Leave Backfill, Gap Coverage & Bandwidth Relief

Leave cares for employees who take it but can unintentionally hurt those left behind. In fact, 1 in 2 employees experience burnout while covering for a co-worker on parental leave. 

Many companies do not have a plan for when leaders go out on maternity leave or take time off, leaving teams left exposed, without leadership or high-skill muscle. But when companies plan ahead and provide structured leave support, productivity increases +65%, retention jumps +80%, and morale improves across the board.

Whether maternal, paternal or medical leaves, sabbaticals, PTO, resignations, terminations or hiring lags, the performance, success, health and happiness of the individuals left behind to cover hinges on capable backfill and support.  I developed PreLief™ to address this crucial, prevalent, underserved problem.  

PreLief ™ is pre-planned, expert backfill and full-cycle leave support for parental leave, medical leave, PTO, employee exits and hiring lags — a full-cycle model that I designed to reduce friction on both ends, prevent burnout, keep initiatives on track and deliver results. 

A proven strategy for protecting performance, retention, and morale when teams are down a player, PreLief ™ can also be a means for adding extra firepower through periods of heavy activity or high growth when workload increases beyond capacity. Destressing the system and strain on bandwidth so your team can function at its highest potential, this PreLief ™ application keeps teams and top performers from becoming overloaded, overwhelmed and spreading themselves too thin so that your work doesn't slow and quality doesn't suffer when needed the most.

I was tasked with covering for colleagues on leave so many times throughout my CPG brand management career that I can't recall a year when the only job I did was my own. For eight consecutive years, I juggled up to four roles at once for months on end. Each time I asked for support, but it never came. 

It was what happened in 2024 that drove me to develop and launch PreLief™. Within the first 2 months of the year, my Division’s CMO and VP were abruptly let go — and never replaced. I became the most senior brand leader in the division overnight, responsible for my $300MM portfolio in addition to all of my former VP’s responsibilities, with no executive oversight. 

The very next day, an additional brand was added to my portfolio — a new acquisition, without a brand team. Six weeks later and still with an open Brand Manager role on my newest brand, my most senior direct report on the company's highest priority brand went on maternity leave. She left behind not one but two roles for me to cover: hers, plus the Associate Brand Manager role she hadn’t been able to fill before stepping out.

Still, I received no help, coverage or backfill.

I sent my dog across the country to live with my parents, disconnected from my friends and social life, put my head down — lifting it slightly in July when I was able to fill the Brand Manager and Associate roles, but not fully picking it back up until October when my team was finally whole again.

I was the only Director in the Division to deliver Plan that year. I successfully repositioned our largest spirits brand and reshaped the strategy and future of my new acquisition, but I paid a personal price: my mental and physical health, relationships and personal life all suffered. And though I was able to pull off something remarkable, I felt immense frustration at sacrificing the time I should have been using to grow, in order to backfill roles I had long since outgrown and my trust in a system that left me unsupported again and again was left significantly eroded.

Leave is essential. It protects the people who need it. But too often — through no fault of the person taking it — it punishes the people left behind.

I launched PreLief™ to change that. To ensure that when someone steps away, their team doesn’t just survive — they succeed. With the right leadership in place, they can grow, gain momentum, and even come out stronger on the other side.