Today I woke up to another LinkedIn post from an incredibly smart, talented, and ambitious woman informing the community that she made the difficult decision to step down from a position she loved to take care of her family’s wellbeing and kids’ education.
Being a working mom myself, it breaks my heart to see how systems fail female professionals across industries. Women are leaving work and taking up the burden of care during the pandemic.
While LinkedIn recently added “stay-at-home mom,” “stay-at-home dad,” and “stay-at-home parent” job titles, allowing people who care for their children and manage their homes full-time to highlight what they did while not part of the paid workforce, many are sceptical about the real-life value of such an option to a job-seeker.
Returning to work after leave is hard. It comes with significant risk of career and professional relationship derailment. The unconscious biases held against individuals returning to work are, unfortunately, still a heavy obstacle to overcome.
How then can you ensure that your leave doesn’t hurt your professional future and is a brief interlude in your career rather than a destructive disruptor?
Reaffirm Relationships
Have an honest and up-front conversation with your boss and colleagues about your need to leave and your plan to return to the workforce. Even if you don’t know when you might come back, ensure that professional relationships you have built through your current job do not vanish.
No matter what your reason is for leaving the workforce, keep your explanation brief but open. A couple of simple sentences will do. Nobody expects full disclosure on your personal life challenges and reasons behind the leave; however, a transparent conversation about your desire to stay on the radar as a professional will show that you cherish the relationship and will bring clarity on your need for support in the future.
Sharing some insights on your professional development plan during your leave might be useful as well. This will send a strong message that you are not taking a break in your career but slowing down to change the line temporarily, so you can take care of other priorities.
Stay in the Talent Pool
“Labour market is no longer a market for labour. It is a market for talent”, says Josh Bersin, and that is true. The same job role might bring you significantly higher income, depending on your skills set and capabilities.
Skills are the new currency, and you need to
- keep alive skills that you have
- add new skills and skills that are lacking in your industry to your arsenal
- stop being quiet about what you’ve mastered
If you are not developing critical capabilities and not sharing the information about this with the world, soon enough you might find yourself overboard.
Business and HR leaders are putting tremendous focus on skills. Vendors from LinkedIn and Microsoft to Coursera, Udemy, Degreed, Cornerstone, and others invest in creating the skills assessment and development tools. Advancement of AI gives an opportunity to evaluate data in seconds and create your “Skills Profile” by looking at jobs you’ve had, experiences you’ve shared, the tests you’ve taken, the courses you have completed, people you know, and conversations that you’ve participated in.
We are confidently moving toward a skills-based economy. Understanding your skills gaps and having a roadmap for competencies development is crucial. Quiet Tenacity can help you with this navigation.
Stay Visible and Be in Touch
Identify a list of people and information sources that you absolutely can’t afford to lose, and literally plug activities into your calendar that will help you to stay afloat. Putting “review industry report” between “school appointment” and “grocery shopping” might look strange on your schedule. But reading it will pay back later, trust me, especially if the next day, between morning exercise and setting up the kids for school, you schedule “Share insights from report with my network on social media.”
Here are a couple of other ideas:
- Podcasts: Thanks to the universe, many SMEs (Subject Matter Experts) share their knowledge via podcasts. This channel is literally a life saver for caregivers, I feel. While cooking your family meals, stay tuned into the last episode and reflect on if there is something new that is critical for your future. Discover more about that. To some extent, you may not need new skills. Some fields do not change quickly. It may just be that you need to remind yourself of how the industry works.
- Newsletters: Know the influencers in your field. Make sure that you don’t miss updates from them and that you share new knowledge from them with others. I find that people who really bring value into my mailbox never send e-mail more than once a month, but it is loaded with insights that help me to understand the industry and future of my work better.
- FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) Calls: Don’t be afraid to show up vulnerable and ask your network for support. The power of community is incredible. Reach out to your past colleagues, mentors, coaches, sponsors. Let them know that you don’t want to miss important advancements in your field. Ask what new people in the industry you should follow or connect with. Ask for introductions, if it is appropriate. People love helping others. Don’t hesitate to reach out for help.
- Learning Opportunities: If there are new products or programs available that aren’t familiar to you, consider financial investment in learning, but make sure to really understand the product and value it will bring to you.
Finally, breathe out!
The hardest part of the decision making is done.
You’ve felt guilt, stress, and worry while you were thinking this decision over. Now it’s time to let them go.
Returning to work might be hard but it might be exciting also. Remember that how the return is handled is typically more important than the actual length of leave. Embrace your new life fully and with open heart, so one day you come back into your paid professional life full of energy, better skilled, and even more experienced!
I’m betting on you.