ms. Houston, for example, attended two big events she’d help to plan — which occurred just two weeks after her baby was born — and kept in touch with the people who were assigned to some of her bigger projects. Ms. Monroe attended critical meetings, held a few meetings at home, and kept up with voice mail and e-mail during her four-month leave.

The most important task is to balance staying in touch with work with staying attuned to the new baby, says Ms. Houston: “Keep in touch, but also take the time to bond well with the baby so that when you go back to work, you feel as ready as you can and you do not regret the way you’ve spent your leave.”

Have you taken maternity leave from your nonprofit job? What advice would you give to other charity employees about taking time off? Share your thoughts in the Job Market online forum.