Why I Took Paternity Leave 4 Months Late

Mom went back to work last week.

Not my mom; she's been a happily retired grandmother for a while now (shout out to LaLa!). After a four-month hiatus from work after the birth of our second son, my wife went back to her office.

Rather than leave our four-month-old son at home alone (bad form, I'm told), I was able to spend some time out of the office during a weekday and during the day to watch the baby.

Why?

Because Connect Gifting is the kind of place that understands its employees have full lives outside of work and sometimes need time during the work week to deal with those lives.

Look - I get it. I'm the boss so I could take whatever time I want to do whatever I want. (But you probably guessed that's not quite my management style.) (And another confession: even the times I was "on" with my son most of the day I hopped online late at night or early the next day to stay on top of issues, communication, and my work. So I was never truly "away." But that was fully my choice and not a requirement from "corporate."

But if I needed to, I could be. I had the choice that resulted from an ethic of flexibility at our company that is extended to all employees.

tl; dr: if your company is inflexible enough to treat people like people when unpredictability hits, then be ready to see how flexible your employees are when it comes to hopping over to a new place to work.

Inflexible companies lose flexible people

If your company wants to better engage your workforce, then be ready to offer up some notion of flexibility when it comes to work environments and arrangements. According to FiveThirtyEight , employees ultimately just want a place that offers some choice so that they can deal with life when life hits (as it always does).

According to some aggregated research, what matters most for employees nowadays is:

• People want flexibility in terms of work location
• People want flexibility in terms of work hours
• People want flexibility in terms of work benefits

So why do so many of our companies seem so inflexible when it comes to meeting people where they are?

Bad companies commit to a system over people

When it comes to flexibility, I think a lot of companies aren't creative or imaginative enough to consider exceptions to rules.

Sure, rules (without exceptions) certainly do make many things easier. Which is why if you can get robots to do something (who don't have kids or sick parents or new puppies or burst water pipes or need to meet the cable guy), then it's a lot more predictable to plan productivity. In fact, some robots don't even need the lights on.

But, a robotic workforce is clearly a workforce void of humanity, which is a workforce void of one of our deepest needs: connection.

So if you want the benefits that connection brings, you need to offer the benefits connection demands: flexibility.

At Connect Gifting we've let employees work from the road while on tour with bands. We have allowed people to dial in from the beach while traveling with a partner on their work trip. People can work on the weekend to catch up or from a camper while in a state park.

For our operations crew (those whose job requires them to pack a gift box in a certain location because that's where both the gifts and boxes are during an allotted time frame) we've come up with tasks that can be done from home while watching their sick kiddo or waiting for a car repair (anyone want to take ribbon home to tie 10k bows?).

And all that required was some imagination and a dash of humanity.

"But if we let one person do it, we have to let everyone do it!"

No you don't.

Try harder.

Get creative. You're smarter than that. I see how the LinkedIn learning certificates you have. Certainly some of those are good for something.

Your employees don't need (even if they think they do) the exact same perks (sorry, but if don't have a child you don't get paternity leave), but they do want the exact same considerations.

And at the core of those considerations should be flexibility, resulting from our shared humanity in the quest for connection.

So offer up (and let them take) parental leave when it's needed most (not just during the first few weeks of their child's life). Let them duck out early one day to pick up a dog or groceries or a massage. If your company is going to fail because of allowing one person a modicum of flexibility, then I don't think workplace perks are the issue.

Be what's certain amid uncertainty

This week, my hometown was rocked by a school shooting.

A day later, my older son's daycare received a credible threat and asked everyone to come pick up their children early. I screenshot that message, texted it to my co-founders with the note "I'm OOO the rest of the day."

They understood. (Everyone is okay, FYI.)

Life will only ever get more uncertain for all of us. If our companies can offer our people an ounce of certainty in the middle of life, we'll create connection that lasts beyond mere perks.

We'll create community that people count on and won't ever want to leave.