Parental leave with Renata Mrazova and Evgeniy Akulich

On Air: Podcast by Femme Palette

What does parental leave look like in different countries? What is the optimal model and what can companies do to make it easier for parents to return to their jobs? In this episode, we sat down with experienced leaders Renata Mrazova and Evgeniy Akulich to hear their views on this heavily debated topic, including the ultimate question: do you have to choose between career or children, or is it possible to have it all?

About the speakers:

Renata Mrazova

Renata is an experienced business leader whose professional experience spans decades. After graduating from University of Economics, Prague in 1995, she began her professional career in the finance division of Swedish pharmaceutical firm Astra (now AstraZeneca), later becoming Finance Director and coordinating a merger with the British firm Zeneca.

Since then, she has served as CEO and Chairman of the Board of Directors of Direct Insurance, CFO at ING Group, devoted time to her family business - the largest company in the fabrics industry in Czech and Slovak markets (retail, wholesale and e-commerce) - and also worked as an external consultant on several projects for the banking and insurance sectors.

In 2019, she moved back to the Czech Republic with her family after four years spent in the Netherlands serving as Global Head of HR of NN Group in The Hague, where she was responsible for strategic HR in 18 markets. On returning to her home country, she joined Home Credit International, a.s. (part of PPF Group), a global leader in consumer finance, as Group Chief People Officer. She is a proud mother of 2 daughters, Anna (18) and Eliska (14), and is married.

Evgeniy Akulich

Evgeniy is an experienced professional and leader in strategy management consulting and people development.

He started his career in HR in 2005, shifting to strategy management consulting in 2009. Evgeniy spent 11 years with BCG in Russia and Switzerland, having completed above 60 projects in 25+ markets, focusing on Consumer goods, banking, telecoms and public sector/social impact. It was a very exciting but very demanding time – a lot of travel (up to 130 flights / year), long hours, unpredictable schedules.

Evgeniy took a parental leave just before pandemic, quit BCG in the middle of the 1st lock down, then worked as independent consultant and executive coach for 9 months and got back to strategy consulting as a partner at EY-Parthenon in Switzerland.

Evgeniy will share his experience of taking a parental leave after his son was born, going through pandemic, quitting his job, looking for other options that are better compatible with children and family, how he got back to consulting and how he manages his work and family time.

Insights from the speakers:

• when it comes to your parental leave, do not think in any pattern, everyone is different, so you will in the end have to find your own solution
• if the speakers should just say just one ideal length of a parental leave for them, it would be 1 year - it is not too long so that it would harm your career, it is not too short so that your kid can already be without you for a longer period, plus some time off might do you good if you already worked for a couple years
• when combining work and family, don’t forget about yourself
• everyone is equally capable of taking care of and raising a child
• the second parent is not ‘helping’ the other ‘take care’ of their child, it’s their child as well
• important thing is also financial planning for the parental leave