by Kristina Tool

What can companies do to not lose valuable resources when employees take time for maternity leave? What can women do to remain competitive in the workplace if they take time away from the office for maternity leave? PWA hosted a panel of speakers on February 17 at the Grand Hotel et de Milan and generated a list of tactics that both women, and the companies who value them, can use to continue to benefit both business and women.

The panel was comprised of Barbara Cominelli, Strategic Planning Director at Tenaris Dalmine, Lynn Chasson, EU Controller at Arvin Meritor and Mara Caverni, Partner at Price Waterhouse Coppers – Private Equity Leader.

Questions about returning to work post maternity leave initiated a discussion in which    the panelists spoke candidly about their experiences. Barbara Cominelli explained that a successful maternity leave begins with planning what to delegate, what to reduce and which responsibilities to keep control of while away. 

Lynn Chasson related how her experiences away from work varied with each of her three children. With more than ten years of work experience, she had risen up the corporate ladder and did not want to lose her place while growing her family. Due to company restructuring during her first two pregnancies, she was unable to return to job. During her 3^rd pregnancy she was without work and post pregnancy faced the challenge of getting back into the job market and achieving her pervious level. She started small and actively pursued opportunities through her networks, eventually working for a previous boss who knew that having a family did not interfere wither abilities to perform her job.

Mara Caverni provided a perspective, not as a mother, but as a partner who did not want to lose two strong employees who left for maternity leave. In each case she was able to shuffle her teams and shift their responsibilities to manage projects while these women were away. It was not always seamless but with open communication and a commitment to stay in touch, Mara and her team were able to manage this temporary shift with great success.

All panelists agreed that good planning and outside help were essential to making this work. The discussion opened up to an active Q&A period from the audience, generating more suggestions about what both companies and individuals can do to have a successful maternity leave. Many from the audience contributed to help formulate a list of actions, including Maria Grazia Bizzarri, HR Manager Corporate Function Vodafone. Maria Grazia shared information about Vodafone’s culture of recognizing the value which diversity in the workplace contributes and how they actively cultivate an atmosphere which supports women, something that we hope more companies will begin to do.

With the goals of supporting women and bringing more value to business, the evening’s event produced the following tactics:

COMPANIES:

• Allow flexible schedules
• Allow part time work
• Enable employees to redefine roles and duties
• CEO and top executives must demonstrate support for diversity and set up business to allow women to return
• Educate the employees; produce written guidelines to provide all employees with strategies on how to work successfully with colleagues on maternity leave
• HR to maintain contact and provide guidance during transition
• Make it a goal to manage people by objectives met, not simply physical presence in the office.
• Provide coaching to employees on leave
• Evaluate process in place to manage maternity leave and share success of established programs

 INDIVIDUALS:

• Plan leave in advance
• Decide which duties you can delegate, reduce, keep
• Stay in touch with work
• Strategies to return:
  • Start small, freelance in current field
  • Use professional and social networks
  • Use personal coach to validate your value
• Have support at home
• Don’t stay away too long
• Choose good companies and supportive bosses
• Be clear with your boss and company about your intentions
• Don’t lose your ambition

Women in Italy represent 58% of university students, but occupy only 17% of top management positions. What is it that stops women in their career path? Returning to work after maternity leave is a major obstacle for Italian women. What are the critical factors that determine success? How are companies assisting women in reintegrating into the workplace? What policies are missing that would help close the gap?

Join us for an interactive panel discussion of challenges women have faced and overcome upon returning from maternity leave and what companies are doing – or not doing – to retain talented women and aid them in their professional growth.

The panel will share their personal experiences from both sides: those who have temporarily left the workplace for maternity and the managers who handle their departures and reentries.

About The Panel

Mara Caverni, Partner PricewaterhouseCoopers / Private Equity Leader -  Mara  is a partner of PwC Italy, and since 2005 she has been the private equity leader. She was graduated in economics at Bocconi University. She gained international experience working in Paris and London and is a professor at LIUC University (Master in Merchant Banking)

Lynn Chasson PWA member and EU Controller at ArvinMeritor – Lynn is a Finance professional with over 20 years experience in financial reporting, strategic planning and project modelling.  She started her international career in Mexico/South America and has spent the past 12 years in Europe; currently she is the EU Group Controller for ArvinMeritor (Cameri, NO).  She originally joined PWA in 1999 and has served in a variety of board positions.  Lynn lives in Milan with her husband Andrea and their three children.

Barbara Cominelli, PWA member and Strategic Planning Director at Tenaris Dalmine. -  Barbara holds a Laurea and Master from Bocconi University and has also studied at ESADE, RSM, and Stanford. She is currently Director of Planning at Tenaris Dalmine, responsible for Strategy, Management Control , Industrial Planning and Marketing, overseeing a team of 50 in Italy, Romania and the US. Previously she has held management positions at AT Kearney and was Assistant Professor at Bocconi. She was chosen  Donna Manager 2009 by Aldai/Federmanager. Barbara is married and has one child.

Cocktails 7-8 p.m. / Presentation 8-9.30 p.m.
Grand Hotel et de Milan. Via Manzoni 29, (MM Montenapoleone)

Free for members, €20 for guests, payable by cash at the event

Members please register your attendance in the calendar section of www.EuropeanPWN.net

For guest reservations, or additional information, please contact speakers@pwa-milan.org

On 8 February 2006, the Commissione Lavoro della Camera (the Italian Parliament’s Labor Review Board) amended the federal law to provide for maternity leave coverage through INPS for dirigenti (dirigente is the highest contractual hiring level in Italy and generally refers to senior- or executive-level managers). This may sound like an innocuous change, but what does it really mean for women? For those of you who’ve never taken maternity leave under Italian law, let me give you some background. In general, Italian maternity law has been fairly protective of women employees – 5 months paid leave at 80% of the base pay was paid by INPS (and generally the company contributed the remaining 20%), with the guarantee of returning to the same position or one of equal level of responsibility. Not a bad deal over all, unless, of course, you were a dirigente…Before February 8, any maternity leave time taken by a dirigente was fully paid by the employer. This meant that the company continued to pay at least 80% of the salary (many companies paid 100%) for the five months of maternity leave. Think about it – what do most companies do when a female employee goes on maternity leave? They hire a temporary replacement to fill in for that period. Where do they get the funding to pay for the temp? From the savings generated by the salary they’re NOT paying to the woman on leave. But in the case of a dirigente, in order to bring in someone to cover a managerial role, a company would incur an incremental expense: they would pay the salary of both the dirigente on leave AND the salary of the temporary manager.

What was the result of this situation? One more reason NOT to hire/promote a woman, particularly a woman of child-bearing years, to a dirigente position in the first place.

When managers of human resources, hiring and finance look at a woman applying for a job, the first thing they see is cost, the second is lost work time, and last but not least, the skills that the woman will actually bring to the firm. Forgive my cynicism, but I’ve lived it myself. When I first arrived in Italy in 1999, I interviewed for a dirigente position for which the job description read like a photocopy of my CV. But the divisional director interviewing me wasn’t really interested in my skills. He wanted to know more important things: how old was I? when was I getting married? how long did I plan to wait before having children? As an American who started her career under the protection of the US Equal Opportunities Act, I was outraged and insulted by these questions, which unfortunately are standard and completely legal under Italian law. Fortunately, the British hiring manager WAS interested in my skills, and so I was indeed offered the job.

Ironically, the Italian manager for whom I worked at that company and who saw me through 2 of my 3 pregnancies was also willing, without ever questioning my commitment or ability to perform, to hire me for a key position in his new company just this last September. This was after I’d spent a fruitless and very depressing year searching for a new dirigente position. The low point of that job search came when the human resources manager from a company that espouses “Employee Work/Life Balance” as part of its corporate image asked me “But don’t you think a dirigente position would be too impegnativa for a woman with three children?”. Needless to say, I was NOT offered that job.

I’m not the only one who’s had this type of experience. Recently a friend of mine was promoted to dirigente after several years of performing the same work for which other MEN in her company already had the title. What took so long in her case? Well, she did take two maternity leaves in the course of three years. And, strangely enough, she was promoted to dirigente shortly after it became clear to her company that she was done having children. Coincidence? Possibly, but it might just have been part of an overall cost-saving plan.

Of course, each woman has her own perspective, and each company shapes that perspective through their human resources policies. One Italian dirigente and PWA member I spoke to told me that this law will have little impact on her company because that corporation already has true equal-opportunity hiring and promotion policies and that female dirigenti were supported and encouraged to return to full-time work because they already represented an “investment” on the part of the firm. Another saw this new law as a positive change for the next generation of female managers ready to take the step up to dirigente level.

Yes, we still need to work on convincing companies that women have the commitment to reach the highest levels of corporate management; however, this change in the law means that the Italian government recognizes the issue and is now working to eliminate the barriers that keep women from reaching those levels. That, in itself, is a very positive sign for women at all levels of business in Italy.

Lynn Chasson
PWA Board Member