Coding Maternity Leave Program (CMLP)

Working pregnant women and new mothers always struggle to take a maternity leave due to the fear of being seen as less competent and competitive by employers and not being able to catch up with works after the maternity leave. Such problem can be solved through our Coding Maternity Leave Program (CMLP) which commits to give pregnant women and new mothers the opportunity to enjoy their maternity leave while keeping up with work and learn computer science competence in the digital workforce. The solution that CMLP propose is a conditional paid maternity leave that requires pregnant women and new mothers to take an online coding skills training program. This solution can help pregnant women and new mothers to receive a paid maternity leave, increase their technology literacy while satisfying companies’ increasing needs of computer science skills among their employees, and encourage women representation in the technology space.

My goal is to help working pregnant women and new moms to balance their baby cares and work lives through a conditional paid maternity leave (ranging from 4 weeks to 12 weeks depending on the number and difficulty of the courses). United States is one of the few countries that doesn’t provide guaranteed government regulated paid maternity leave and millions of pregnant women and new moms in the work force is affected by this. Unfortunately, the Family and Medical Leave Act only provides new moms 12 weeks of unpaid leave and only 40% of the women are qualify for it and 12% of the women in the private sector receive paid maternity leave (United States Department of Labor, 2015). Meanwhile, companies often lack the incentives to offer their employees paid maternity leave. However, our Coding Maternity Leave Program provides companies an opportunity to satisfy their employees’ needs and benefit from retaining employees and increase their productivity. Companies would have the opportunity to acquire the coding skill-sets they would like to see from their employees while cutting costs by not having to hire additional employees. This solution also solves the problem of the low women representation within the computer science space.

The population that I am working to directly and meaningfully improve are the pregnant women and new moms within the digital workforce. Since blockchain is going to play a major role in future society, it is important for employees to learn this technology skill if they want to stay competitive in the job market or within an organization. Pregnant women and new moms can utilize their maternity leave to acquire the coding skills to increase their competitiveness. Since each employee has a different level of technology literacy, this program will provide various coding languages courses, including learning the basic coding languages (like Python, JavaScript, HTML and Solidity) and how to utilize these coding languages in work life. Each course will be a 4 weeks online college-level class. The participants will be tested on the materials by the end of the class and will receive college credits along with certificate if they pass the test. CMLP would help participants to increase their competitiveness in the market where the demand of technology skills is constantly increasing. It also helps them to explore new opportunities using coding skills in their work life while fostering entrepreneurship in technology field.

My solution is to provide a service that encourages companies to participate in my concept program (CMLP) that offers or extends paid maternity leaves to women in exchange for the participants to learn coding skillsets that the organization is looking for during the maternity leave. The CMLP also offers participants credit-bearing computer science classes through partnership with universities. Participants have the flexibility to choose what classes they want to take from the CMLP based on their technology literacy. CMLP mainly focuses on providing online entry level programing languages classes (4 weeks, 3-6 hours online class time per week) to increase the generally technology literacy of participants but also offers higher level online courses (6 weeks, 3-6 hours online class time per week) like data logic, artificial intelligence, cryptocurrencies and ledgers, cryptography and blockchain. After the completion of each course, the participant will be tested on the course and will receive a certification from universities and college credits if she passed the test. For women who cannot graduate the class during their maternity leave, they can apply for extension to finish their training program after they return to work. The duration of the paid maternity leave will take consideration in individual companies’ current maternity leave policies, which means companies that already offer paid maternity leave will extend the paid maternity leave while companies that doesn’t offer paid maternity leave will grant the participants within the company paid maternity leave. CMLP offers consultant to individual companies to determine a reasonable maternity leave duration for the participants and coordinates the skill sets that companies want with suitable online college credit classes that participants can choose from.

The decision of taking a maternity leave or not has always been a dilemma for new moms. According to a study in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, women are perceived as less competent at work if they took a maternity leave and women are perceived as irresponsible parents and less desirable partners if they don’t take a maternity leave. CMLP takes a new approach to maternity leave and helps both employees and employers to look at maternity leave in a different perspective. Employees can now utilize their maternity leave to enhance their technology literacy while employers can also cut cost by reducing outside hires to satisfy the digital skill-sets they need. Another important factor is that companies who join the CMLP would have a higher chance to retain their workers and increase employees’ loyalty. The aim CMLP works to achieve is aligned with three United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, including “Decent work and economic growth”, “Industry, innovation, and infrastructure”, and “Reduced inequalities”. Employees in CMLP would be able to achieve work growth, explore their innovative side related to technology, and increase women presence in the technology field.

Working women will receive online computer science classes according to the needs of their companies during their maternity leave. Participants will gain technology competency that satisfy their companies’ desired skill-sets after finishing the program. In short term, participants of this program will be able to utilize their new acquired skills of computer science in their work lives hence increasing their work efficiency. In long term, participants of this program will be able to create unique solutions that utilize their experiences in computer science and be able to manage other employees with these skill-sets. Companies that participate in this program are more likely to have a lower employee’s turnover rate since employees see opportunities within the companies and understand that staying in the companies will be a good option to better themselves in long term. According to research by Kronos and Future Workplace, the importance of employee retention is aware by 87% of HR leaders and they consider it as a primary concern. A Gallup workplace survey revealed employees who are not adequately recognized are twice as likely to say they’ll quit within the next year. The CMLP helps new moms to be recognized by the companies through company paid training programs and help companies to solve their problem of employees retention and reducing cost through lowering turnover rate.

My solution is still in prototype stage, so currently there are no participants. I project to serve about 2500 women within the workforce within one year if there is no problem with the financials and initial establishments. I project to serve approximately 20000 women within the workforce in five years.

• Raise enough funds for CMLP (through industry donations and government funding)
• Successfully set up partnerships with universities that offer the college credit-bearing training programs
• Successfully set up partnerships with major firms (S&P 500) that are interested in this program
• Recruit members for the solution team

• Expand the scale of CMLP and offer comprehensive technology training programs for the participants
• Set up CMLP Participants Club for past participants to network and share their experiences
• Offer alternative programs for participants in a different group
• Continue to recruit members
• Explore the possibilities to penetrate foreign markets

One of the largest short-term barriers of this solution would be the financial issues, including the initial funding (like incorporation fees, application fees for Form 1023 and tax-exempt status) since I would need to incorporate a nonprofit organization before promoting this program. Another important short-term barrier that I must address is it might be difficult to build an effective board that have people with resources and influences who also believe in my organization’s mission. The last short-term barrier of this solution would be the establishing partnerships with universities and organizations who are willing to participate in CMLP. In terms of long-term barriers, the most important one would be how to maintain financial sustainable. There are many non-profit organizations in US, but many fail to thrive due to financial issues. The competitions between non-profit organizations are intense so it is important to distinguish my program from others to remain financial stability

In order to overcome the barrier of initial funding, I plan to search for nonprofit grants and funding from the government. Also, I will search for similar organization that can help me to head start with lists of their donors so that there is a higher possibility to receive funding from them. I will also recruit members from similar organization to be the board members of my organizations since they have experiences in running a non-profit organization and there is a higher possibility that they will support my mission. Although the barrier of establishing partnerships with universities and organizations will be a big uncertainty, I believe this problem can be solved through a trailblazing business plan. As of the long-term financial sustainability of the organization, I plan to minimize the cost of the organization through recruiting a larger volume of volunteers to handle the administrative side of the program and generate sustainable revenue through providing consulting to participants’ companies and collect commission for the online fees for the online college program.

My solution is in prototype stage, being implemented in US markets. However, if enough initial funds are collected, the solution will move to the next stage and if the firm is generating enough revenue to expand in foreign market, Canada will be my second targeted market.

There are still too many uncertainties related to the expansion plans to Canada since the firm has to be first established in United States and gain financial stability before it can generate enough revenue to expand to Canada. The reason why I picked Canada as the second market other than United States is because the market in Canada and United States are relatively similar so it would be easier to penetrate the market.

I am the only one in the solution team since it is still in prototype stage.

Although currently I am the only one in my team to deliver this solution, I believe, as the creator of this program, I have a better understanding of how this solution can benefit the women in the workforce. I have experience in co-creating a business plan for an online psychology support application that helps college students to deal with psychology issues. Also, I worked on a consulting plan for Ford to shift their focus on green electronic vehicle through providing subscription plans. I believe these experiences help me to have an understanding on how to run a business that have a purpose to better our world and society.

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My business model is to provide the Coding Maternity Leave Program to companies so that they can enhance the technology literacy of their employees who are planning to have a maternity leave. The key customers for the program would be larger companies (like major firms in S&P 500) who have many employees and universities that partner with my program. The key beneficiaries of the program would be the women who participate in the program and the companies that provide this program since they can mitigate the cost of outside hires if their current employees already receive proper training for their desired skill-sets. The CMLP will be provided to participants through online courses from partnership colleges and my organization will charge the customers (companies and universities) commission fee to continue fund our services. However, another large portion of the program’s revenue will be generated from optional donations.

In order to achieve financial sustainability for CMLP, my organization will ask for sustained donations, government grants, and selling services. Sustained donations are achievable once the organization gained its reputation in the market. I project my major donors would be from organizations that have women as their major customers since my program is aimed to improve the lives of women and increase women’s presence in the technology field. Government grant is also achievable since my program is aimed to increase the technology literacy of the participants and this aligned with the increasing market demands of workers who have adequate skills in computer science. I project this service would be attractive to larger organizations since larger firms have a larger demand in computer science skill-sets. It is much cheaper for a firm to train their women employees during maternity than to hire from outside for people who have the same skill-sets. This also increase the employees’ loyalty to the firm and cut cost for these firms by reducing their employees turnover rate.

The reasons why I am applying to the Digital Workforce Challenge is because ServiceNow is an excellent platform for my program to gain attention, recruit talents, and receive mentor-ships to better the solution. Also, the $100,000 prize funding can accelerate the establishment of this program since one of the largest barrier of my solution would be the amount of time for my solution to gain the initial funding to incorporate a non-profit organization and it is difficult to do so if the solution is not well-known.

The organizations that I would like to partner with would be universities that offer excellent higher level online computer science programs, including MIT Sloan, Cornell Blockchain, and NYU Stern FinTech, since these schools offer some of the best blockchain programs in United States and they are relatively harder to find compare to normal coding language programs that most universities offer. I want the participants who enroll in my CMLP to receive an education that can create a positive change to their lives, companies, and the society.