Adobe a Best Workplace for Parents and Alissa’s Success Story

For the second year in a row, we are proud to announce that we’ve been listed on Fortune Magazine’s list of Best Workplaces for Parents! This year we rank no. 16 out of 50 companies!

At Adobe, we understand the importance and reality of managing work and life and want to support the health and wellbeing of our employees. In addition to paid parental leave, Adobe offers many other benefits to employees such as flexible schedules, adoption assistance, surrogate assistance, the Welcome Back program, and childcare back-up and flexible spending accounts. One such employee who took advantage of some of these benefits is Alissa Johnson. Hear her story and find out how a successful job rotation and parental benefits prepared Alissa for her biggest product release yet!

Alissa’s Story

In her eight years with Adobe, Alissa Johnson has experienced many transitions. As Senior Product Manager of Collaboration Platform Services, her team enabled XD sharing of prototypes and is key to Adobe’s growing focus on including cloud documents and collaboration in future product releases.

Alissa recently experienced a new transition: becoming a mom. It was a fulfilling new experience for her— and also offered an Adobe colleague an invaluable learning opportunity.

Soon after Alissa learned she was pregnant, she contacted her new manager, Director of Product Management Noah Edelstein, to inform him so they could begin crafting a coverage plan to coincide with her parental leave.

“Don’t tell my mother this, but I may have told my manager about my pregnancy first,” Alissa joked. “We were still forming our team and making hiring decisions, so it was important to plan for business continuity early on. I knew I could trust Noah to help me find a solution so once I shared my exciting news, we worked together to strategize coverage.”

With a 1.0 product release planned near her expected delivery date, Alissa and Noah thought an internal candidate would be the best option for a smooth transition. Alissa put the word out to her Adobe network and Noah took the appropriate steps to develop a coverage plan for Alissa’s leave. Alissa and Noah’s teamwork paid off for all involved, including Thuy Vu, Senior Product Manager, Creative Cloud.

The Hand-Off

Thuy had previously worked on projects with Alissa and knew that she had a parental leave on the horizon. And thanks to Alissa’s outreach to her network, Thuy learned she was searching for a backfill. Believing change is always good and eager for a new learning experience, Thuy reached out to Alissa and expressed interest in a job rotation to backfill Alissa’s role.

“A job rotation provides both career and personal development opportunities,” noted Thuy. “The timing was perfect because I was ready to try something new. I knew I would be able to work with a new team and learn from their talents while also sharing my own unique skill set so I presented a transition plan to my management team; and they were very supportive.”

With a plan in place, Alissa and Thuy began working together about one month before Alissa’s leave. They took a deep dive into current projects and those ahead of them, allowing Thuy to meet her new team members, ask questions and learn the ropes of Alissa’s role. This was the beginning of an exciting new endeavor for both Alissa and Thuy.

The Big Reveal

Conventional wisdom suggests that a first baby often arrives later than expected. That wasn’t the case for Alissa’s daughter who arrived just four days after the launch of the Team Projects service.

“I was thankful my daughter allowed me to help get the release out the door,” mused Alissa. “And I am incredibly grateful that Noah, Thuy and the generous Adobe parental leave benefits enabled me to focus on my new baby. While Thuy learned about the video segment and collaboration technology, my team benefitted from her licensing knowledge and broader Creative Cloud customer experience. It was wonderful knowing my team was in excellent hands; the transition was smooth and after my return, I had the benefit of a seamless hand-off. It made returning to work much easier. All of these benefits helped my family to enjoy our bonding time together and prepared me to come back to work refreshed,” Alissa said.

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