After 3.5 months of Maternity Leave, I was anxious to return to work. Here’s a short list of the possible insecurities:
- Have they figured out that they don’t need me?
- Have they figured out they need me a lot, and piled up my to-do list?
- What happened to my in-flight projects?
- Will I be able to keep up after such a long break?
- How much has changed while I was gone?
- Will the new folks like me? Will I like them?
- Will I still enjoy my job?
- How much will I miss seeing my baby grow?
- Am I a terrible person because I’m happy to leave my baby to go back to work?
I pushed through those anxieties, put on my comfy pants, and headed up to my home office. I didn’t need to worry much: my team had held up the fort while I was gone, and was gracious in giving me time to settle back in.
These are the steps I took to transition back into my first week at work after a long time away:
Changelog
My first week back, I collected a running list of changes (big and small) that had occurred on my teams. This helped me feel less overwhelmed in thinking through what changes required updates to my process vs. what changes were background noise. Some example changes in my changelog:
- A list of the names of new people who had started since I left (a lot, with HashiCorp’s rapid growth right now) and their job titles. I made note of any that I should book a 1:1 with.
- A change in how our design team does critique
- A new initiative in the design organization–along with a definition of the new acronym.
- A change in the name of one of our product features
- A new tool our designers are trying out
- A merge of two teams, with the new team name
- A process change for Sprint Planning and Retros on one of my teams
To Do’s
I missed our annual review process, so one of my first to-do’s was to go over any questions with my report(s) and schedule my own review with my manager. Aside from that, I made note to:
- Watch the latest All Hands from the Design org
- Check the product’s changelog to see what was most recently shipped
- Get my old recurring 1:1s back on the calendar
- Schedule a few 1:1s with new folks
- Complete annual required trainings (we have annual Bias and Security training)
- Double check that my payment during and after Maternity Leave was accurate and benefits were being applied to my baby
Reading List
Much like a To Do list, my Reading List is a checklist of documents or important emails that may take time to absorb. Of course, I did an initial pass at email and Slack to archive unimportant items and to quickly get through messages that only required a simple response. That made it easy to narrow down a reading list of important emails and long documents like PRDs or RFCs that would take a while to read through.
Questions for My Manager
My manager took over my management responsibilities while I was away. I asked them:
- How have you collaborated with our Product and Engineering partners for the latest release planning?
- What are your expectations around your ongoing involvement now that I’m back?
- How did my annual reviews go?
- What are your expectations this week for our team?
- Can you give me an update on {a project} that we implemented?
- Has anyone left the team?
- How is the work you’re seeing from my team? How is morale?
Questions for Old Report(s)
For my pre-existing report, I asked:
- What have you been working on lately?
- What have been the big challenges in the past 3 months?
- What’s not working right now that we need to fix for you ASAP?
- What would you like my guidance on over the next few weeks?
- I know you’ve been covering a lot while I’ve been out. When is your next vacation? Please plan one!
Questions for New Report(s)
While I was on Maternity Leave, the company hired a new person to work on my team. I asked them:
- A little intro to myself. What questions do you have for me?
- How has your onboarding experience been?
- How have you been guided on projects so far?
- Is there anything immediate I can help you with this week?
- How can I best support you over the next month?
