Navigating Parental Leave in your Nonprofit: How to Ensure a Smooth Transition for All

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Hey, wonderful listeners!

We're thrilled to have you join us for this compelling episode of The Just Be Cause Podcast, as we sit down with the insightful Lacey Kempinski. Dive into the world of nonprofit organizations and the often-unspoken challenges of managing parental and caregiver leaves. How can embracing change turn challenges into growth opportunities within your organization?

Discover the secrets to maintaining efficiency with the support of external consultants and coaches, and learn how to celebrate parental leave as a positive, transformational experience. We'll unravel the complexities of turnover costs and the true value of sustainable workload management, and explore the impact of effective planning when an employee steps away.

We will cover:

• How prioritized planning can transform your organization's dynamics. 
• The financial and organizational cost of turnover.
• How turnover, mentorship, and mission alignment intersect.
• The strategies you can use to make a parental leave as stress free for everyone involved.

Join us for an inspiring and insightful conversation that promises to provide valuable perspectives and actionable tools for nonprofits striving for positive impact and well-being.

Let's navigate these intriguing discussions and empower your organization to thrive!

Where to find Lacey Kempinski:

LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/laceykempinski/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/balanced-good/

Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/balancedgood/

Website:
Home - balanced good.

Meet your fundraising expert

Thanks for listening to Just Be Cause Podcast! I'm Katherine Lacefield the founder and head consultant of Just Be Cause Consulting.

My goal is to partner with YOU nonprofits and philanthropic organizations to help you make a positive impact in your community.

With over 20 years of experience in the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors, I help organizations optimize their operations with key knowledge in various domains, such as fundraising strategy, grantmaking research, communications, and development.

Sign up to my newsletter, The Nonprofit Nuggets for FREE fundraising advice, tools and guidance!

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Transcript

Lacey Kempinski [00:00:00]:

I support thoughtful parental leaves and realistic workloads just because it makes financial, emotional, and practical sense.

Katherine Lacefield [00:00:08]:

Welcome to the Just because podcast. In a space in which the scarcity mindset has been normal for far too long, discover how we're helping nonprofits finally take back their power, find their true purpose, and even use mindfulness to manifest their dream solutions into reality. I'm your host, Lacey Kempinski, a lifetime nonprofit professional. Together, we'll master the tools needed to overcome limitations, rise in times of adversity, and understand the interconnectedness of all causes towards a more conscious philanthropy just because it's the right thing to do after spending my entire life optimizing non profits, I've explored countless of the most powerful tools and apps available so that you can stop wasting your time on mundane tasks and start having an extraordinary impact on the communities that need you. Follow the link in the show notes to access our full list of nonprofit tools and apps for free. We've also included some discount codes in there to make it even more worth your while. Hi everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Just because podcast. And I have Katherine Lacefield with me here today, and I'm so excited to have this conversation because it actually ties in very well with what I've been living with, a volunteer experience that I have here in Playo Carmen, Mexico.

Katherine Lacefield [00:01:25]:

So, Lacey, thank you so much for being here today. I'm very excited to have this conversation.

Lacey Kempinski [00:01:30]:

Thanks. I'm so excited to be here as well, looking forward to chatting and sharing some different perspectives with your audience.

Katherine Lacefield [00:01:37]:

Yes, I think this is a topic, Lacey, that I'm sure I feel like no one else is talking about this more actively. It's not a consultancy that I've heard about very often. Fundraising, leadership, strategic planning, but parental leave, I don't know many other people working on that in this space. Are you the only one?

Lacey Kempinski [00:01:59]:

Yes. Can I give an unofficial yes? So, yeah, balance good. Covers parental leaves in the nonprofit sector, fundraising roles, communication roles and operations and program based roles. And it's really something that I haven't seen other organizations doing anywhere in North America and perhaps even beyond with this real niche on parental leave. So I'm excited to chat more about that today.

Katherine Lacefield [00:02:27]:

Yeah, so let's dive straight into it. So maybe give a quick view of how you ended up founding balance. Good. And yes, it's about parental leave, but also I know that there's other types of leaves, so maybe if you can give us a full description of what kind of work you do and how you got to doing that yeah, for sure.

Lacey Kempinski [00:02:45]:

So I'll start with the first part. So how. Or the second part, how balance good kind of came about, and it really was. And I think for many entrepreneurs, it's about your personal journey, and that's exactly what balance good was for me. I had worked in the nonprofit sector for over ten years and realized that I just as I became a mother, I knew I couldn't do the two things in a way that felt good to me. I couldn't be in the sector working, working in leadership level roles while also being the parent I wanted to be. I think our sector, especially when it comes to overtime, working late, late night board meetings, just a general culture of martyrdom, all of these pieces play into it, and I knew I couldn't keep doing that while having children. So I decided to start balance good.

Lacey Kempinski [00:03:38]:

And initially, it was just to, like, if I could find some balance, if I could help some other women and leaders in the sector, great. But then what we realized was that there's this huge problematic area in how parents enter parenthood. Well, in the nonprofit sector, and I think it's beyond the nonprofit sector, but this is a space I know and love. So, you know, when we think about parental leave, we just think about it as this, like, employment gap, and it's like, oh, shoot, who's going to cover the work? Who's going to do this work? You know, maybe we'll just muddle through and add more work to our plates. But we know in the nonprofit sector, adding more work to our plates is just this recipe for burnout. So we will I, and then soon we, as I hired team members, niched down and really started covering leaves and employment gaps in the sector, specifically parental leaves. But then what we realized is that there's so much more. There's caregiver leaves, there's health leaves, there's a.

Lacey Kempinski [00:04:34]:

Just sometimes there's gaps, organizational staffing gaps that need to be filled quickly so it doesn't burn out the team members around them. So I would say our primary focus is still on parental leaves and supporting that gap. So we go in and we fill the role, we do the work, but we also make recommendations for the organization on how they can do things better in terms of, like, creating roles that really help support work life balance and working parents. But, yeah, now we're covering caregiver leaves and any type of gap that's going to cause additional work in your organization and work that often people don't have capacity for.

Katherine Lacefield [00:05:11]:

I mean, this was nice so much because even in, like, academic context, where I would sometimes have, you know, five weeks vacation, let's say, in the air. And if I took two weeks vacation, just like regular vacation, I would come back with a full email box. No one had taken on my job while I was gone. And so then I just ended up having so much more work, which made me not even want to take vacation. It made me dread taking vacation for two weeks. I can only imagine that pressure and that sense of stress around leaving for however long your maternity leave or paternity leave is going to be and how difficult that can be for the organization of filling that gap, especially since most people working in the nonprofit space are already overworked, even without adding on a gap, and then the operations or in fundraising or in whatever position this person is taking. Let's rewind a bit and talk about and dive into this aspect of martyrdom and nonprofits. I know that it is something that everyone in the nonprofit sector has felt at some point in their career.

Katherine Lacefield [00:06:15]:

I know myself when I was working in an animal rights organization, I just constantly felt this pressure and this need to always do more and more and more because these animals were gonna die. Like, literally, there was animals depending on me in my mind to survive. So that meant me. I was taking on much lower pay than I should, working overtime, not taking days off, even if I was sick. I remember one time, I was literally on the bus, huge headache, fever, like, dying. And I was like, my bus is like, just go home. I was like, okay, fine. This constant sense of never respecting your own limits and when it comes to parental leave, like, you need to be in such a mentally healthy state, properly take care of your child.

Katherine Lacefield [00:06:59]:

Like, how that shows up before the process full starts, but also how that shows up in the team itself afterwards, once a person is gone, has huge impact. So how have you seen the impact of this sense of martyrdom in nonprofits take shape?

Lacey Kempinski [00:07:14]:

Oh, my goodness. So many ways. And I think what you're saying, sadly, isn't unique. Right? Everybody has their own story of martyrdom and action, which sometimes we wear as a badge of honor, and we really shouldn't. Right. We really need to normalize, like, taking care of ourselves first. You know, that whole putting the oxygen mask on yourself when you're on an airplane kind of idea, you have to take care of yourself first. And I think there's this tricky intersection when it comes to martyrdom and parenting and parental leave, especially in the nonprofit space, because in the nonprofit space, we are compassionate, empathetic people.

Lacey Kempinski [00:07:54]:

And as I mentioned before, like, we're so committed to the causes that we're working for, and so we want to give so much of ourselves. And then all of a sudden, when this balances against becoming a parent and you want to give all of yourself to your child, like, what's left, right. It really is a recipe for disaster. And then when you look at this idea of parental leave and the gap it causes in the workforce, and if you're just adding that work to plates of your team members, like, they're just going to do it, right? Because that's what we do in this sector. Oh, I'll do it. But at what cost? Which is the cost of burnout, the cost of turnover, the cost of resentment between you and a colleague. Like, there's so much there where I think it's. It's really important to say, okay, how can we cover parental leaves? How can we support people as whole human beings with lives outside of work in a way that still allows us to push our mission forward and doesn't create an expectation of martyrdom? And I do think that that has to come from the top, from leadership, from the organization.

Lacey Kempinski [00:08:59]:

Right. Because ultimately things will continue to get done even if you're not doing it. So, yeah, I think that's why it's so important, though, when you have gaps. So, like, look at, how can we fill these so it doesn't fall on the plates of people who are already so busy.

Katherine Lacefield [00:09:15]:

Exactly. And also, like, at what cost? Like you said, not just to the person taking the leave, for example, of, like, the stress, the burden, but also for your team. Like, if you're gonna be burning out the rest of your team, like, you're just. It's a recipe for disaster. So let's. Let's dive into that question of, like, the cost that this can have so that people can understand that by being prevented, like, taking preventative measures before and planning properly for someone when you know they're going to be taking parental leave, there is some planning time. Like, what can we be avoiding as costs of turnover, not just for the person who might not want to come back to an environment that is too stressful for them and the pressure of, like, oh, my God, I'm going to have this mountain of work when I come back, but also for the people in your organization that might have burn out prematurely because they're just being added on this work. So let's dive into that question of, like, what have you noticed is the cost of turnover for an organization?

Lacey Kempinski [00:10:10]:

Yeah, I mean, I love talking about the cost of turnover because it's so tangible. And when we have organizations that are so focused on moving mission forward and watching dollars raised, I don't know why we don't see that losing people costs money. Turnover costs money. Right. So on average, especially for salary ranges under $50,000 a year, we can say that turnover typically costs the organization $20,000 to 30,000. So that's a significant portion of somebody's salary.

Katherine Lacefield [00:10:43]:

That's insane.

Lacey Kempinski [00:10:45]:

And then I've also seen statistics where in leadership level roles, you could look at double the person's salary in terms of. Yeah, I love your reaction, Catherine. So true, right? Like, it costs a lot for turnover because you're looking at, especially in leadership roles, if they have to use a recruitment agency to backfill the role.

Katherine Lacefield [00:11:07]:

You'Re.

Lacey Kempinski [00:11:07]:

Looking at the cost of hiring the time. Right. I think people fail to acknowledge, especially in our sector, that time costs money. You're paying somebody to do that work. So the hiring, the. The onboarding, the gap in between, if there's a gap in roles, the lost opportunities there, potentially the extra work or lack of work being done, if there's not a leader in the role to lead the team. So there's a whole bunch of expenses. And then I also, when I talk about cost of turnover, I really think it's important to talk about the loss of mentorship in our sector when people turn over enrolls.

Lacey Kempinski [00:11:49]:

What happens is then we don't have leaders in the organization to mentor younger professionals, and we know we have a gap in our sector in terms of recruiting young professionals to come into the social impact space. So I think that's also something we need to value more highly when we talk about turnover.

Katherine Lacefield [00:12:07]:

I hadn't even thought of that. So if we look at the cost. So I kind of took some notes. So, first of all, the actual recruitment process of having to publish your ads somewhere, sometimes just those ads costs money, just like the actual cost of publishing the ads, to find someone all of the time of your staff to go over the applications, to read them, to set up the interviews, and then let's say if you don't find the person in the first round, like how long? I've seen sometimes process where it takes months to find the right person, and then there's the onboarding costs, and sometimes the first person is not a right fit. I've had people come in, some of my clients, or they hired someone, and then everything seemed great, and then suddenly the person got another opportunity elsewhere, had to restart the whole process again, the onboarding so that they're not at their top efficiency for a couple months, sometimes even a year, before they get to that previous person's position level, if not several years. Of course, the lost opportunities of, let's say, if it's a fundraising person, how much loss of donations have you caught? Like, are you dealing with because of that, the work that's not being done? And then I hadn't thought of that idea of mentorship of, I know, let's say, perfect example. I was working at fee lab for seven years, where I had been there, I had been the stability, and now me leaving would have caused a gap. What they did, which was really smart, is they actually hired me as a consultant for the next year so that I can still step in.

Katherine Lacefield [00:13:31]:

I still participate in some meetings. I'm still there as a resource, but they respect that I'm no longer working there. So they actually pay me for that time because they know that what I brought, all the connections I had made, they want to keep that within the organization. So when there is that staff to endeavor, you're losing all of this person's relationships, the connections they've made. And we all know how important that is in fundraising, so I think that is. But the numbers that you shared of how much it costs, like, please, anyone listening, think about this before you don't take in control of filling out that gap. So Lacey. I'd love to hear maybe concretely, like, what would that have looked like? So I don't know if you have a particular example, maybe ideally, because a lot of people that are listening are in the animal welfare space or the environmental space, but I'd love to hear an example of someone that a client that came to you of, like, we need help.

Katherine Lacefield [00:14:24]:

And what did that process.

Lacey Kempinski [00:14:26]:

Yeah, I mean, we've had clients come at all stages and phases of work. I think, you know, when we speak about animal welfare specifically, and you've alluded to this, there's something about it where you feel like, if I'm not there doing this work, animals lives are at stake, and that feels really heavy, especially if you are an animal lover. And so we had been working with an animal welfare organization for quite some time. We're still working with them. We love them. They're incredible. And in that time, we've seen two parental leaves happen. Right.

Lacey Kempinski [00:15:10]:

And I think, especially in animal welfare, resources are tight. Right. And I also think there's this piece around, I don't know, and I'm gonna generalize the audience of animal welfare, but a lot of donors are more elderly where that personal connection, and I mean, this is general and fundraising, too, but there's something about animal welfare where that personal connection is so important. And like, it's the easiest conversations to have when you're calling donors that are donating to support animal welfare because everybody loves talking about their pets. Right.

Katherine Lacefield [00:15:43]:

Number one, a hundred percent easiest way to build a connection with your donors.

Lacey Kempinski [00:15:47]:

Yeah, it's so easy. Right. But if you don't have somebody in place to do that, you can lose that connection so quickly because there are so many other organizations vying for attention, especially when it comes to animal welfare. So with this organization, we actually came in to help them build their fundraising program out a little bit more. And then it just so happened their director of development went on a parental leave. They were able to backfill the role, and then, you know, sometimes things happen where that ended up not working out. So now they had a gap that they weren't seeing, so they were doing all the right things. They had recruited somebody to fill the role.

Lacey Kempinski [00:16:22]:

And so, you know, luckily we were already there and familiar with the organization, so we were able to jump in and support this director role, which meant when this person came back, they weren't coming back to missed months of work, they weren't coming back to things kind of stagnating. They weren't coming back to, to do lists that were overwhelming. They were coming back to a program that was continuing to grow and advance. And so when they, when they did come back from parental leave, they felt valued, supported. They felt excited because things had happened. Right. So, you know, and then we were able to offer some recommendations in terms of, like, how can we make this role a little bit more supportive for a working parent? And it's things that, again, contribute to martyrdom. So looking at reducing the number of events, looking at reducing low return on investment fundraising activities.

Lacey Kempinski [00:17:14]:

Right. Recognizing that just because you're the fundraiser doesn't mean you have to be at all of the fundraisers. Right. So you don't need to be at all of the third party community events. You can build a network around you to help steward those donors, and you can steward donors without having to be there in person. So pushing these suggestions forward, help maintain, like, consistency and support in that fundraising role, which I think was really important and important to the donors as well.

Katherine Lacefield [00:17:44]:

Yeah. And I think just that fact can also be done even if you're not considering a parental leave. But these are just good human resource practices of, I've had to do that myself or I'm always like, yes, I'll do it. Yes, I'll do it. But I have to, at some point, make a decision of what is necessary to the success of, in my case, my business, but also what is necessary to the success of your fundraising department or the success of your organization, and what is superfluous, and that if we remove it, that nothing significant will be affected. I'd also love to bring it back to the point of these relationships that you're building with donors are also based on trust, and if there's suddenly a gap, it's really hard to build that back up. I just did a survey with one of my clients where we reached out to their network, and a number of times when we wrote comments about their interactions, many people brought up, well, we tried contacting for a couple months about something, and we never heard back, and we were hurt about it. And they felt like there was this lack of communication.

Katherine Lacefield [00:18:44]:

So imagine if you don't fill that gap and that person doesn't know that they have to write to Sylvie, because Sylvie is a recurring donor, but she likes having that personal, and that her dog's name is Mister Pickles, and that she loves her dog, and he's the one that has inspired her to donate. So those personal relationships take time to build, and so you don't want someone to come back and feel like all of their work that they had been building up for years, suddenly almost, they have to restart.

Lacey Kempinski [00:19:13]:

Yeah. And I think there's something really special, too, about. So we always encourage overlap of at least a month before we take on a parental leave. That allows us to dive into these questions, to go through the donor lists, to go through the key tasks, the key deadlines with that person, and also understand with that person what's important to them in their role, because it is their role. And if we treat it that way, when they come back to work, they feel like we have stewarded their role in a positive way. And we're able to be transparent with donors, too. Like, it's an exciting milestone that somebody's going on parental leave and that their family is growing. But here's this contact, and you can be in touch with them while your other contacts off on parental leave.

Lacey Kempinski [00:19:56]:

And then I would say, I always talk about, like, the tools you need to prepare for parental leave. And I think this is, like, not just parental leave, any staffing gap, any succession planning. You need to have a functional database, a database that you're tracking all of this information in the. I've seen too many organizations where they're like, oh, you know, it's all in someone's head, but it can't be right. And for reasons or staffing changes. And then I think a project management tool too. I don't see a lot of organizations really using and leaning into project management tools like Asana or Monday or Trello, whatever one you prefer. But just tracking those key deadlines and timelines helps create when there's a succession plan for any reason.

Lacey Kempinski [00:20:40]:

Helps create that quick and easy handover.

Katherine Lacefield [00:20:44]:

Any other tools that you would recommend? Cause I can definitely say that those two are like, number one, is there any other tools that you would say can be useful that should be in place before, but that can also support any transition?

Lacey Kempinski [00:20:58]:

Yeah. Another thing that I like to recommend is so at balance, good. We're all big fans of calendar blocking and putting things in our calendar from like key projects, like just like chunks of time to work on key projects to meetings and stuff like that. So I always recommend when somebody's going on a parental leave is to download your calendar from the past year and look through that and highlight any of the key dates, any of the key meetings that came up. And then you can kind of put that into a year at a glance while you're off on it. Helps provide that initial framework of here are the things that need to get done.

Katherine Lacefield [00:21:36]:

And I feel like that's also just useful for generally when you're trying to establish how much time is spent on which tasks within a position. So even if you're just this person is leaving for whatever reason, downloading that information, being able to, okay, maybe then we can adjust the actual job description. That was a great idea on really getting the actual data, not just what it says on paper, but what's actually happening. I did that for myself for the last two weeks where I was actually tracking. I used toggle tracker, where I was tracking all of the different things I was doing. And I realized I spend a lot of time on business development. I was like, oh, I thought I never had time to do it, but I've actually been spending a lot of time on it. So sometimes we don't realize what we're actually spending our time on.

Katherine Lacefield [00:22:18]:

We have this idea of what it is. So that's a great tool. So for everyone listening, just a reminder, get a functional database number one, for anything, even if you don't have parental lead, please have a functional database number two. Project management tools can very much help distribute the tasks afterwards, know what's going on and then the calendar, making sure to understand what are people spending their time on. So that's great. Thank you so much, Lacey. I think that just that helps people understand, like, how they can prepare. But also, I'd like to dive into many people, I think, already in their organizations, even without a leave happening, are already at capacity.

Katherine Lacefield [00:22:55]:

And I'd love to hear your thoughts from an HR perspective and from an organizational perspective, what can organizations do to improve their situation before it gets to a point where someone's leaving? So let's talk about being prepared before you get to the point where it's an emergency so that you're already at capacity. Imagine if you're going to be dealing with anyone leaving. These things are not always planned. So what would be your recommendations? People, when they're dealing with that kind of a situation?

Lacey Kempinski [00:23:26]:

I think as an organization and as a leader, you really have to have a good sense and pulse on what people are spending their time on and how they're spending their time, not in a micromanaging way, but in a way that can you support them with finding efficiencies, or are there things that they're struggling with because they're spending too much time on? And so this is where that time tracking, calendar blocking, however you want to do it, really helps. I also think it's okay to raise your hand and say, I need help. So whether that's bringing in a fractional fundraiser or somebody like balance good, or whoever it is to fill some gaps or to take some projects off plates, and then, you know, for me and the balance good team. And we, I've already talked about this a little bit, but we love looking at what is the return on investment, on the activities that you're doing. So, you know, whether it's fundraising and you can really see, okay, this event, this mail or this whatever raises a significant amount of money, we need to maintain this. But actually, this one's actually not performing. So let's either try something new or let's just cut it for this year because we're at capacity. Right.

Lacey Kempinski [00:24:31]:

Or let's merge this into our year end appeal. So looking at some of those things is important. But then even from an operations perspective, looking at, are these activities, are these actions, are these programs actually getting us closer to our mission? Are they actually mission aligned? Especially when you talk about programs and like grant funds, you often find people saying, oh, we can do this, because we'll get $100,000 from this grant funder. So we'll create a new program. But is that actually getting you to your mission? And is that actually going to help with, like, employee wellness and their workload and supporting the team members.

Katherine Lacefield [00:25:09]:

I think that's where, like, mission drift is something that needs to constantly be, like, checked in on and especially with grants. I work a lot in the grant making space, and it's constantly, like, skewing or, like, adapting our mission, not always, but to fit into these project grants. But then there's thinking about all the reporting that's going to be required. Is that actually achieving our mission? So from what I'm hearing, it's about becoming more efficient. And sometimes it's not about hiring another employee, which requires maybe a lot more work, but someone that can just step in a fractional fundraiser, like you said, or a coach or consultant can come and just like it, help create some efficiencies and do those projects that no one has time to do. I know myself. I just needed to sit down and put all of my different client work into Asana, into a project management tool. And just having someone step in with me for a week where we had three meetings where he explained to me how to do it, and it just gave me that little push to just get it done.

Katherine Lacefield [00:26:04]:

So sometimes when you invest in, sorry, a coach or a consultant that comes in, you've made that investment. There's kind of like this extra, not pressure in the negative sense, but, okay. I feel supported and getting these things that I constantly putting on the back burner, getting them actually done. So from what I'm hearing, get more efficient. Try to make sure to cut out any weights that are dragging you down, that are not actually advancing you, and prepare for maybe having to place someone or if someone needs to leave or someone needs to become a caregiver or a parent, you want to be prepared. Okay, so now we've done the preparedness, getting, like, your organization ready. Now we have this. Someone on the staff is announcing they're going on paternity leave or maternity leave.

Katherine Lacefield [00:26:51]:

They're going on parental leave. What do you do as, like, what is this framework of how you work with these clients of, like, what does that look like concretely? Of bounds.

Lacey Kempinski [00:27:01]:

Good.

Katherine Lacefield [00:27:02]:

Coming in and preparing and taking, like, what are the steps that you would. That you usually take with a client?

Lacey Kempinski [00:27:07]:

Yeah. So we have a pretty rigorous onboarding process where we try to download all of the information that we need through a lot of the things that we've talked about today. Right. Like looking through databases, looking through project management, looking at calendars, speaking with the person going on leave, speaking with the manager, speaking with the leadership of the organization to understand the key priorities of the role, the key timelines, deadlines, key relationships. And so we map all of that out to kind of guide our deliverables over the course of the parental leave. So whether that's six months, twelve months, 18 months, and then tactically we really integrate ourselves into the team. So at balance, good. There would be one key project lead that would really be a team member for the organization that we go in and support.

Lacey Kempinski [00:27:56]:

So we take on an internal email. We attend team meetings when they're relevant. We also are pretty good at saying no to meetings if they're not relevant to our role, which again, I think that sets a standard and tone for moving forward, that we don't need to be in as many meetings or this role doesn't need to be.

Katherine Lacefield [00:28:13]:

So we're normalizing that culture.

Lacey Kempinski [00:28:15]:

Yeah, normalizing saying no and creating boundaries. And we get the work done depending on if the parent who's on leave wants it. We provided bimonthly quarterly updates just on, like, progress and the role, because not everybody wants to completely disconnect from their job when they leave to have a child. And then it's that thoughtfulness around return. So again, we suggest a month of overlap for returns so the parent can slowly come back to work, so we can support them, so we can give them the detailed, here's what you need to do your first week, second week, third week back. Here are the key priorities. Here's the, you know, like the status of this project and this project, then that work doesn't fall on the leader, it doesn't fall on anyone else in the organization. It's up to balance.

Katherine Lacefield [00:28:59]:

Good.

Lacey Kempinski [00:29:00]:

To get that person and support their on ramp back to work.

Katherine Lacefield [00:29:04]:

And for everyone listening, how many times has there been this stress where lots of work doesn't end up getting done? Because we're all trying to do our best to make this person feel supported, but there are limited resources, there is limited amount of time. I think what I'm hearing the most, and what is most important about this is that not only are you filling the gap wall like the person's gone, but you're also increasing the efficiency of the return of this person. You're making sure that the other members of the staff are not carrying the burden of the extra time so that everyone can feel like this is. I love what you were talking about, making this a celebration instead of it feeling like a burden that everyone else has to carry, because that's how it should be. Someone having a baby, someone having a child, adopting a child, whatever it might look like should be seen as something that should be positive in an organization. I feel like it's often seen as, like, a stress, and it puts a lot of pressure on the individual to almost, like, I wouldn't say ashamed, but it kind of becomes like a source of negativity when it should be the complete opposite. So hiring someone to take on that, I think, will change that perception within the organization, make people feel maybe more comfortable with themselves becoming a parent and not feeling like that means it's the end of their work there or that they're too stressed to actually be able to do it. But also, when we come back to the beginning of the conversation, we're talking about the actual cost of turnover.

Katherine Lacefield [00:30:33]:

I am sure that investing in that kind of a service will save you so much money from the cost of the turnover for not just the person maybe leaving, but also for the other staff that won't be burnt out when.

Lacey Kempinski [00:30:46]:

The person spa 100%. Right. And that's one of the reasons that we're doing it right, is that we want. We recognize that this is a challenge and we want to reduce the cost of turnover for our sector. We want to reduce the impact of burnout for our sector. And so we, you know, with a sector that is, you know, very women led, women heavy, like, there's a reality there that there's going to be parental leaves and then obviously there's same sex couples and all of that. But, like, there's just this reality that our sector is going to need this service.

Katherine Lacefield [00:31:16]:

People have babies. Like, it's.

Lacey Kempinski [00:31:18]:

People have babies.

Katherine Lacefield [00:31:19]:

It's a thing, right? Yeah. Oh, that's great. And Alicia, I'd love for you to share, like, if people are wanting to work with you, want to learn more, want to kind of explore, like, is this the right fit for them? How would they best connect with you? Where can they find you so that they can start this conversation both internally and maybe with you to get on this bandwagon and start preparing for these things that are inevitably gonna happen at some point. Exactly.

Lacey Kempinski [00:31:47]:

Yeah. So the best way to reach me is LinkedIn. So Lacey Kampinsky on LinkedIn. We also have balanced good on LinkedIn. We are on Instagram. Balancedgood. And then you can visit our website, www.balancegood.com. there's lots of free resources there, so, you know, dive into those.

Lacey Kempinski [00:32:04]:

Yeah, I think. And, you know, you can always send an email as well.

Katherine Lacefield [00:32:07]:

Happy to try. And of course, for everyone. As always, I'll be leaving all of these resources in the show notes. So feel free to click them and start preparing because some, like, we're talking about parental leave a lot, but this can be, like you said, a caregiver that needs to take some time off. Like, God forbid someone falls sick in their family. Like, you want to be able to offer this opportunity and be prepared. And sometimes it's just about creating more of the sense of organization and efficiency. So it's always best to be preventing the potential problems than to be dealing with them later on.

Katherine Lacefield [00:32:39]:

And Lacey, I feel like this is exactly what you're able to offer to a lot of these organizations. So is there any last advice or last thing that you'd like to share with the audience before we end this amazing conversation?

Lacey Kempinski [00:32:51]:

I think it's just to lean into this and to explore what this could mean for your organization in terms of thoughtfully covering leaves.

Katherine Lacefield [00:33:00]:

I feel it's also like what I'm hearing is that this makes me feel more excited about the project. You know what I mean? Like when you feel like you're with someone that's going to support you through it, it almost becomes like an opportunity to like, hey, why don't we take this opportunity to make all of our roles much more efficient and you'll just raise up the entire organization, not just that person's role. So see this as an opportunity to grow and to improve your organization instead of a stressor. And we're good to go. So lean into it, guys. So thank you so much. Lacey, this was absolutely amazing. Thank you so much.

Katherine Lacefield [00:33:30]:

I know we for anyone that you don't know how hard this was actually to record this episode, Lacey and I had to go through so much challenging things, but we pushed through and now it's going to be an amazing episode. So thank you everyone for listening. Don't forget to check out Lacey on LinkedIn. Check out her website if you guys are looking into helping out with a parental leave coming up. Thank you so much, everyone. 

Katherine Lacefield [00:34:20]:

Thanks for tuning in to the just because podcast. Are you enjoying the content we're creating? We'd love to hear your thoughts and feedback. Thanks for leaving us your wonderful review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and hitting that subscribe button to have access to new episodes as soon as they drop. All of our affiliate partners are hand selected to offer you only tried, tested and true tools to give your organization the absolute best. Signing up to any of them using our code or link directly supports the podcast, and it's a great way to say thank you without any extra cost for you. Thanks for being part of the community.