Your new VP will be out for over 8 months?
Talk to HR. She won't ever come back.

I will just say that I ended up in this situation (got promoted, got unexpectedly pregnant, realized I could not go back to that demanding job after mat leave). I asked my boss for a demotion so I could work part-time hours.
The smart thing to do would have been to get as much leave as possible first, wait it out until the baby was old enough for daycare and then go back to the higher-paying job and not give 110% like I used to. But I wanted to be honest.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well, this is what you get for demanding RTO. She'd probably be more ok with coming back if she could work from home, at least hybrid. 5 days in the office is much more intimidating to go back to when you are a new mom. There ya go. Have fun covering for her or replacing her.

It is practically impossible to work from home with a newborn. I mean, seriously. Anyone who has had a newborn knows this.

The baby isn’t a newborn anymore. I went back to work remotely when my first was 6 months old. I maintained my (already very high) productivity while working from home for the next 3 years with 2 babies- the second was born when the first was 2. The key is that I had a large home with an office and a nanny, and the oldest got put in part time preschool at 3.

+1. Nobody here is arguing she should be working without FT childcare. It’s the transition to that care that can make the difference between a successful employee and one who leaves.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well, this is what you get for demanding RTO. She'd probably be more ok with coming back if she could work from home, at least hybrid. 5 days in the office is much more intimidating to go back to when you are a new mom. There ya go. Have fun covering for her or replacing her.

It is practically impossible to work from home with a newborn. I mean, seriously. Anyone who has had a newborn knows this.

This. DIL found this out quickly. She was only working from home 2 days/week. After one week, she put baby in child care five days/week.
But, some people don't figure this out. Or think they will make up the time at night. Trouble is, if you are working and waiting on information from the mom at home with baby, you might have to wait until the next day.

I was not suggesting she care for the child by herself while working. But commuting makes things much more difficult. IF WFH, you can take a kid to a daycare close to your house. You can throw a load of laundry in and out of the wash. You can breastfeed rather than pump. Or pump in a better situation than a bathroom stall at work. You can have a nanny come in and you can feed a couple times. Etc. It's just easier, even if the kid is in daycare outside the house.

Anonymous wrote:OP, she could be experiencing a serious mental health crisis. I had a colleague who extended her maternity leave and ended up committing suicide. Tread very carefully in your conversations with her and lean on HR for guidance.

Yes you don't want someone like that coming back craft a way to can her

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well, this is what you get for demanding RTO. She'd probably be more ok with coming back if she could work from home, at least hybrid. 5 days in the office is much more intimidating to go back to when you are a new mom. There ya go. Have fun covering for her or replacing her.

It is practically impossible to work from home with a newborn. I mean, seriously. Anyone who has had a newborn knows this.

True. But welcome to two working parent households. Every employer has the right to insist on childcare for kids under a certain age for WFH. But and a working mom, here’s how this goes. Either there is a nanny/nanny share set up, and the baby is brought in to feed (faster, safer, easier than pumping in the office). Or the child is in daycare near home if Mom and Dad don’t work near each other. And leaving an infant in childcare is HARD for many women. And it makes most of us anxious. For many women, that does tip into them leaving the workforce.

Let’s say the employee here has an hour commute each way under RTO (and is trying to pump and maintain a milk supply). That puts her an hour away from her baby while she adjusts to having that kid in childcare. And that feeling of “what if something goes wrong and I can’t get there” can be terrifying. Working from home for the first month or two with the baby is in childcare (with the nanny, but mom can see it’s okay or a childcare center and mom and go fed at lunch and see the baby is okay) helps her feel like her child is safe. And ideally, her spouse works at home or takes time her first week back in the office, so she can get back into a routine and trust she can get to her kid in an emergency.

There is an evolutionary reason women can’t just drop a six week old at a childcare center, commute an hour, and then concentrate on anything. Our ancestors would have dumped their six week olds pretty dang fast if it were that easy.

It’s reasonable to expect her to come in. It’s kind to give her telework at first so that she can trust in her child’s safety and health. And it gives you a workers who isn’t distracted and anxious. So why not do it?

PP- meant to say that the time I spent breast feeding was minimal compared to the time it would have taken me to pump.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well, this is what you get for demanding RTO. She'd probably be more ok with coming back if she could work from home, at least hybrid. 5 days in the office is much more intimidating to go back to when you are a new mom. There ya go. Have fun covering for her or replacing her.

It is practically impossible to work from home with a newborn. I mean, seriously. Anyone who has had a newborn knows this.

The baby isn’t a newborn anymore. I went back to work remotely when my first was 6 months old. I maintained my (already very high) productivity while working from home for the next 3 years with 2 babies- the second was born when the first was 2. The key is that I had a large home with an office and a nanny, and the oldest got put in part time preschool at 3.

Anonymous wrote:You got DEIed. Everyone deserves an equal chance to be VP, even if they don’t work.

Who has been VPing during her leave?

You gestate, give birth too and provide nourishment every few hours for a year to a human being and then come back and tell us how it’s NBD.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would try to relax the RTO. That's a PITA for everyone and proven to not increase and even reduce productivity.

Then they need to relax it for others as well. Lots of people would have less stress and anxiety if they didn’t have to work in person 5 days a week.

No argument here. In many jobs, it’s a dump policy that controls employees, but doesn’t improve anything.

Anonymous wrote:OP, she could be experiencing a serious mental health crisis. I had a colleague who extended her maternity leave and ended up committing suicide. Tread very carefully in your conversations with her and lean on HR for guidance.

+1. I had a sick premie in the early 2000s and severe PPA and was forced back into my job before I was ready and able. I was a terrible employee and felt like a terrible parent and after four months tried to kill myself. Because I was a Big Law Associate and they said no to my request for one year of reduced billable hours (something that would have put me at a stable 40 hour workweek)/reduced compensation. Looking back, I should have held my ground and insisted on an ADA reasonable accommodation process. But, at the time it was too much and PPA/PPD was more stigmatized.

Be careful OP. You seem very cavalier with “assume it’s PPA” like that’s NBD. It can be life threatening. You don’t need to know the details. It’s better for you if HR silos it. But if they say she has a legit medical issue— assume it’s as serious as cancer and don’t treat it as less a physical illness than because you think it’s mental health.

Also, this is a good time for you to reach out to HR to reach out to her about whether she is requesting ADA accommodations and to consider whether they are appropriate here. There may well be a half day for 3 months, then 30 hours then FT, or shuffling of certain job responsibilities for her first few months solutions that gets her back in the office faster and performing well when she is there.

My cousin pulled this exact thing. She knew before the baby was even born that she was going to be a SAHM and just milked the company for as much leave as possible before resigning. She said it would have been stupid not to because "everybody does it."

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well, this is what you get for demanding RTO. She'd probably be more ok with coming back if she could work from home, at least hybrid. 5 days in the office is much more intimidating to go back to when you are a new mom. There ya go. Have fun covering for her or replacing her.

It is practically impossible to work from home with a newborn. I mean, seriously. Anyone who has had a newborn knows this.

This. DIL found this out quickly. She was only working from home 2 days/week. After one week, she put baby in child care five days/week.
But, some people don't figure this out. Or think they will make up the time at night. Trouble is, if you are working and waiting on information from the mom at home with baby, you might have to wait until the next day.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can you not offer her the additional time unpaid? The cost of the temp and her unpaid salary should balance out, so everyone’s happy,

Contractors come out of a different departmental budget (separate from the headcount budget) so we can’t recoup the funds.

No wonder people hate employers. You aren’t actually out the money, it just comes from a separate budget. You’re not even paying this employee and are making up what her medical issue is. You will spend much more on hiring and training a new person. A few extra weeks of UNpaid time is hardly going to break your company. You sound like you’d literally throw her away because you don’t like that she’s experiencing medical issues. Not cool.

I hope this is unpaid extensions... if it is unpaid, I would just suck it up and grant it.