Bringing baby to work: Disrupting or not
Filed in archive Strategy by Steve Rucinski on May 25, 2006

When four of my top employees told me in one six-week period that they were pregnant, I realized that their good news could spell disaster for my advertising agency, T3.
We had fewer than 25 employees at the time, and the soon-to-be moms were our head of publicity, a media buyer, the manager of print production, and a senior account executive. Each had client and supplier relationships that were vital to our business. Plus, conducting four executive searches at the same time would be costly.
So I decided to try something radical. A few months before they left for maternity leave, I invited the women to bring their babies to work when they returned. From my own experience as a mother of three, I know what a horrible feeling it is to leave your very small baby in the hands of someone else.
While juggling work, you're also distracted by concerns for your child: Is she safe? Who is watching her? I also knew that several of these women didn't need the paycheck; faced with leaving a child, they would probably quit. Infants sleep for much of the day, and our office space at the time, a historic home in Austin, had a large office we could equip with cribs and baby swings.
My lawyer hated the idea. He worried that we would get sued if a child got hurt at the office. And the women--all first-time moms--had a hard time imagining how they would manage breast-feeding and changing diapers while doing their jobs. But they agreed to give it a try, and it worked out even better than I expected.
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