This week on the Uncharted Podcast, Dr Andy Roark and practice management super geek, Stephanie Goss, tackle another awesome submission to the Uncharted Podcast mailbag. This week's email comes from a practice owner who has babies everywhere at their practice! They have experienced maternity leave before on the team but that was one person at a time. They are currently juggling 4 people on a small team of less than 15 who are out on leave or going out on leave in the next few months. Plus they have a couple team members who have shared with the team their current desire to become pregnant. This practice owner loves babies and is also wondering how in the heck to survive when 1/3 of the team is out on leave at once?! Given that more of the team is likely going to take leave over the coming months and years, this practice owner is trying to figure out a plan for right now AND think about future planning. They asked some wonderful questions of Andy and Stephanie about how to prepare. Let's get into this…
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Episode Transcript
Stephanie Goss:
Hey everybody. I am Stephanie Goss and this is another episode of the Uncharted Podcast.
This week on the podcast, Andy and I are in the mailbag, because there is something in the water. That's right. We've got an email from a practice owner who is swimming in babies at their practice and they have a handful of questions about what to do when it seems like everyone is pregnant at the same time. Let's get into this.
Speaker 2:
And now, the Uncharted Podcast!
Andy Roark:
And we are back. It's me, Dr. Andy Roark, and the one and only Stephanie “there's something in the water” Goss.
There's something in the water.
Stephanie Goss:
Please sing for us today.
Andy Roark:
I don't like the flavor. I don't like the taste.
I'm a man of two worlds, Stephanie Goss. I walk in two worlds. Yeah, oh, yeah, because I walk in the world of teenage girls.
I am up on teenage girls and what teenage girls are doing, because my youngest, my youngest, is about to turn 13. I picked her friend up to take them both to dance class and it was the friend's birthday and she was turning 13, and they've been friends forever, and I was just driving and I was like, “My youngest daughter's best friend is 13, and she's going to be 13 in the blink of an eye.” Meanwhile, my older daughter is almost 16 and she is talking about getting a car, and I am blown away. That's the two worlds.
The first world is, I know about the music that teenage girls listen to and what they watch and what they're into. Very up. I have purchased tickets to the Taylor Swift movie. I've done these things. I'm aware. At the same time, I'm also old. I am walking in the world of an old man. I was recently caught not paying attention on a Zoom meeting because I was watching my bird feeder. And so, I'm watching birds and listening to Rod Stewart, and I am one phone call away from taking up pickleball. That's where I am.
Stephanie Goss:
Stop it. If you take up pickleball, you can move here. This is where it was invented. You know that, right?
Andy Roark:
I had no idea.
Stephanie Goss:
Where I live is where pickleball was created, invented, whatever, made up as a sport. It's real big here. All the old people, every day, rain or shine.
Andy Roark:
My dad plays it. I could play with him. I can play with him.
Stephanie Goss:
Oh, that's funny.
Andy Roark:
Yeah, he would trash talk me and without wearing his hearing aids, so I couldn't trash talk back. I don't think I want any part of that. But yeah, I'm a man of two worlds, Goss. That's where I am.
Stephanie Goss:
Yeah, I feel that. I feel that. It goes by really fast, while you go from kids' toys to teenage crap in the blink of an eye.
Andy Roark:
Oh, man. Well, it doesn't. It does or it doesn't! Because I had this thought, too, I was like, “Man, it's been a blink of an eye and now my kids are teenagers,” and someone said to me, “Would you ever consider having another child?” And I'm like, oh hell no. Absolutely not. No. What? I'm so past that part of my life.
And again, no shade, but I'm like, I have a friend who's in his fifties and he is in his second marriage and they decided to have a baby. So, he's like 53 and he's got a baby and I'm like, “I would not wish that on an enemy.”
I say that, I walk that back. Obviously, people who are excited about having kids, it is a wonderful joy and it's important to them, but I just, I… Oh boy, the idea of starting over. Oh, man, it's a lot of work. It's a lot of work. It makes me tired just thinking about it.
Stephanie Goss:
Yes, I feel that, and I agree. I think it's wonderful if that's something that you want. And at the same time, I think when you have gone through the infancies and the toddlers and you get away from that and you get to the stage where we are now where they're going out with their friends and they can do things, they can let themselves into the house and they can cook themselves dinner, and they have all of this autonomy, and your life changes in a big way again, and you start to have more… I've started reading again, because I actually have free time. There's not someone climbing on me and asking me to do things 24/7.
Andy Roark:
That's just me. Just me.
Stephanie Goss:
Just you. The asking me to do things, not climbing on me.
Andy Roark:
Exactly. Yeah, you're far too far away for me to climb on you. I would demand piggybacks if you were local. I would, “Goss, come and pick me up. I'm tired of walking.”
Stephanie Goss:
No, I did… My kids, it's so funny, because we have been working on kitten-proofing the house, because we got a new kitten. It was time for Pepper Potts to have a sibling, and that's how I am satisfying my desire to have another baby, is, “Let's get a kitten.”
Andy Roark:
I think that's great. I think that's a great way to satisfy that itch. Just scratch that itch with kitten claws.
Stephanie Goss:
Let's not have a human. Let's scratch it with kitten claws. So we've been kitten proofing the house and going through a bunch of stuff and purging, and the kids discovered the baby carriers that I had from when they were little, and my daughter is my oldest and she's 14, but she is very small and she still fits in the damn thing.
Andy Roark:
Oh, you put her in your BabyBjörn? You stab it in your, shove her in your chest and walk around with her? That's hilarious.
Stephanie Goss:
She got it. She got in on my back and I could still walk around the house with her on my back, and it was like, “Oh yeah, I don't want to go back to this though.” It was that moment of, “I remember.”
Andy Roark:
If Tyler Grogan wasn't so tall, I think she could ride around in… I could just transport Tyler in the BabyBjörn, and then I would have marketing support whenever I needed it.
Stephanie Goss:
Oh, my gosh.
Andy Roark:
But she's tall, she has long legs. I don't think it would work, but so close.
Stephanie Goss:
I think she might even be taller than you.
Andy Roark:
I think so, too. I think so, too. I think I should wear a BabyBjörn and let Tyler carry me.
Okay.
Stephanie Goss:
This is off the rails.
Andy Roark:
Yeah, I feel like we're a long way from management advice at this point.
Stephanie Goss:
Speaking of baby carriers, we got a great email in the mailbag from a practice owner who is, there's babies everywhere at their hospital.
Andy Roark:
Just all over the place. Contagious.
Stephanie Goss:
There's something in the water.
Andy Roark:
Something in the water.
Stephanie Goss:
Because it feels like they are going through a season at their hospital and they have people on maternity leave, they've got some people on the team right now who are pregnant, and they've got some team members who are actively trying to have kids. And so, they are like, “Okay, this is a thing. It has happened and now is happening.”
When you have one person on the team, you just kind of figure it out, and this is the season where they're just like, “It's happening with everybody. And so I have some questions about how to plan for this,” and there's some really great questions having to do with, “How do I staff for this? How do I plan for it? How do I support them?” And things like that.
I just thought that this was so great. It's something that is so, so common in a female dominated field, and so I thought this would be a fun one to go through and answer some of the questions that they were asking, because they signed it, “An almost empty nester that is surrounded by young mamas.”
Andy Roark:
Yes.
Stephanie Goss:
Just loved it.
Andy Roark:
I feel you. Yeah, I feel this so much. I love it. First of all, I just want to start by validating the scenery. It does feel like often that pregnancies come in waves. I hope it's not offensive to say, I don't mean it to be, I don't know why it would be, but just in my experience, not always, but we have all… If you've been around vet medicine for very long, you have been around a hospital at least where a lot of people are pregnant together in a short period of time. And it's just kind of a joke, I don't mean anything by it, other than to say the idea that people would not reproduce on a convenience schedule for the business, it should not be… That should not be a novel thought to you. That should not be shocking, if and when it happens. It's going to blow some people's minds. Owners and managers, you would think that you could ask them to space these things out. You can't. They do not, people do not move these things around the calendar for work. They don't.
So, anyway, that's it.
Anyway, you got to have good perspective. Let's start with headspace on this. I do think, when we're sort of laughing about it… And again, let me just say starting off, I love when people who want to have children have children. I think that that's wonderful for them. I remember being a young person and wanting so desperately to have kids, and then having that in my life, and it was this wonderful time. I also remember I was in vet school and I was in my fourth year of vet school when my adult oldest daughter was born, Jacqueline. I was doing rotations, and it was kind of this crapshoot, because we knew what the due date was, but it doesn't really mean anything, and we were I think about 10 days late from the due date, which was good because I think I was in equine internal medicine or large animal internal medicine.
And sort of the reputation was that if you had some life thing that happened when you were on that rotation, nobody cared. They did not care. They were not going to help you out. So, I had a limited amount of control over my schedule, but that's where I was. And I was like, “Oh man, this is a big deal, and what is this going to be like? Am I going to miss this? What am I going to do if this becomes an issue?” I imagined me getting the call from my wife and the professor being like, “No, you're here.” And I'm like, “No! This could be bad.”
Stephanie Goss:
Take a bathroom break and just not come back.
Andy Roark:
But that didn't happen. And I ended up in small animal dermatology with five young female clinicians and they were like, “Get the hell out of here. Don't come back. You get a B plus, just go.” And I'm like, “All right, I'm out.”
Stephanie Goss:
That's so great.
Andy Roark:
I wrote notes to the clinicians just being like, “Hey.” it was like two years later I wrote to them. I was like, “Hey, I just want you guys know, I still remember this. It was important to me.” And it was wonderful.
So anyway, I remember that experience around that time, and you want to have everything to go right, and it's stressful, but…
People are going to have babies and you can be happy about it and supportive of it and deal with it or you can be a villain about it and not supportive of it and they will remember you being a jerk for the rest of their lives and they will tell people about it and it will be what they think of when they think of you and you're still going to have to deal with it. And so, these are your two options.
The first part of headspace is you should get into a good headspace, because you have no power here. You have no power, you have no control. You might as well be kind and supportive and excited for people, because you're going to deal with it no matter what. Just be a good person about it.
Stephanie Goss:
Well, and I think if we roll that back even further, the reality is, we don't have any control over life. I think it's a lot easier in kind of an ironic way to feel frustrated or irritated because you think about the pregnancy thing and it's really easy to think, even though you were joking, the thoughts of, “Couldn't we have scheduled this better? Did this really have to happen during summer? You know how busy summer in the vet hospital is?”
The reality is, how is this any different than someone having a death in their family or getting ill or some other life thing? The reality is, none of us can control life, and we do work in a female dominated field at this point. And so, I think your point is, the healthiest headspace that we can get into is to shift the mindset to acceptance, that we are in a female dominated field and that means there's going to be relationships.
And whether it's female or male, someone's gender doesn't really matter, the reality is we employ a lot of younger people as well, and so that means life events. It means weddings, it means babies, it means dating. It means all of these things that are things that people cannot control the timing over as much as we might want them to. So I think you're spot on, and I love that idea of let's just get into a zen headspace of there are going to be things that you cannot control as an owner of a practice or as a manager and a leader, and this is one of them, and your life will be better if you can just wrap your brain around that and accept it.
Andy Roark:
Well, and again, I think then… Now we're going to start to get into some real talk and things here might get a little bit dicey. I'm going to try not to blow my face off with this.
Whenever I hear people talk about maternity leave and paternity leave and stuff like that, there's a tendency to just put this rosy face on it and just say, “Oh my gosh, this is great. This is all great.” I want to inject some nuance here. And so I just said you should be kind about it. You should be happy about it.
At the same time, you and I deal in reality here. I do want to give some validation to… First of all, I think these are great questions. I love the fact that we've got somebody who's looking ahead and going, “Okay, I want to be supportive of this. I want to be a good employer. How do I get this stuff done?” Because that is the thing. I saw a story one time where this company, and I can't remember what company it was, but just getting dragged through the coals, because their CEO had said that maternity leave was inconvenient. He'd used the word inconvenient in talking about maternity leave. People got really upset, and I don't buy… I think that that is a picture of our society not being able to handle nuance at all.
If things fall into the category of being either convenient or inconvenient and we're talking about for the business, then yes, maternity leave is inconvenient. Maternity leave is not convenient. I mean, it's inconvenient, but so is people getting sick, and so is people finding other jobs, and so is people getting married and moving away, and all sorts of things that are bigger and have life implications that could theoretically possibly be much better for that individual. It's still inconvenient for the job or for the business, but that doesn't mean people should be mean about it or that they should not be happy that it's happening. You can be inconvenienced by something and still be happy to deal with it.
I still think that that is true, and I think that for everybody to come together and look at this eyes wide open in a productive way, we have to be able to hold this idea in our head that something can be inconvenient or challenging for the business and also something that people should not feel bad about and that we should actually celebrate.
Stephanie Goss:
Yes.
Andy Roark:
So anyway, you have to be able to hold that nuance in your head, and I think if you can't, if you're losing your mind, this is going to be a hard episode for you.
Stephanie Goss:
Well, I mean, I think that as a society we struggle with the idea that two things can be true at the same time that are opposite of each other, and this is one of them. The truth presents itself in almost every single time I have had a team member come to me, and thinking about myself, too. Coming to your employer and letting them know that you're pregnant, it has almost always started with, “I know this is not great timing, but, dot-dot-dot, I'm pregnant.”
Andy Roark:
As soon as somebody says, “I know this is not great timing.” I'm like, “Oh, are you pregnant? Is that where this is going?”
Stephanie Goss:
And as a boss, as a manager, I remember how, like you remember how your clinicians made you feel, and-
Andy Roark:
Absolutely.
Stephanie Goss:
… I remember how previous employers made me feel. Even the ones who were excited for me, I remember that feeling like it was my fault. And when you're happy, especially if you are… I went through significant challenges with infertility, and when you're struggling to get pregnant, feeling like you're someone's inconvenience the first thing when you're so excited and this is the happiest thing that you have experienced, that sticks with you. And that feels like crap. And so, for me, from a headspace perspective, I think it's something that I'm super passionate about. Because, when I became a leader, one of the things that I really was intentional about was trying to create a safe space that was happy.
And it wasn't just babies. It needed to be all the life events, so whether someone was getting married, or they got into grad school and they were telling me that they were leaving, or whatever it was, I think that it is within our control to choose to look at it from a positive space, because yes, it is inconvenient and yes, there's always challenge associated with it, and the results that come from choosing to be positive and put on a positive face for your team are just so, so incredible.
I can't tell you how many times I would, the first words out of my mouth, I would, “Congratulations, I'm super happy for you, and don't worry about it. That's my job.” Because I want them to know, “I don't want you to apologize.” This is not something to apologize for. You are living your best life and I want that for you. That's from a headspace perspective. Part of it is recognizing that we employ humans, and humans are going to have life events, and so we should want them to live their best life. I mean really, if we're about culture, and that's what you and I are about, that is an intentional choice that you can make as an employer, is those two things can be true at the exact same time.
You can inwardly, inwardly is the key, be thinking, “Oh my God, I have no idea how I'm going to deal with this.” And outwardly, you need to choose the person, choose the human, because it makes all the difference in the world.
Andy Roark:
Well, this is why I said nuance is so important, because let's just pause for a second here. I love the way you set this up, but it's like… Everything you said, I completely agree with. And also, I just want to try to step away unemotionally for a second and honor the difficulty of what we just said, which is to have someone deliver you news that they're super excited about and you say to them, “I am happy for you and congratulations to you,” and at the same time, you are going to have these fears of, “How are we going to do this? And what am I going to do with all the support staff who now don't have a doctor?”
And I can just tell you, it is naive to say that, “Oh, good people don't have those thoughts.” Yes, they do. Yes they do.
Stephanie Goss:
Yes, absolutely.
Andy Roark:
The fortitude, the emotional fortitude, is required. It really is.
My wife, when we had our second child, her employer was not good. They weren't like… Her direct boss was a jerk, an absolute jerk, and if I ever want to just want to make my wife angry, I'll be like, “Hey, remember-“
Stephanie Goss:
“Remember that guy?”
Andy Roark:
“… your boss, Sam, when we had our second kid?” And she'd get mad real fast because she remembers it, and they were a jerk. You do not want to have that impression on people, and ultimately, the boss being a jerk, it made no difference in what we ended up doing. We're going to take care of our family, we're going to do our thing. And so, that person did not gain anything, but boy, they lost a lot of trust. That was, and I think my wife would say, that was probably the driving reason when she was like, “I'm ready to be somewhere else.” And it was. So, anyway, but I just… As a podcast for people in leadership and management who are often the ones receiving the information, I just want you to know, yes, this is hard.
I've said this many times, I think that running a practice is simple. That does not mean it's easy. It's simple to say, when someone tells you that they're going to go out on maternity leave or they're excited about their pregnancy, it's simple to say you should celebrate with them. It is difficult to, in that moment, take that information, not think about yourself, not think about your practice, just think about them and be there for them emotionally while putting your sudden, “Oh my God, my world just shift that under my feet,” putting that on the back burner until you can process it. But, that's what separates strong leaders from weak leaders. That's what separates people who have great emotional intelligence and emotional control from people who don't.
What's funny is, nobody's going to pat you on the back and say, “Hey, I suspect the moment that you got that news, it was probably scary for a second, but you didn't show it. Congratulations.” But if you've done it for long, you know. I have left encounters and said, “You know what? I'm really proud of myself. I really sat with that person in the moment and genuinely was happy for them and I'm still happy for them, and now I'm going to start to think about the logistics and how this affects what I'm doing. But I did not show that to them. I was there for them, and I'm just going to pat myself on the back.”
I don't know. Tell me that I'm wrong.
Stephanie Goss:
You're not. You're not.
Andy Roark:
Maybe I am the jerk and everyone else is sitting in the lotus position, “Silly Andy, struggling to not-“
Stephanie Goss:
No. I will a thousand percent validate you and say, poor Andy, we had not been working together very long; it was probably five months before our big conference, it was back when we were only doing one conference a year, and we had our April conference coming up, and I very unexpectedly found out that I was pregnant. I remember calling you, and I remember as soon as I found out, when you find out your due date, the first thing that goes through your head is, “Oh my God, this is two weeks after the conference. What am I going to do?” And I remember calling you and I was just like, I had all of these nerves and I was so anxious. The first words out of my mouth were, “Don't worry, I can still come to April,”
Andy Roark:
“Don't worry. I'll be there!”
Stephanie Goss:
That's what I told you! I was like… And I will validate you, because I can imagine the panic that you were feeling at that point of, “This is person who was speaking,” you're coordinating all the speakers, you're doing all of these things. And the first things… I think the first thing that you said to me was, “Shut up.” And I think the second thing that-
Andy Roark:
“Shut up, are you serious?”
Stephanie Goss:
I think the second thing that you said-
Andy Roark:
No, I did not. I did not.
Stephanie Goss:
… Was, “I am happy for you,” and we talked through it, but I do want to validate you, because it is really, really hard. I can only… That panic, I've been there, when the team member tells you, “Oh, I'm going to go out on maternity leave right when someone is taking an extended vacation,” or… It never fails. It happens at the worst and most inconvenient time. That was how I felt. And you were very calm about it, and inwardly, I was like, “Are you panicking? You can panic.”
Andy Roark:
Oh, I was living in a box. I was living in a box in the forest when everything fell apart.
Stephanie Goss:
You could panic now.
Andy Roark:
And the whole thing was disaster, and our company went out of business. I was mentally living in a box in the forest, but I was like, “Hey, where are you registered?”
Stephanie Goss:
But I think that it is, it's one of those things that, as a leader, you're right. It's one of those thankless jobs. Nobody is ever going to… I shouldn't say nobody. It would be a rare person who would acknowledge you for your calmness. I did have a technician say, “You know, you were really calm and I really appreciated that, because I really thought that you were going to lose your mind when I told you.” But very rarely is somebody going to acknowledge that, but you can make the difference for someone and you can create that safety.
I will tell you, that makes all of the difference in the world, because I had a radically different experience with you as my boss as I did with my owners at the practice. And so, I think that it's really important to remember this is hard. It is hard. It's never going to get easier, but it is a thing that you're going to have to deal with for sure.
Andy Roark:
It's funny, there's all these things that happen when people say, “Hey, I'm pregnant. I'm going to go to maternity, or I'm going to be out on maternity,” or whatever.
It's funny how many people immediately go to, “Well, why did you choose this time?” And it's funny, it's like, I get it. Again, I think that's a panic response. It's a panic response. But to me, it's hilarious. It's like they signed up for a class. It's not the same thing. It's not like, “Hey, it looked like a good spot in the calendar, so I thought I would just make a human right here. August is a good time to make a person. I'll just…” Again, but it's about trying to give grace and empathize to the people who are receiving this. And again, anyway, okay, so I'm going to push this really hard here in headspace, because here it goes.
Okay, your people are going to reproduce. They are, and it's going to happen. You are going to deal with it one way or another. The way that you show up, you have complete control on how you show up. Doesn't mean it's easy. It doesn't mean… It requires strength, emotional strength and fortitude, to say, “I'm going to put this news and what it means to me away and just be here and present for this person and I'll figure this stuff out later on.” And it is much harder to say than it is to do. You do have control about how you show up for that person. No matter what, this will pass. It will. You will get through it. The business will figure it out.
And you have the potential here, so I'm going to get a little bit romantic here, but I do think this is important for headspace and philosophy, you have the potential to be the boss who shows up for someone when they're having a child. You have the ability to be the good story about, “I was working for this practice when I did this and I went through it and they were there for me.” We tell our people all the time that we care about them. We tell them that we want to be happy. I'm not saying this is corporate policy, but I want to be a part of the lives of the people who work for me in a good way. I want to have a positive impact on their life. It's not just about seeing pets, it's not just about putting on conferences. I want the people to work for me to be positively experienced in their life by their time with me and with our company. I do.
This is my chance to do it. It's my chance to put my money where my mouth is and say, “I told you that I wanted you to be happy, and I cared about you as a person, and I do.” And so, this is where I step up and I freaking figure it out. I'm not going to let you shoulder that stress. I am not going to do it.
And for me, it's a core values thing. It's a philosophy thing. It's a being-the-light-you-want-to-see-in-the-world thing. And again, but I wanted to start by honoring the emotional experience of the people when you receive this news, it's not convenient. It shakes you. But, the two things that you should think are, “This too shall pass. We will figure it out. And now, I get to be the person that I would want to have, that I would want to work for.” And then you can make that happen.
You may not receive praise for it.
We have a mutual friend, Dr. Bruce Frankie and I love him, but he's told me stories before of working with people, and he's such a generous, giving person. He is a boss that I aspire to be. I want to be like Bruce. I try. He's someone I look up to him.
Stephanie Goss:
When we grow up, we would like to be like Bruce.
Andy Roark:
I want to grow up to be like Bruce, that's what I want, because he's a wonderful person, and he has told stories of having veterinarian… He told me a story one time about letting a doctor go. They had a significant disagreement, and 10 years later, they came back and they were like, “Hey, you really treated me very fairly and I just didn't understand that at the time, and I'm sorry.” And I'm like, oh man.
I love that story, because there are people out there who see what you do for them. There are people out there who get it. Maybe it takes 10 years before they acknowledge it or see it, maybe they never do. A lot of people probably do, but they're shy or they don't know what to say about it or whatever, but you have to put that aside and say, “I don't know this person will ever. They may never say thank you, but I don't care, because I'm not doing it for them to say thank you. I'm doing it because of who I am as a person and who I want to be as a person. This is my chance to prove it, to step up and to do the thing.” So anyway, I think that, from a headspace standpoint, to me, that's the best advice that I have. So anyway, yeah.
Stephanie Goss:
I think the last thing for me from a headspace perspective is recognizing that your first instinct for most of us as leaders is going to grasp for any sense of control that we can. That usually means our brain's running a million miles a minute trying to get answers to all of these questions. I think that it's really important from a headspace perspective to realize that no matter what it is, whether someone's pregnant, they're getting married, they're dealing with illness, this is where it gets murky, and you cannot go at them asking them to have a crystal ball and have all these answers for you.
They might have some, especially if somebody is getting married, they might be able to tell you when they're going to take their honeymoon and how long they want to be gone for, but they may have no idea. They may have just gotten engaged and they're telling you because they're excited.
Our first instinct is to go into control mode and want to ask all these questions and have all these answers. I think it's really important to remember that this is where it gets murky and there is no control from here on out. We can ask the questions and we can support them in trying to give the answers, and recognizing that we can't… Again, we have to control our emotions, because it does far more damage if we get angry or frustrated or show that to the team versus creating a space where it's okay to not have all the answers.
Andy Roark:
Exactly.
Stephanie Goss:
And letting them know that you're still here, you're still supporting them. And so, I think I'm recognizing that. It's going to get murky, and they may not have all the answers, and it's not fair to ask them to crystal ball it. I think is really important.
Andy Roark:
I think it's super important. Let me hit on this just real quick, too, because you're exactly right.
The truth is, okay, I guess headspace here, one last, maybe this is action steps. I think in this case, you have to let go of control. And that's really hard for people. But the truth is, there is no clarity. It doesn't matter. And again, I have known people, young parents, who are like, “Here's the schedule.” And I'm like, “Ha,” from your lips to God's ear, that's the schedule.
Stephanie Goss:
Yes.
Andy Roark:
You just don't know. I mean, we had an easy baby and we had a not easy baby who had thrush and did not sleep at all, and I was a different person in those times, but you just don't know. Then you've got… I mean, who knows what's going to happen? You could have a preemie that requires extra care.
You cannot know.
I understand people, desperately, they want control, they want to plan, they want to make adjustments. And again, this goes into, it's real simple. You don't have that control. You're going to have to wait and see how this goes. You just are. And, even emotionally, you don't know how parents are going to feel. I see a lot of people are like, “Oh well, when are you going to come back? Are you going to be right back? Are you not going to be right back?” And I think a lot of people are like, “I don't know what… I have no idea what this is going to be.”
And so anyway, I know that that's hard to hear, but it really is just true, and a lot of times, you are pushing for clarity that does not exist. If you push too hard, you're just going to end up with resentment, or you're going to end up getting people to commit to things they can't deliver on, and then they feel bad and you feel bad and everybody's angry and it's like, none of this was ever in your control anyway. You were kidding yourself.
Stephanie Goss:
It's so great. I think that's a great segue into the action steps, because that was actually one of the questions that our writer asked us, was, and they asked it from such a great perspective, because they said, “How do you deal with it when somebody says they're going to come back, but then they want to come back part-time or minimally or not at all?” And they framed it with, “I know that that happens. I recognize that that happens, and how do I handle it? Because I want to support them, but also, that's really inconvenient.”
So I think you're spot on with that in terms of, again, it's one of those things we can't control.
Andy Roark:
Yeah. Well, these are such excellent questions. They've got four questions here. I think we should just take a break, and then we should come back, and I think we should answer their questions rather than laying out general maternity policy.
Except maybe for one caveat. I'm going to lay down one ground rule at the very beginning, and then… all right, let's take a break.
Stephanie Goss:
Did you know that we offer workshops for our Uncharted members and for our non-members? If you're listening to today's podcast and you are not a member of Uncharted yet, you should be. But, this is not a conversation about joining Uncharted. This is a conversation about all of the amazing content that we have coming at all of you.
Whether or not you're a member through our workshop series, you should head over to the website at unchartedvet.com/events and check out what is coming. We have got an amazing lineup on the regular. We've got something every month, sometimes two or three things in a month, coming at you to expand your brain, to talk about leadership, to talk about practice management, and dive into the kind of topics that Andy and I talk about on the podcast every week.
So, now's your chance. Stop what you're doing, pick up your cell phone, I know it's not far from you, and type in unchartedvet.com/events. See what's coming and sign up. They are always free to our Uncharted members and they have a small fee attached to them if you are not currently a member. You can get all of the details, pricing, dates, times, and register. Head over to the website now. I want to see you there.
Andy Roark:
All right, so I want to do these questions, but I just want to say, real quick, upfront, the right time to create a maternity policy is not when someone tells you that they're pregnant. That's a terrible time to create policy.
You don't want to be creating policy when someone has just given you this news. It looks bad, it feels bad. People take it personally, it's just not good.
Stephanie Goss:
There will be crying.
Andy Roark:
Yeah. And you're like, “I don't know, let's make this rule.” It's bad. So, if you don't have this problem and you don't have a maternity policy, get one now. You get your employment lawyer, figure out what's legal in your state, what are the norms, try to come out. And I think this is important, too. When people make policy staring down a problem that makes them afraid, they have a tendency to make a not fair policy to their employees. They end up making policies that are unpopular because they are driven by fear and not a wide-eyed idea of what's happening.
Anyway, my advice is figure out what your policy is going to be when you're not in it so that you can be unemotional and you can really think about it, and then do your research to make sure that you are following your state regulations and that you are proud of the policy that you have.
That's my one caveat here before we start answering questions.
Stephanie Goss:
Look at you, stealing my thunder about making sure that you're checking the boxes legally. I'm super proud of you.
Andy Roark:
No, well, I mean, thank you. Thank you very much. It was a, “What would Goss do,” moment. I was like, “What would Goss do? Oh, she would…” And then she would put it in her handbook. She would come up with a policy and she would put it in her handbook. WWGD.
Stephanie Goss:
Okay, so question number one was, “We are a smaller team, so we have a lean staff. We don't have extra hands.” So they were asking, “We are going to have to hire if we have multiple people who are going to be out at the same time, right? That's a reality.”
And I think I would say, absolutely, because this is where you and I get into… The team can work shorthanded for a day, a week. When we're talking about pregnancy and maternity leave, for all of the reasons you mentioned, because you have no control and you don't know what's going to happen, you can have a person who comes in and tells you that I was so excited and so happy and I was like, “No, I'm going to work. I want to keep working, and I love my job,” and blah, blah, blah.
I had hyperemesis with all of my pregnancies and I was put on bedrest within the first four weeks after I found out that I was pregnant with my oldest. And so, I was on bedrest until my last trimester. That was not something that I thought was going to happen or could control. So, I think it's really important to recognize you don't know what's going to happen. We're talking about at least nine… Well, if you're finding out right at the beginning, nine months plus maternity leave, which is another couple of weeks to months depending on people's desires and needs, and so this is not a, “We can manage it for a couple of weeks,” especially if you have multiple people and multiple timing. You have to look at this like a longer term process.
Andy Roark:
So I would say, I think you're right. It depends. It depends.
Again, I'm maybe be a bit more wary about hiring people than you are, but that's just kind of how we are. As a person who has to pay people when we hire them, I'm like, “No, I don't know. Let's slow down here for a second. Let's slow down everywhere.” So it depends. It depends right on, is this one person that we're talking about or is this really a series of people that we're going, “Okay, we're going to be in this. This is going to be an extended thing,” then I would move quicker. The other thing is, I think you and I also agree with this, and a lot of it is in the details, but you and I also agree that generally best practices is we don't like to be staffed perfectly.
Stephanie Goss:
Correct.
Andy Roark:
You want to have extra capacity, because people are always going to get sick. Something's going to happen, they're not going to show up. If you are like, “Bam, we are perfectly staffed,” I'd be like, “You are understaffed most likely,” because something is going to happen.
And so, I think if we've got staffing… And again, we are where we are, it's no shame, but ideally, we'd like to just live with a little bit of extra capacity so if somebody's out, it's not the end of the world. If you've got one person going out and you're staffed a little bit above capacity, then what I would say is, “All right, great. We've got a little bit of wiggle room here.” My first step I think would be to kind of audit our workflows and kind of be like, “All right, what are we doing here? Are there things that we could do differently? Are there services that we could alter? Are there things that we could take away? Could we, I don't know, tone down our boarding for a little bit and maybe not run at full capacity boarding and pull people over?”
I don't know. Just think… I would try to think outside the box.
Stephanie Goss:
Absolutely. Are there internal solutions?
Andy Roark:
Exactly. Are there internal solutions, things like that. Kind of process that. It's not wrong to ask the team. It's not wrong to go to them and be like, “Hey, we're looking at this. This is where we're going. I don't want you guys to be short staffed.”
Stephanie Goss:
“Gut check. How do you guys feel?”
Andy Roark:
“Gut check. How do you guys feel?” And again, a lot of people, it depends on your team, it depends on your relationship, the trust that you have, how big your staff is. But I'm telling you, if you can have those conversations with your team and just say, “Gut check. What are you guys feeling? I'm not committing anything, but I want to know where your heads are.” And they're like, “We're dying. We're overwhelmed.” You say, “Okay, great. I can count on you guys to help me hire, correct?”
And then I'm going to start saying, “If you have a friend, let's do some referral hiring. Let's start to look at those things.” I can recruit them into helping me bring someone in. I can recruit them into onboarding. I can try to leverage my team, because they had a voice in this process.
And if they go, “Nope, we don't want anybody,” and I think that we really need somebody, I may still hire and still move forward, but at least I've explored where their heads are. All of these things, they might impact my thinking, and so those are kind of things.
I don't know that it's a, “Heck yes, you've got to hire,” I think you should run a quick audit, see where you are with your workload, see where you are as far as, “Can we flex over?” Maybe do a gut check with the team and say, “Hey, you guys, are you on board with this?” And then, I really do think getting your team involved, that's a great way to hire, is to have people who say, “I have a friend who could come in. They're looking for a job. I think they would be really good.” And it's funny how you can get the buy-in from the team and they can help you recruit and they can help you fill that spot. I think that's how I would play it.
Stephanie Goss:
Yes, and I would agree with you. I think it's smart to look internally and see what you can shift. In this case, this owner did a great job of going through the audit, and they have half their team who is pregnant or is trying to get pregnant. So in that case, yes, absolutely hire someone else. This is not going to be a short-term fix.
Which leads to their next question, which is a great one, which is, “Okay, what do we do with the new team members when everybody comes back?” I think this is where remembering the last bit of headspace, this is the crystal ball land, and it's murky, and who knows. So, if everything goes perfectly according to plan and everybody comes back when they say that they are, then you might have to face the fact that you are a little bit overstaffed. And what I would say, and their concern was, “When we have extra people, that's when we maybe get a little less efficient and there's a little bit more hanging out and standing around.” I totally get that as an owner and as a leader. I get that concern. And, I think it's really, really important to remember life happens.
This is where I go back to my answer for number one, which is I have almost never been able to say that I was truly overstaffed, because something always happens. Someone decides to go to tech school. Someone decides to get married. Someone wants to take a four-week vacation to ride their bike from San Diego to Florida. Whatever it is, it happens. And so, I am a big advocate for hiring smart.
I think, “Do you need to replace every single person on your team who's going on maternity leave?” Probably not. But, “Do you need to get some extra staff to help get you through the season?” Absolutely.
And I think the answer to number two falls in finding that balance, that sweet spot between being able to absorb it and grow when they come back, if they come back.
Andy Roark:
I completely agree. Yeah. I didn't think to clarify that. Yeah, I would not one-for-one replace.
“People are going out on maternity. Well, then let's hire someone continuously to replace that.” No. “How many people do we need, knowing that we've got this ebb and flow, knowing that we're going to get spread thin?”
You are not going to be comfortable. You are going to be uncomfortable. That's okay. A lot of life is being uncomfortable. Get used to it. That's it.
What I would say is, look ahead, see how much… What are we talking? If you're talking about, “This is going to be a hard two months, let's hire somebody.” I'm like, I don't know, I'd suck it up for two months. I'm assuming things aren't really bad. But if you're talking about, “We've got this, it's going to be the better part of a year,” I would say hire someone. And then they say, “Okay, but then when everything is back, what do I do?” And I would say, “The world will be different. It will be different.”
Stephanie Goss:
Cross that bridge when you get to it.
Andy Roark:
Exactly right. You have no idea what you're going to be looking at. I would not worry too much about this. Yeah, I would not worry too much about this.
The worst case is, you're going to carry this person for a year and then you're going to say, “Hey, we are overstaffed. We're going to need to move you to another position or find another seat in the bus, or we're not going to be able to… We're going to have to downsize.”
But I can't remember the last time that happened. Something always happens. Somebody moves away, they just leave. I mean, something always happens. Don't sweat too much about a year from now, nine months from now, “What am I going to do?” I was like, “The world will be a different place in nine months. You're going to have to get there and then see what you're looking at.” I agree with you completely.
Stephanie Goss:
Yes.
So, their third question was the question about, “How do you prepare when somebody says, ‘I'm going to come back full time,' and then they change their mind?” Whether they only want to come back part time or they are not going to come back at all. And so, their question was about, “What are some of the signs that might be the case?” And I think the hard answer is there are none. You don't know.
Andy Roark:
Yeah. You don't know.
Stephanie Goss:
And here's why, because as a human who went through this, and I was sure that this was my plan, I was like, “Nope.”
When I had my first, I was all in and I was like, “I want to stay home. I want to experience it.”
And let me tell you, by the third week after I had my daughter, I was literally going to Target every other day just to have adult conversation with the person at the checkout stand. I was miserable as a stay-at-home mom. “I love my kids, but I need people. I need conversation. And I miss working.” So, I was sure, and I had told them. And my boss was so excited when I called and said, “Hey, can I go back sooner than planned?”
And most of the time, for us as leaders, unfortunately, it's the other way around, where someone says, “I'm going to come back,” And then they change their mind and they want to stay at home more. I think the thing to remember is that there are no signs. The best thing that you can do to survive this is have great communication. The way that I set it up with my team is I just say, “You're not going to know.” And I tell my team, “Thank you for telling me that you want to come back full time, and I am not going to hold you to that, because you're not going to know until you get to that bridge. So, keep communicating with me. We'll keep the doors open. We'll set up some regular touch bases. I want to see how you're doing, how the baby's doing, and we'll plan when we get closer to that point.”
Because, especially if you just found out you're pregnant, you're not going to know what is going to happen after the baby gets here. They have no idea. I approach it from the perspective of, “Let's keep the lines of communication open, set up some regular checkpoints. You're not asking them to work while they're on maternity leave, but let me know how you're doing.” It could be a text, it could be an email, and just keep the communication ongoing, and as leader, that's something you have to stay on top of. Because it's really easy to just be like, “Oh yeah, they told me they were coming back,” and then it's a week before they're going to come back and now you're getting the email that's like, “Oh, I've changed my mind.” And that's when we go into panic mode.
Andy Roark:
Yeah, I agree with this. The thing that this feels like to me is the question that we get a lot about investing into people in training and then having them leave. It's like, “What do you do if you invest into people and then they leave?” And you and I talked about this before.
I've got an article I really like. It's called Fare Thee Truly Well. It's something I'm proud of. I think it was inspired by Bruce Francke, who we were talking about, and sort of conversations I had with… If I remember correctly, it's at least a year old. But the basic idea is people say, “Well, I invest in these people and then they leave,” and my thought is, when we grow people, when we develop people, when we work with people, we should do what we're going to do for them because we want to do it, not because of some idea we have about what they're going to do for us in the future.
I see that as a root of a lot of pain and resentment and unhappiness, is they're like, “Well, I did this, but I thought she was going to stay for another year.” And I'm like, “You don't know. And she doesn't know. You should do it because you want to do it and that's what you wanted to do and you want to be that type of a boss or you want to provide this experience, or don't do it.” But don't do it with hidden strings attached about what they're going to do or how they're going to behave in the future. That's not fair, and it just never works, and so just do it when you want to do it.
If you buy into that, and the same thing is true here, where I go, “We provided this experience, we provided this environment, because I want you to be here and I want you to be happy, not because I want you to pledge to come back or behave in a certain way after you got from maternity.” I don't think you're can ask people that, and you shouldn't take it personally if they decide to be gone. It's a choice the individual person makes.
My wife was the exact same boat as you. She geared way down on work for the first year of our first child. And she was like, “I got to get out of here. I got to get out of here.” And that was it. But people are different. And so, I think part of it's just, again, it's that… I think we're sounding like a broken record in a way. You don't have this control. I think the best piece of advice I can give is, one, to say you don't know. You're not going to know. Don't drive yourself crazy trying to read the tea leaves or guess what someone is thinking.
I would take it back to dating advice, relationship advice. And it's funny, a lot of times we end up talking about dating, it's because relationships are relationships. The number one way to get someone to want to be with you is not to follow them around and ask them, “Do you want to be with me? Are you still going to be with me? Are you going to be with me in the future? What do I need to do to make sure that you're still with me?” It's not, it's to be freaking awesome. It's to be awesome. It's to be good to be around. It's to care about them, to do your own thing, take care of, handle your own business, and just be a generally good person to be around. If you do that, I think that's your best chance of getting someone to say, “I want to continue to be around you.”
And that's just the same thing, but you still can't, you cannot take this as, “Oh man, Andy said I should be awesome and I clearly wasn't awesome enough because this mother or this father decides he wants to stay home with his kid more than he thought he would.”
That's not about you, my friend. That's about them. All you can do is what you can do, and then you have to go on with the cards that you were dealt. It's the same thing as we said in the question before. It's like, you can't know. You're going to have to get there and see what it is when you get there.
I've got this idea. I think I'm going to write it up, because I've been thinking about it a lot. Let me bounce this off of you and see what you think.
Okay, so I was taught and grew up with this mentality that a problem was a puzzle that I could attack and solve, right? That's what it is.
Stephanie Goss:
Okay. Sure.
Andy Roark:
As I have gotten older and I have seen more of the world, I believe that some problems can be attacked and solved as puzzles and others have to be dissolved. Meaning, they have to sit. They have to sit and you have to sit with them. And over time, oftentimes, these puzzles will start to come apart and you will get some insight into how to approach them. And then one day, the problem will just come apart in your hands and you'll go, “Oh, that's… Why didn't I think of that a year ago?”
And the truth is, because you didn't have the clarity a year ago. It was not a puzzle you could solve a year ago. You had to dissolve this one. And a lot of the questions about what do we do, if and when they come back, those are problems that have to be dissolved, which means you're just going to have to sit with them. And that's not failure. I think a lot of people are like, “How do I solve this puzzle? I can't solve this puzzle. I'm failing.” And I'm like, “You're not failing. That's just a puzzle that can't be solved. It has to be to dissolved.”
Stephanie Goss:
Well, yeah, I think there's something to that, for sure, and I think that this is a great example of one of those ones where time… And it sucks that that's the answer, but you got to sit with it because who knows what's going to happen? You can't read the tea leaves.
I think the last question was, which is a great one, which is, “How do we prepare for all of the extra sick days and last minute call-outs that inevitably come from team members who have small young children?” I think it's a great question, and see the answer to number one, which was, “We need to hire more staff.” And this is another reason exactly why. Because, it's not just the pregnancy. It is the maternity leave afterwards, and then it is, as a parent, like you, who went, “I had horrible infants.”
Again, I love my children with all my heart. They were horrible infants. They both had some health challenges, and they both had severe ear infections, and I was out constantly. As much as I wanted to be at work, in order to support me being at work, they had to go to daycare. What happens when they go to daycare? They become petri dishes.
The good news was, and I vividly remember it, and I just was so appreciative of our pediatrician who said to me, “Stephanie, this is a season.” And he was just like, the really important thing, he's like, “I want you to just hold this in your head. When they get to grade school, they will never miss school being sick, because you're getting it all out of the way now.” I in the moment could not hold that, but then when they got to school and all of their friends were constantly getting sick and they never got sick and they still never get sick, I was like, “Hell yeah. He was totally right.”
And it is true, but it's a season. I think, as an employer, recognizing that. You focus on the pregnancy and you're like, “Oh, this is nine months, we can get through this and then everything's going to go back to normal.” Everything doesn't go back to normal. Life happens.
Andy Roark:
I think it's funny. It's funny, you went back to question one. I'm going back to question two, which is, “What do we do with this person that we hire when everybody's back?”
And then question four is, everybody's going to be sick all the time.
Stephanie Goss:
Yeah, that's what I mean.
Andy Roark:
Good thing. Good thing we staffed. Good thing we ticked up our staffing a little bit, because we're going to tank this. That's my answer there is, you're right. It's interesting to anticipate these things. Who knows if that's going to happen or not. You have to wait and see.
But, it is very possible that a year from now you'll be like, “Oh man, everybody's back and we should be overstaffed, but life is happening because we have these little people at home, and we're not overstaffed.” And you know what? You're going to have to get there and assess it.
But that's basically the idea, is try to be intentional about your capacity, your efficiency, and then think about your staffing. And again, I would staff on the heavier side and just say, “We have to be overstaffed sometimes so that we can handle the other days.”
Otherwise, your option is, “We are staffed perfectly when everybody's here and then we're miserable all the other times.” And as the all other times, meaning the times that we are not fully staffed, as that number clips up, you're going to be miserable more and more. So anyway, it's got to be that sort of staffing. You're just not going to be able to… You might be able to run a really tight ship, a really lean staffing, when everybody is 20-something and no one has kids at home, when they're not pregnant, and bam. But at some point, things change.
I'll tell you, if you had a staff full of septuagenarians, you would have to staff heavy too, because they've got… They're going to have-
Stephanie Goss:
Doctor's appointments.
Andy Roark:
They're have doctor's appointments, and it's just phases of life.
Stephanie Goss:
Appointments to look at all the money in their retirement account because they're counting down the days.
Andy Roark:
Financial planning appointments. Just, people calling out because they just can't get out of bed.
I'm not trying to be anti-septuagenarian, just… You know what, let's just be done.
Stephanie Goss:
We started it off the rails. We're ending it off the rails. It's good. It's good.
Andy Roark:
And that's why-
Stephanie Goss:
We're done.
Andy Roark:
… We don't have whole practices staffed by people in their seventies and eighties.
Stephanie Goss:
Or in their early ages where they're all going to have babies at the same time.
Andy Roark:
Or when they're toddlers and they all have ear infections. We don't staff toddlers.
Okay, that's it. We're done. That's it. Let's be out.
Stephanie Goss:
Have a great week, everybody.
Andy Roark:
See you, everybody.
Stephanie Goss:
Well, gang, that's a wrap on another episode of the podcast, and as always, this was so fun to dive into the mailbag and answer this question.
I would really love to see more things like this come through the mailbag. If there is something that you would love to have us talk about on the podcast, or a question that you are hoping that we might be able to help with, feel free to reach out and send us a message. You can always find the mailbag at the website. The address is unchartedvet.com/mailbag.
Or you can email us at podcast@unchartedvet.com.
Take care everybody, and have a great week. We'll see you again next time.
