Guest commentary: After experiencing unpaid maternity leave, I vowed to establish better policy for others
BY HANNAH INMAN, GUEST CONTRIBUTOR
I remember vividly when I found out that I’d be adding mom to my list of other roles — wife, daughter, sister, employee, friend. Of course, I was elated. But once the excitement and butterflies settled down, the practical side of being a working mother kicked in. My focus couldn’t merely be on daydreaming about names for our little one or how I wanted to decorate the nursery. It had to be locked in on determining financial, health, career and child care implications because soon I’d be delivering a baby, with no paid maternity leave available after my birth.
For those who have the opportunity and privilege, motherhood proves to be abundantly rewarding and challenging, often at the same time. Some of those challenges are unavoidable, but others merely persist because we haven’t prioritized solutions for moms, either in our families, our communities or our workplaces.
Maternity leave continues to be one such obstacle. I write this not to criticize or shame organizations that do not yet have paid maternity leave policies, but merely to underscore the significant role that those of us with deciding power have in this situation. After having to navigate postpartum without the freedom and flexibility of paid maternity leave, I vowed to myself that if I ever had the opportunity to create a better experience for working mothers after me, I’d do it at the first chance I got.
During my near decade as the CEO of the Great Outdoors Foundation, I’ve been able to work hand in hand with our board of directors to develop a working environment where motherhood and purpose are in harmony, not in conflict, with one another. The fact of the matter is that when women’s experiences are not taken into account when employee benefits are created, an invisible burden is placed on them and weighs on them long before they ever decide to start a family. When employers exclude an incredibly common and extremely major life event, it unintentionally sends a message: We are not interested in this part of you. As such, women are faced with compartmentalized identities, and physical realities, while trying to somehow integrate career with motherhood.
This will continue to impede our ability as a society to address the complex problems we face in business and industry, because we’re shortchanging ourselves in the long run in exchange for perceived short-term savings. I’m incredibly proud of the mission work that we get to do at the Great Outdoors Foundation. But beyond that, I’m so grateful that our board doesn’t just want to do good for our community; they want to do good for our people, too.
Our benefits for working moms (dads too!) include a fully paid 12-week parental leave, Dependent Care Accounts (DCA), flexible work environments and the freedom to attend activities and appointments without using paid time off. Our team also makes a conscious effort to limit early morning and late afternoon internal meetings to allow our staff to be present with their families during busy times of their personal lives.
These are investments, but they are not investments without return. When we were building our leave plans with our board of directors, we kept returning to the same question. If we were able to offer a benefit to our employees and their families that would ease the transition back to work, why wouldn’t we? Having a small staff on a nonprofit budget is rarely an advantage, but in this case it was. The cost of leave was already accounted for in our budgeting, and slight increases in our reserve and contracting work expense line made the policy obtainable.
Our board recognized that this policy was not only possible but was likely more profitable than any other alternative in the long term. After all, requiring employees to return to work too early might have other negative implications leading to underperformance, or an employee leaving the workforce entirely. What we have seen has affirmed our choice. Over the last year, two of our employees have gone on leave, and our entire staff rallied behind them. Document workflows, departmental cross-training and clear outlines of responsibilities not only made those leaving feel confident but also improved our organizational efficiencies. We saw company culture and organizational values flourish.
Both employees have since returned to work and are thriving by all accounts — sleepless nights aside. While we have been able to craft more favorable benefits for employees, we have not been able to address the largest concern for employees with families: child care. The cost of child care for infants, toddlers and preschool-aged children can be as much as in-state college tuition. We have 18 years to prepare for that cost — we don’t for child care. As leaders, we can help alleviate some of this pressure for our teams by providing flexible schedules, fair market salaries and paid leave.
A recent national study revealed that from January to August 2025, an estimated 455,000 women in the U.S. left their jobs. Rising cost of child care was the top reason for voluntarily leaving the workforce, with inflexible work and lack of office accommodations for new mothers also listed. We as leaders cannot sit idly by as our workforce is drained of the ingenuity, tenacity and creativity that women embody in the workplace.
I love my work. I love my organization. I love my family more. And work and family do not need to be a zero-sum game. I am a better mother because of my work, and I am a better leader because of my family. Having a board who recognizes this and supports my efforts to create a culture that values our employees — every part of them — is an invaluable gift. You can certainly take an approach that requires employees to compartmentalize themselves, dissociating from the elements of their identity that don’t directly benefit the business. But the fact of the matter is that when you excavate a human solely for the parts that are appealing, you miss out on the gold mine right in front of you.
When we value the whole person, we reap the whole reward.
Hannah Inman serves as the CEO of the Great Outdoors Foundation. In her role, she leads efforts to improve conservation, water quality and environmental sustainability in the region. Inman contributes to several local organizations, including the Iowa Nutrient Research & Education Council Advisory Board and Iowa Confluence Water Trails Executive Committee. Prior to joining the Great Outdoors Foundation, she served as the director of communications for the Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation. Hannah received her B.A. in political science and journalism from the University of Iowa and an executive MBA from Iowa State University.
0 Comments