‘You see? This is why I hire men’ — HR boss reveals the sexism that new parents suffer at work

Michelle O’Keeffe, co-founder of Platform55 and a former Enterprise Ireland entrepreneur of the year, said focus groups facilitated by the company have unearthed some eye-watering experiences.

One woman in a senior role told her manager she would need 24 hours’ notice before travel assignments.

The manager replied: “You see? This is why I hire men.”

Another woman was told she would “make partner” at her firm if “there are no more surprises”, while her boss directed “a nod at her belly area”.

Men are also subjected to bias around paternity leave. The focus groups heard how one man said his boss asked whether he would take paternity leave by asking if he would be “babysitting” his child.

Others cited being asked by their boss if they were going to take “all” of their entitled leave.

According to a new study carried out by Platform55, 80pc of new mothers “have considered” not returning to work after maternity leave. The same study found 70pc had no “readjustment process” after returning post-baby.

Fifty per cent of parents felt being a parent is not compatible with being in a senior role, and 75pc of this cohort were women.

According to the study, the average cost to replace a parent who does not return after maternity or paternity leave is 240pc of their salary. This takes into account their earnings while on leave, the “knowledge capital” they take with them and recruitment and training costs.

Ms O’Keeffe said her advice for Irish companies is that it “costs substantially more to lose a talented new parent” than “the cost of giving them flexibility and ensuring your company is there to support them”.

The businesswoman co-founded the HR company with Tracy Gunn after realising “the system is broken” for employees who were raising young families. She now has two children, Alex (11) and Anna (8).

​A former managing director at Electric Media, Ms O’Keeffe was promoted to the position just hours before the birth of her first baby.

She said her former employers were “incredibly supportive and progress­ive”, but she came to her own realisations around the difficulties of being in a senior role while raising very young children.

“I would drop my kids off at 7am and pick them up at 7pm. I often used to lift my baby out of the car to the cot and we wouldn’t have made eye contact for the day. That’s why I left. One week I remember I hadn’t actually seen her eyes open for five days,” she said.

“Another time, the creche said, ‘I think Alex will soon take her first steps, what do you think?’ And I knew that they were sussing me out — because she already had taken her first steps and I hadn’t seen them.”

Ms O’Keeffe said her firm became a “passion project”, and she is now partnered with some “really progressive companies”.

“We started working with AXA three years ago when they had a 75-25 male-female senior executive split. They’ve now switched to 50-50,” she said. “Another firm has ensured senior roles can be part-time and flexible.”

As International Woman’s Day approaches on Friday, official figures from the UN show 80pc of the gender pay gap is directly attributed to a motherhood penalty, whether it is “career plateauing” or quitting a job after maternity leave.

If managers don’t have personal lived experience of being a parent, it’s hard for them to relate

Ms O’Keeffe said that among the challenges faced by parents is a lack of understanding from line managers.

“A company may have wonderful policies in place and a great culture, but sometimes it’s down to an individual manager who doesn’t have the lived experience of being a parent, so they are unaware of the support the individual needs,” she said.

“If you have managers who don’t have personal lived experience of being a parent, it’s hard for them to relate. That’s where managers need to be trained in empathy, because this is where we see attrition. This is where women step away from the workforce.

“When men ‘parent out loud’ at a firm, it has a massive impact on women being able to progress in their career.”