My employee didn’t tell anyone she was pregnant

A reader asks:

A while back, an employee who reported to me (I’m a man) became visibly pregnant soon after she started. But she never brought it up. Not with me, not with HR, not with anyone. I didn’t ask her about it, though nearly everyone else in our office asked me. I cringed when I responded since it was obvious she was pregnant but I felt that I needed to protect her privacy. I felt like I was walking around on pins and needles with this very obvious elephant in the room.

Her job description included occasionally lifting objects up to 40 pounds, and the only way I treated her differently was that I went out of my way to pick up anything remotely heavy.

Eventually, she was put on bed rest and had her baby a week later. She did not return to the organization.

The office was a very friendly place, and I know the employees would have loved to have thrown her a baby shower and all those fun things. But I realize I was handed a hot potato, from several different angles. Should I have addressed this directly with her? Or was I fine to ignore it?

Green responds:

You were right to ignore it, awkward and strange as it felt. Sometimes when people think someone looks obviously pregnant, they actually aren’t. Sometimes that’s just their body shape, even if it’s new. Other times they’re pregnant but know they won’t be carrying the baby to full-term because of a medical situation and don’t want to talk about that at work.

I know the argument is that the employer needs to plan for the person’s maternity leave (or departure in this case). And generally people do eventually announce their pregnancies at work for that reason. But when someone chooses not to, there’s usually a reason for that choice—and as a manager I’d err on the side of respecting that. After all, other situations can cause someone to suddenly need medical leave without any heads-up or to need to resign without notice, and employers deal with those and make do.

Of course, the counterargument to this is that if an employee knew months in advance that they’d need several months off for, say, surgery, and didn’t bother to tell anyone until the day before, that would be a problem. But again, we don’t know the full story here, most pregnant people do announce their pregnancies, and the fact that she didn’t likely indicates she had a reason for wanting privacy. If we get an epidemic of people not announcing their pregnancies until the day before they go on leave, thus leaving employers everywhere in the lurch, we can revisit that, but right now it’s not typical, it’s reasonable to assume something was up, and you were right to err on the side of respecting her privacy.

One last thing: It’s important to note that any concern should be solely confined to the employer’s ability to plan for the employee’s sudden absence. The office’s interest in giving this person a baby shower is 100% not relevant. If she had wanted that, she would have shared the pregnancy. She didn’t, and that matters much more than anyone’s desire to celebrate with her.

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