Last year around this time I had the pleasure of writing a blog post about my adventures into aunt-hood, and what my nephew’s life will look like from a social media perspective as a part of Generation Alpha. This year I can hardly believe that I am getting ready to welcome my own little bundle of joy into the world! Babies seem to be a running theme at Ivie this summer. With 4 due between June and September, we have all been joking that there must be something in the water! While I can’t wait for my baby to arrive in just a few short weeks, it really got me thinking about taking time off from work for maternity leave and then coming back as a working mom (a whole new adventure for me!).

From a client services perspective, each person on our team works very hard to meet client expectations and develop individual relationships. We each take pride in the expertise that we bring to our clients on a daily basis. After learning I was pregnant, one of the first thoughts that came into my mind was “how will I take time off from work?!” (What I do is extremely detail-oriented, and I’ve been known to be a little Type-A, so I am not always the best at “letting things go.”) After the first moments of panic, I realized that this was a perfect time to put our team-driven cross-training to work! Our number one priority has been continuing to meet client expectations and providing wonderful results for them. Another piece of this puzzle that I should mention is that on our account in particular, I am not the only pregnant woman! My boss is also pregnant, and we were planning to be on maternity leave at the same time, so it was extremely important that we come up with a great maternity-leave plan!

Rather than bringing in a temporary hire, it was important that we redistribute some work across current team members and take several months to train, rather than doing it in just a few weeks. We took this approach for a couple of reasons: 1) babies work on their own timelines, and these babies could have shown up at any time, 2) for jobs to continue to run successfully it was important for other team members to gain an in-depth knowledge of how the jobs run, including the unpredictable troubleshooting spots that could pop up along the way, and 3) we didn’t want to bombard our client with new faces and personalities to learn; we wanted everyone to feel business running as usual.

As we both plan to go out on leave in a couple of weeks, I am extremely happy to report that our cross-training efforts have absolutely paid off. Our clients have been extremely supportive as different faces step into different roles, and our team has truly grown its knowledge-base by learning more about what everyone else works on. Perhaps our maternity leave experience and cross-training can help your company plan for similar situations.

Next on my list of learning situations at Ivie will be coming back to work as a mom! If anyone has advice from their own experience, I would appreciate comments below, and perhaps I can provide a follow-up blog about working moms when I return from maternity leave!