After returning from her own parental leave to find her team struggling and her career momentum stalled, Allison Whalen knew this wasn’t just a personal challenge—it was a systemic issue. That insight led her to launch Parentaly, a company helping employers turn parental leave into a strategic advantage rather than a career disruption. In this episode, Allison joins, Ren Akinci, to talk about what most companies get wrong about parental leave, how to support both managers and employees through the process, and why leave isn’t just a benefits issue—it’s a leadership and retention issue. We also dig into the real impact of career disruption on working parents and explore practical, proven strategies that organizations can use to do better.
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Hi, everybody. Welcome to season two of Great Minds People and Culture podcast. I’m your host, Ren Akinci, Chief People Officer of Advertising Week and Emerald.
This week, I sit down with Allison Whalen, Founder and CEO of Parentally. After returning from her own leave to find her team struggling and her career momentum stalled, Allison launched Parentally to help companies better support working parents. We talk about the systematic challenges around parental leave, how organizations can retain talent through better planning and reintegration, and why supporting parents is not just a moral imperative, but a business one.
Prior to founding Parentally, Allison led enterprise sales at Managed by Q, which was acquired by WeWork. She’s turning lived experience into real measurable change with Parentally, and I’m excited to dig into this conversation.
Hi, Allison. Welcome. Nice to have you here.
Thanks for having me. I’m excited. Thank you so much.
We’d love to start with getting a sense of your background. You started your career in finance and then later worked in tech. You and I bonded over one of those companies when we first met. What drew you to those industries early on, and what were some defining moments in your corporate career?
Money. No. Money is literally the reason why I chose finance. I graduated from undergrad, and I thought, where can I go to make the most amount of money with the least amount of risk? And the very clear answer, this is back in 2006, where investment banking was sort of at its peak. I shouldn’t say at its peak. I don’t even know what’s happened to investment banking since then because I’m out of that world. But it was a really sort of safe and competitive and high-paying place to go. And so I did that.
And very quickly realized that, unfortunately or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, money doesn’t solve a lot of problems after a certain point. And so I found after two years in investment banking and two years in private equity that it just wasn’t right for me. And I had literally gone into it with just a little bit of thought of like, I need to have some financial security. I had a lot of student debt. I’d worked two to three jobs through college. And so being able to get financial security was really important at that stage. But then after that, I had to do a little bit more of the hard work to figure out, well, okay, if I actually need to figure out what am I good at, what should I be doing? That took me a little bit longer.
So I spent a year working in education, realized very quickly I am passionate about high-quality education. Nothing about my skill set aligns to that. So I can be passionate in something and not actually work in that space. I did a little bit of more sort of working with like VC investors, got my MBA, and then finally landed in a role that I think was just perfect for me.
So I somehow convinced a VC-backed startup to hire me as a general manager, sort of taking over a turnaround situation of a city. And then eventually through that, I started to really like it, do a good job, and went on to other roles within the firm. And I think I’ve just realized that, yes, what I actually love and I’m good at is building businesses, being more entrepreneurial, and especially anything that requires more of like B2B sales.
And so I don’t have like a clear answer as to how I found it, why, but I kind of stumbled my way around until I found something that felt really good.
And at what point did you realize, hey, I want to do something completely different?
I don’t know that I had that realization. I think that when I was at Manage by Q, which is the VC-backed company, I was shocked at how much I liked it and how good at it I was because I wasn’t around entrepreneurs. I fancied myself a very corporate person and very risk-averse. And then I found myself actually in those situations and could handle them really well and was good at it.
And I think in that moment I realized I want to be in more of this space where I have this freedom and flexibility, but I was actually very happy there. And so when I became a mom and I took my first parental leave and I had sort of my aha about what would eventually become my business now, Parentally, I was very torn because I knew how fortunate I was to be in a more flexible environment at a startup where I was doing a lot of great work and I loved my teammates.
And so I was kind of choosing between two really goodoptions of stay where I was, where I was very happy, or start Parentally. And so for a period of almost a year, I kind of did both, where I was very slowly starting to lay the foundation for what would become my business Parentally while also working at this startup.
What inspired you to start thinking about Parentally to begin with? And tell us a little bit about what Parentally is. Back in 2017, I was running the enterprise sales team at Managed by Q, which was based in New York. I was living in Chicago because I had previously run the Chicago office. And I became pregnant. It was a healthy pregnancy after some infertility and pregnancy loss challenges. And so I was very, very excited. But then that excitement very quickly turned into panic and fear as I thought, how in the world am I going to step away? I mean, you know, at any fast moving company, large or small, it’s very daunting to think, how am I going to step away? Not just for the people that reported to me, who, of course, would be impacted by my absence, but also like I knew about all these big projects and there were a lot of promotions happening around me and things moved so quickly that I thought I’ve worked so hard to get myself to this point in my career. And this is the worst possible moment to step away for three months. But at the same time, I’m very excited. You know, I’m in my mid-30s. This is time. I’m ready.
So I went on leave and I returned to work afterwards and I was just completely astounded at how hard that experience was. And I had the easiest pregnancy, the easiest delivery. It’s like textbook. Everything else that I went through could not have been better. And yet, or I should say, and still my return to work was incredibly difficult. And I think the just to paint a finer sort of picture of what I mean by that, you walk back in. Everyone is exhausted as you walk back in because they’ve been overworked. So they’re thrilled to have you back. There’s sort of this long laundry list of things that have stalled or not really been done exactly how you had hoped. Despite your team being overwhelmed, there may be some people that have a little bit of resentment because maybe your peers took over for you in different ways. And that wasn’t exactly like helpful to them. And the business leaders had made a lot of decisions that negatively impacted my team, not knowing that it negatively impacted them, but they didn’t reach out to me while I was on leave because, of course, they were trying to be supportive and let me take my parental leave with my baby.
And I just found myself in this position where I thought it seems so obvious. Of course, things were going to fall apart when you remove a human being from the equation. Like, of course, that’s going to be difficult. And yet, how come none of us knew the right things to do? None of us really knew how to re-onboard me. And I really, really wanted to quit, even though I love my company, my job and all of that. I wanted to quit. And I thought this is such a big problem because I know my company, my manager gave me that paid leave to support me. But the end result was that it really hurt the business and it really hurt my career.
And I guess like to sort of land the plane on that story, I think the piece that was the most motivating to me, as well as sort of anger inducing, it was the same thing, which is that I could see that it did not have to be that way. This wasn’t like, well, you know, when people go out on parental leave, this just is what it is. You need to understand your career is going to be hit. I felt like this is no one’s fault because nobody knows what to do. My company didn’t know. My manager didn’t know. I didn’t know. But we can solve that. Like there are actually things that we know need to happen and hard conversations that need to happen and goals that need to be reset when someone is stepping out of work. And just changing those things can be the difference between somebody coming back to work, being set up for success, your manager, your manager’s manager feeling like they are also set up to succeed. Like there’s actual things that we can do.
And so I started sort of obsessing over this topic back when I had my first child. And then fast forward to 2019, we launched our business and we’ve pretty much stayed true to what we were when we first launched. We do two things:
We have a career coaching program for employees going on leave. It’s gender neutral by design. We take them three months before they go on parental leave through three months back at work. The pre-leave period is very much focused on setting you and your team and your business up for success. So whether that’s laying the foundation for a future promotion or the tactical nitty gritty of how to transition over client relationships or pipeline or things like that, you’re working with a coach and all of our online guidance to do that.
And then when you return to work, our coaches are there to help you with whatever may be challenging, whether it’s childcare or a lot of people return to a brand new manager, things like that.
And then on the manager piece, we run quarterly manager trainings because what we found is that most managers really want to do the right thing, but they have no idea what it is. And so managers love going to our training because while it’s called training and sometimes the word training can be a little scary to people, it’s actually very beneficial to them.So we see really high attendance rates and utilization of our materials where we’ll literally give you the words, how to have these conversations that we’re recommending you have. You can take our conversation guide, you can take our templates, like we’re making this so much faster and easier to set your team and the person going on leave up for success when they go out.
And so it’s been interesting because we’ve stayed very focused. We’ve now grown pretty significantly. And so we work with a lot of really large companies to help them make sure that the business is supported when parents go on leave, which in turn very much supports the career progression of everyone who is impacted when someone goes on leave.
I love the fact that you use the word onboarding about parents coming back, even though three months probably goes by super fast and doesn’t really feel like a lot of time in the grand scheme of things and other leaves across the world. How did you realize that being re-onboarded was really critical to your success or the success of people that are actually using the platform?
I think there’s sometimes an assumption that because this person worked here before, they know what’s going on. And even in slower moving organizations, that’s not true. There are new hires that have started in the past three to six months. There are new strategic decisions. There are so many meetings that people have missed out on. And I think because people have a history at the company, we think, oh, they can just sort of figure it out, right? Well, they can’t. It will take them a long time. And that is very costly to rely on that returning parent to spearhead their own re-onboarding.
And I actually think there’s a more important piece here, which is the feeling that they get when they are handed a re-onboarding plan, it is overwhelmingly positive. Because these are employees who’ve been at home, oftentimes feeling really isolated. They don’t feel like they have a person who’s kind of watching out for them or taking care of them. They are responsible for this new child in their life. And it’s like this incredible opportunity for managers to really show up and kind of take someone under your arm and say, hey, this is a big transition. It’s a big shift. I know that you’ve been here, you got it, but like, let’s crawl before we walk a little bit. And then it’s going to really allow us to run faster.
Because I think the mistake I see too often, and I did this myself, is you can kind of jump back into execution mode based on outdated knowledge, right? So you like come back in, you’ve got this outdated knowledge, then you start working, you’re actually creating a mess, right? Because like you’re not even using relevant projects or information, or you don’t even really know who to go to. So if we don’t onboard, re-onboard these new parents, it feels like you’re moving fast when actually you’re just sort of creating a mess and elongating the process of getting folks up to speed and back, you know, operating with efficiency.
You mentioned you work with a lot of different companies at this point, which is incredible. I think there’s such value in offering this program because it means the world to those people who are actually utilizing it. And I think it’s a great tool for managers to be able to support their employees in this way.
What has been some of the statistics around engagement or retention from using some of the training that you’re providing and the platform that you’re providing?
We think of our impact in a few different ways. So of course there’s retention. We have, that one is actually a really hard one to get hard data around. So we do a few things:
We track how many employees say they are more likely to stay at the company because of Parently. So we can actually get that data really quickly. As they enter, as they return to work, we ask them their intent to stay and how much has that improved based on their experience directly with Parently. So we do have that leading indicator.
And then we’ve also done a study with one of our clients to look back at historical data and see what that difference is. And I think from memory, there was an increase in about 10% of retention based on folks who went through the Parently program.
Retention is definitely a big one. I would say though, more recently, I’ve seen more of a focus from employers on business disruption and reducing that business disruption because I think there is a recognition that of course that’s good for the business, but that’s also really good for team burnout. It’s good for the career of the person when they return to work. And so we ask a lot of questions of both managers and employees going on leave to say, do you feel more prepared? How supported do you feel? So we’re able to show, hey, there is this direct business impact here.
Of course we track engagement and it’s like off the charts, the improvement there, because anytime you work with a career coach, I think in this major life moment, you’re going to see an increase. And I would say the most fascinating impact that we found is we did this big study with one of our clients where we looked back at five years of historical data and the people who went through Parently were 2.6 times more likely to be promoted than those who did not. And so yes, retention is important and we do increase that, butI was shocked to see that because not only are we retaining them, we’re helping new parents come back. And I mean, you know this, the best thing for a company is to promote talent from within. You save so much money. You don’t have to go through the recruiting bumps and ups. and downs and hiring the wrong person and whatnot. And so when we saw that data, we were like, wow, this is really compelling.
I think it also is a really interesting thing that sort of flies in the face of a lot of the stereotypes of like, oh, new parents, they kind of want to lean back. They kind of want to find balance, which for many people is true and there’s nothing wrong with that. But when you see that we have such an impact on promotion rates, I think that there’s like an interesting story there of these are people that maybe would have slipped through the cracks if they didn’t have access to the support that they need in arguably one of the most vulnerable moments of their career. I love that.
And I’m sure there’s also a lot of value to the managers who are implementing some of the training and the more process on how to manage people coming back in. They could absolutely use that same process, same approach, same organized approach to anyone else that’s on their team. Totally.
And we have people go to our manager training all the time that don’t have anyone going on parental leave because what we’re teaching is really tactical. We have a little bit of leading with empathy first just to sort of lay the groundwork. And then we go into really tactical tips and tricks for what should you tactically do before, during and after someone’s on leave. Most of this is applicable to anyone who’s going on leave, whether it’s a mental health leave or medical leave or any reason. A lot of this is around, hey, if someone’s going to miss a performance review, how should you handle that? What guidance and options do you have as a manager in supporting the coverage planning experience? Things like that, that it’s not specific about expanding your family.
And of course there are some things that we talk about. We do touch on the motherhood bias and the fatherhood bonus. So there are some parenting specific things that we cover. The vast majority of it is really beneficial to any manager managing someone going on leave.
You said motherhood bias and fatherhood bonus? Yes. Tell me about that. I’ve never heard that before.
Yeah, there’s a lot of research that shows that when two individuals who are identical on paper, you know, you control for all sorts of different factors, they expand their family. The woman will make, I think it’s 4% less. The man will make, I’m going to get the numbers wrong. There’s an increase for the man and a decrease for the woman. And what research has found is that it all comes down to bias. So these are identical people. They go on leave, they come back, they have a new child at home. We, the capital we, society, looks at the man and we think, oh, he’s going to work so much harder because he’s got this person at home. He needs to be the provider. Like he’s gunning for a promotion. He probably needs more money if we want him to stay. That’s what society thinks when they look at him. When you look at her, you think, oh, she’s going to be distracted because now her top priority is her child and she’s not going to work as hard. She’s not as dedicated.
And what’s funny about it is it all comes from the same idea. They’re both now, their number one priorities now are their kids. But we think the man is going to take that priority and work harder, and the woman is going to take that priority and be present for the child. And it’s so fascinating because just being aware of those assumptions and those biases is really powerful. Like if we know about some of the assumptions we may be making, we’ll catch ourselves and we won’t make those assumptions and we won’t do those actions that we may otherwise do.
Aside from those biases, what are some other most common missteps companies or the collective we make when it comes to managing parental leave or integration or supporting parents either before, during, or after their leave?
I think a lot of companies are, and this is great that they are focused on the re-onboarding period, the return to work period. I hear a lot of companies hyper-focused on, we need to improve that return to work experience. And I think what they miss or don’t fully appreciate is how important the pre-leave period is. Because a lot of the problems that happen on return to work are actually a result of missteps before someone goes on leave. So it’s bad coverage planning, not resetting goals, not having open communication about priorities of the individual or the team, missing a performance review. There’s all of these things that happen.
Now, of course, there are challenges in the return to work experience that we can’t see ahead of time, like medical challenges or parenting or there’s all sorts of things that can come up. And so it is really important to focus on that return to work experience. But I wish that companies knew how they can eliminate so many of the challenges in return to work if they invest upfront to set people up for success before they go on leave.
I think there’s also just a lot of fear. So a lot ofmanagers really are scared. Like they don’t want to offend someone. They don’t want to do the wrong thing. They do a lot of things that they think are the right things that are actually harmful, like assuming that a new mom doesn’t want to travel because she’s breastfeeding. And so they’ll say, I’m not going to offer this conference opportunity up to so-and-so because, I mean, she has a three-month-old at home and I don’t want her to feel pressured. Like I don’t want her – you know, it’s coming from this good place of, oh, I know she’s really struggling right now and she won’t want to leave her baby. She’s mentioned that to me. So I’m not even going to give her this option.
And I totally get that because it’s really hard. And I’ve been in this position many, many times at Parently as well as previously of like new parents and how do I present an opportunity to them in a way that they really understand they have agency. It is totally their decision. And I think that that’s really important because, you know, when I had my first child, I was breastfeeding and pumping at work, and I really did not want to travel all the time, but I did want to travel. And I wanted to make those choices. And when I traveled, I wanted to only be away for three nights maximum. And so I just think it’s really important to let the individual make that decision.
And I think a lot of managers mess that up because they’re scared and they want to do the right thing and they want to be supportive. Because I think at the end of the day, when people struggle and when they quit, which is really like the worst outcome, right? Oftentimes it really comes down to that personal relationship with their manager. And that’s really tough because I think managers, they play such a critical role, and that’s a hard thing for companies to fix when it goes wrong.
And on the other end of that question, you work with big names like Zoom and PWC. What are some best practices you’ve seen that other companies could learn from? I think the partnership with HR is just absolutely critical because there are so many things that we at Parently do really well. We can take so much of this on our plate, but we can’t do it all. So when I think about our client relationships like those and some others that we have in our sort of book of business, we are so thankful to those HR folks we work with, whether it’s in benefits or L&D or even ERG leaders, because there has to be a strong culture at the organization to support what we’re teaching to and to support what we’re doing.
Because at the end of the day, people are quitting because of their managers, because of cultural issues within the firm. And then, of course, they’re quitting for certain things that we can solve for, like the business disruption and the tough challenges within their role that we can actually solve a lot of that, but we can’t do it all. And so I think there’s the HR commitment. I think there’s also a lot to be said about having really strong policies. So all of our clients have, I would say, good to very generous paid leave policies. That is absolutely critical.
And so while I talk a lot about the challenges of leave, it doesn’t mean that people shouldn’t be taking it. What is good to very generous? What is that range? I’m sure some numbers popped up in your mind when you said that. Yeah. I mean, I think so. In the U.S., I would say most of our clients give three to four months of bonding leave. And then on top of that, they provide medical leave if you’re giving birth. And so in those organizations, fathers are taking a significant amount of time, which is unlike most of the companies in the U.S. Like most companies in the U.S., I don’t remember the exact stats, but there are very few men that have access to that level of paid leave.
And so that’s another thing that I think our clients have really done a great job at is we really only work with companies that have, for example, like 12 weeks paid leave or more. They need to be having those paid leave experiences or those policies in place first or in parallel to what we do. And I really believe that that’s critical because, yes, it’s challenging to take leave, but like people will quit based on your policy. And so it’s really important to have that policy first.
And that’s because they’re being forced into staying home because you don’t offer that leave. Is that why people are quitting? People will quit to go find another job or they’ll quit because they’re angry. So what I see and we actually did a big survey last summer of 3,000 women in the United States who had recently returned from paid parental leave, partially or fully paid. 94% of them said that if they were interviewing today, and this includes women who are done having children, they would consider the company’s paid leave policy.
And people do quit. Like they decide to quit when they find out when they enter that stage where they’re thinking about having a baby and they’re like, I need to go find a place that’s going to give me a paid leave policy that is supportive. And so I do really believe that it’s incredibly critical for every company to provide that.
How about those businesses? And I’m sure this is not any of our listeners, but how about the businesses that see parentalleave as a burden to the business or a cost to the business rather than a strategic opportunity to engage talent, to retrain managers, and to really just invest in people that are in senior roles or even in individual contributor roles that are high talent that are taking this time to build families. I mean, I actually think it’s healthy to discuss that because, yeah, leave can be a burden. I don’t think that that’s like a bad thing to say. And in fact, leave is a burden when you’re not planning for it, right? And that’s kind of like when I talk about all the problems, that is creating a burden.
So I don’t think that that’s even a bad way. I think what you’re getting at here is that there are some companies that don’t see the upside. Like they don’t see the value overall. And I totally agree that there are people who feel that way. I always say like, okay, well, what’s the alternative, right? Someone’s going to have a baby and come back to work in a week? Like they’re not going to do a good job. This person is having a baby. They’re going to need time to recover, to focus on the child.
I think that there’s, it’s not even what I think. There’s a lot of research that shows that the longer term, and by longer term, I mean like one year, it’s not even that long term, but the longer term impacts of receiving paid leave are overwhelmingly beneficial for the parents and for the employer. And we even have like a free, it’s like a template we have on our website that is meant to help people make the case to get better paid leave that cites all of this research about why is it so good.
I think when it becomes a burden is when companies roll out more generous paid leave policies. Now all of a sudden you’ve got more people taking leave, fathers, mothers, and they’re taking longer time away. And then it does become a burden if you haven’t thought through, well, how do we actually support this? And there are a lot of ways to answer that question. Some of which include working with us. Others include, you know, there are companies that say, hey, we are going to have a process to request to bring in a backfill. Because for some roles, you actually do need a human to backfill those. For other roles, you can pause some of the work. You can have others, you know, take over pieces of it. But you kind of have to address it. Like it’s going to happen. Even if you don’t offer paid leave, people are going to take leave. So like that’s still a burden, quote unquote, unless you’re actually addressing the sort of implications of having an employee step out of work.
So I don’t think that that’s a bad question at all. I think that’s actually kind of at the heart of all of this, which is like it can be very negative if we’re not talking about the things we’re scared to talk about, which is how it can be a burden. And then the counters to that is like, okay, and if we do this well, it’s not just about solving problems. It’s also about setting the business up for ongoing success by giving people leave that makes them come back even better than they were before. By offering stretch opportunities to people who are covering for that work when that person is out. Maybe it means, and we do this a lot at Parentally, where someone goes on leave and we accelerate our hiring. So we hire someone earlier and this is a great onboarding experience for them to cover some of the high priority work.
So there are a lot of upsides. We accelerate a lot of business milestones when we find out that someone is pregnant. And all of a sudden, oh my gosh, we can’t just wait until a year to do this. We’ve got to figure out what matters most now and get it done now. There are all sorts of ways that when you treat this experience with intention, you can not just solve problems, but make the business better and stronger. And I would say even more so for small companies where like I can’t afford to not document what people are doing because they’re going to be going out on leave and I’m a small business and otherwise we probably wouldn’t do that.
So there’s all sorts of reasons why I think that treating this experience with more of like a positive planning, intentional angle can be incredibly positive for the business and of course for the individual going on leave.
I like your approach to this because it feels very business oriented and commercial mindset. And I’m sure it’s because of your finance background and your VC background. In the earlier stages of Parentally, what were some of the learning opportunities for you? Like how did you come up with this frame? How did you learn to give this advice on how to reframe opportunities for people going on leave and how to approach things like you said, accelerate milestones. I think that’s a great idea. So you’re basically doing the opposite of what people think will happen if somebody goes on leave. It’s that milestones are going to have to wait until that person come back. But you’re saying actually accelerate them, prioritize them and get them done, which is such a fresh take on things. How did you get to this point where you have the knowledge to be able to advise other people?
Yeah, I mean, I think even when I was ideating on this idea back in the day, I have a co-founder and she and I were talking about this and we looked around and we said, you know, gosh, companies are buying so many things that don’t actually directly improve the business, whether it is a gym membership or whatever. And not to say that they’re bad, buteveryone can claim, oh, I’ll make the people happier and then those happier people will make your business better, right? But for us, we were like, literally what we’re talking about is help plan to reduce business disruption. Like everything that we do is so fundamentally about the business continuing to do well when somebody steps away. And it’s almost like a side benefit that, hey, people get to work with a career coach and they’re so in love with the experience that they feel like this is a benefit and this wonderful thing they get to do when kind of secretly, or I guess not so secretly, we’re actually just like solving business problems that then help the individual. So that’s always been from day one, we were like, this makes so much sense because it is so directly aligned to business critical activities that it’s like a no brainer.
And then learning these things over time, I mean, we’ve worked with over 5,000 people through leave, you learn a lot. And so it’s very much an iterative process. And I think even today we continue to learn, but we’re learning things on the margins, right? Of like when people go through just like a horrendous loss of their two week old or whatnot, and they’re going through like, how should a manager, things that aren’t super common, but we realize when people in our network and people who are going through our program go through these things, we’re continuing to learn the best ways to do this.
And then of course, we’re like working very closely, reading all the research. We’ve just started to do some collaboration with the University of Minnesota. But at the end of the day, so much of what we do is based on management best practices, right? Like it’s not even as much about like what research says about new parents. It’s much more about management best practices of how do you manage someone through a tough experience when you also need to deliver for the business. There’s two really important stakeholders here, the business and the new parent.
That’s such a good point you made about the fact that a lot of the perks or benefits offered are not really to solve any business problems. It’s really actually just a perk or a benefit that’s offered. Do you envision parentally expanding to support any type of leave or do you think you’re going to just focus on parental leave?
So we have started to dip our toes a little bit. We have one client that we’re supporting sabbaticals with them, which is a pretty fun one, right? Like there’s nothing sad that has happened. It’s not like a cancer diagnosis or a mental health leave or anything. It’s like, it’s a very straightforward thing. You know what’s coming, you can plan for it. So we’re dipping our toes in it. We would have to change our name if we actually went in and did this because our name is very much linked to parental leave. I would say let’s see, TBD. I’m very torn because my passion is very much in this sort of parental leave parenting space. I also recognize that a lot of what we do is so helpful and applicable to others.
I think whatever we do, I swore when I started this business that I wouldn’t do things just to make more top line revenue. Like it would need to make sense. And I think my hesitation in supporting other leaves is at our core, we are business planning career coaching and manager training. I think with some of these other leaves, what you need in that moment may not be what we offer. It may be that you need a therapist, right? And so like we would have to study this space and if it made sense, if we have that expertise, then maybe, but it’s not on our roadmap today.
You mentioned you were not focused on the top line as much. What are you focused on? And I think this came across when you and I chatted earlier and I asked you about the cost structure and obviously that may change in the future, but tell us a little bit about that because I thought that was very interesting and not very in line with how other benefits or HR providers in that space approach it.
I’m used to the per employee per month business model where even if only five of your employees are utilizing the benefit, you still have to pay for your entire headcount, which actually makes it very unachievable for us to be able to work with other providers because of the cost structure. But yours is different. Tell us a little bit about that and why you didn’t lead with that.
I definitely want more revenue. So it’s not that I don’t care. It’s that I think that a lot of startups get into a lot of trouble when they chase anything, right? Where it’s like, here’s a one-off thing from a big company and then you get distracted. And so, yes, we get some questions to move into other spaces and it doesn’t make sense unless it’s a thing we want to scale.
But our actual pricing model, so the way that we work, one, we almost always start with pilots. So we’re brand new. No one does what we do. This is not like a budget that a company has. And so we have a little bit more to prove in terms of our ROI and what we can actually, the value we can bring to your business. And so most companies will come to us and start with a pilot model. They’ll pick a set number of seats. It’s $2,500 per individualwho goes through the program. That includes the manager training that’s baked into that price. And so the way that we like to start working with companies is we say, okay, you’re gonna do a pilot with 20 coaching seats that costs this amount. And then for that, we’ll do two manager trainings as well. And then we’re gonna pull up four to five months in and we’re gonna come back to you and show you what your employees said.
So we’re giving them, surveying your employees, getting feedback on ROI, we’re getting their testimonials, we’re asking them, do you wanna give feedback and include your name on it in case HR wants to come back and ask you any more questions? And so what’s nice about that is I think for a lot of folks in HR, it’s like, this is not the moment in time where you wanna be sticking your neck out and trying something totally new and committing to like a major budget spend. And so we like to make this as easy as possible to just try it, see the feedback, and then let your own employees make the business case for you.
Because then you go to finance and you say, okay, great, look at what our employees are saying the impact was. Because they all say the same things. It’s all about business continuity. It’s all about how their teams are better prepared and are performing better. That is what people are saying over and over and over again. And imagine if you’re in HR and you’re going to finance and you have that business case with that data set and like the feedback, it’s so much easier than if we’re like, okay, here’s this flat price.
And I think even in steady state, so after pilot, we move into, okay, we’re a full offering, typically we’re offered as a benefit, but it ultimately is priced based off of how many people are gonna go through coaching. So even when we give a fixed price, there’s an expectation that there’s a certain number of seats. And if you don’t hit that, you’re gonna get those credits rolled into the next year. So it’s never a per employee per month, flat user or lose it type of a model. It’s always based on how many people are actually going through coaching and getting that benefit.
And I assume that setup was intentional. Did you lead with that? Is it based on your own experience? Was it research? Was it because you wanted to provide this? Like what was the business decision behind that?
No, I think the reason was when we were brand new, people want to feel like you’re getting value. And there was a lot of hesitancy to pay. There’s a lot of uncertainty around, well, how many people even go out on leave every year? Of those, how many would even use this? I mean, we’re now almost six years in. There was an interesting tipping point maybe like two or three years ago where our larger clients said, okay, this is awesome, but we do need a fixed price. Like we need to actually submit a PO and we need to know this and you can’t charge us more or less.
We do have that model of saying, well, there’s a band here where if we don’t hit it or if we go way over it, we’re gonna just go into the next year. But people really like feeling like they get what they pay for. And it keeps us honest too. It’s like a win-win when companies are only paying for the things that they’re using. And I suspect that part of this has to do with the fact that what we do is not applicable to every person. I would argue every person at the company will get the benefit of it because you’re not gonna be asked to do a million and one things because we’re gonna work with this person going on leave to say, that’s too much, right?
So like, I think everyone benefits from this, but the actual people who go through coaching, it’s a very small, you know, it’s three to 5% of your organization per year. And so I do think it’s important that HR buyers feel like, okay, I’m only paying for the people that actually use this.
As you said, you’ve been doing this for six years. What are some of the biggest learnings for you as a founder and a leader leading your own team? What’s advice that you wish you had given yourself six years ago to make things a little bit easier?
Gosh, I mean, I think hiring is just like so difficult. And I knew that coming in. I think what I didn’t know is how much harder that is when it’s your own business, specifically like when you have to let people go, it feels almost like the end of the world when it’s your own business. And it’s way worse than when you’re just an employee at a company and you’re, you know, having to deal with layoffs. That was really hard. And I don’t know if there’s even a big learning there, a big takeaway. It’s just something that’s been really surprising.
I think that the big learning or the big thing that I’m sort of struggling with and ideating on right now is what we do is sold as a benefit, but we’re not really a benefit, right? And so when you think about the employees going on leave and all their managers, those are the people that need what we do. But when we are purchased by a benefits team, there’s a disconnect there. Sometimes the benefits team has no idea that this is a problem because people aren’t like, why would you go tell benefits if you’re struggling with returning to work? Like that doesn’t make any sense, right?
And so I think that’s at the crux of our unlock as a business. We’ll be figuring out within an organization who cares about this, who should be bought in on this, who sees the problem, and then ultimately who should the buyer be.And I think it can be benefits. I just think it’s kind of an odd fit sometimes because we provide our service through career coaching, but like it really is kind of like ultimately serving the business to have as many people as possible work with us. So it’s just a little bit of a weird situation for us to try and navigate.
And looking ahead as we wrap up, how do you see the conversation around caregiving and careers in general evolving in the next five to 10 years? And where does parental leave fit into that vision?
Okay, so I’m going to answer this question more broadly and like caregiving. I would really hope that not so much falls on companies. Like I think today we’re in a really tough spot in the United States where there’s a lack of infrastructure around caregiving and even parental leave that then trickles down to an employer to try and figure out, which is a really tough spot for the employer to be in. And my personal opinion is I think it’s kind of like an impossible ask.
And what I mean specifically is oftentimes people are going to employers and saying, well, what are you going to do for childcare? I mean, it is a major problem. And I don’t believe that one employer is going to be able, I mean, I guess you could just pay me more, right? Like maybe it’s just paying more, but that doesn’t still solve the fact that I can’t find a daycare near me that has quality childcare and has open spots, right? So it’s like actually a pretty complicated problem.
And I’m hopeful that in the next five to 10 years, that is no longer a conversation in like the future of work. And it’s more of, we have systems set up with free pre-K and, you know, I don’t know, the better systems set up that way.
I also think with parental leave, hopefully it goes in that direction as well, where like the employer is not having to decide on, do we offer paid leave or not? And that that is just something that everyone gets and it’s supported through the government entities. And companies are instead reallocating the money that they used to spend to pay those people’s salaries and saying, okay, we’re going to use this to bring in backfills. Or of course I want parentally to be brought in. But like, even if it’s just thinking about, we’re going to use our time to figure out how to improve the employee experience and not just how do we pay these people to go on leave.
So I’m hopeful that we see some big shifts. I think maybe I’m being too optimistic to think that can happen in five to 10 years, but there are a lot of great folks that are fighting the good fight to push that in sort of like the public space. And I just think they’re doing incredible work and never a straight line to get there.
How do those people who are listening who want to join the good fight, what can they do? And also how can our listeners find you and parentally?
Yeah, well, we are all over LinkedIn, but you can go to our website, which is parentally.com. We have a lot of resources there. So our business, we sell only B2B. We do career coaching and manager training, but we know a lot about other aspects of parental leave. So we’re constantly making things available on our website.
Like if you want to look at a database we have that shows, I think we have like 200 companies on there and what their 10 year requirements are for paid leave. Like we have a lot of free resources that we’re giving out that have nothing to do with how we actually make money. So I’d encourage people to check out that. Follow us on LinkedIn. And I’d say that’s it.
Thank you so much, Allison. Thank you. Thank you.
