Work has changed since maternity leave…

[Bytheseaseasea]

Wondering if anyone has had a similar experience to this… I’ve been at my company for over 10 years and I’m a middle manager. It’s quite a small company so I work directly with senior managers and directors. Before I had my child, I was seen as the person you could go to if you had a weird query and you weren’t sure who could answer it. My reputation was “if anyone will know the answer to that, it’s ByTheSeaSeaSea.” I was also known as someone who would get back to you quickly, someone who always answered the phone, basically I was seen as efficient and knowledgeable. And people took the opportunity to tap into that, and I like to be helpful so would always help where I could/where it fit with my role.

But since I’ve been back from maternity leave (my daughter is 2.5), my experience has totally changed. I think it’s a combination of factors- new people have come into post and they haven’t worked with me before so don’t have that opinion of me, we all WFH now so unless you work directly with me you won’t see it in the office, I’m part time now so I don’t “always answer the phone” because I don’t work every day. It’s so strange, and decisions (some of which are part of my role!) are getting made without me. Some of my colleagues have made unprompted comments like “I have no idea why people aren’t consulting you and using your expertise.”

Anyone else had a similar experience?

I had a very similar experience, although I wasn’t in management I was the second go to person (after my manager) in our team and had a good relationship with everyone in the team however, when I returned part time the dynamics had completely changed and I was very rarely approached by colleagues and often forgotten about as I was part time, people that had started whilst I was off thought I was new so didn’t come to me with queries either. For me WFH made it even harder and almost isolating? Currently on maternity leave again and already dreading going back because of this. No advice to give but just wanted to say you aren’t alone. I hope it gets better for you!!

Yes, I found the same. In my case I started at my office with teenage children and had been there 9 years when I had another baby. I went from being the go-to person to being completely overlooked.

Somebody else told me the best bet was to move on, because once they've seen you pregnant their opinion of you changes.

I don’t think it’s anything to do with having been pregnant! It’s just that no one is indispensable, and nor should they be. Other people have probably had to find answers to things they would normally have gone to you for before.

The thing is when you aren’t there people just have to get on with things without you are are probably used to it.

Are you in the kind of role where they get in a maternity cover or just farm out your work to other staff ?

Similar thing happened to me. I found it really hard to find my place, leading the team again when they had all managed without me for a year. Plus systems had changed so I didnt know how to do things any more. Then covid hit so WFH and not getting to know the new people well. Also I struggle being part time now as not in every day to manage the team and rely heavily on deputy who is full time.

It's tough but I'm sticking with it for now. Good luck I hope it gets better x

I’ve been on both sides of this. Some of it just sounds like they’ve learned how to be a bit self sufficient with you off and that is possibly no bad thing! Being helpful is nice but it eats into time for the things you need to do and you don’t have that slack these days.

The decisions isn’t great, though. Are they only scheduling relevant meetings in your days off and/or not copying you in?

I’m quite forthright and in a similar situation circulated a brief summary of who I was and what I did and when people needed to come to me on the relevant mangers list! And repeated like a broken record on the last point until it eventually registered.

If you work in Teams then making sure you’re proactively contributing to group chats ensures your visible at a time that suits your work pattern (e.g. if you do compressed hours and work when no one else is). Beauty of Teams unlike meetings is you don’t need to be there in real time.

Depending on what your maternity cover was like, may be worth scheduling some reintroduction 1:1s with key stakeholders, in case your cover burnt some bridges by not doing as good a job as you.

Yes I think this idea is excellent ^^

Interesting perspectives thanks! They definitely had to be a bit more self sufficient in my absence.

When I went on mat leave, they recruited someone to cover my post (an internal candidate on a secondment), but they decided to go back to their substantive post after a few months so most of my absence wasn’t covered.

With the decisions, it’s things like reviewing a system (that I originally designed and am still responsible for ensuring it runs smoothly). And they’ve redesigned it without consulting me and presented me with a final version. It’s not that far off what I would do, but if I was involved I would add some extra details to the documentation because I know staff will have questions about it and I’d address those questions rather than wait for them to come up.

Such a shame that other people have had similar experiences!

We do use Teams but we don’t use it very well! Maybe I can make better use of it to help my situation though.