Life at DICE: Why 3 dads are going on (extended) parental leave - Mattias Hansson

By Yui Washida

Lots of studies show that Sweden is a family friendly country and one of the reasons is its generous parental leave system. Under the law parents can take paid leave for 480 days (16 months) for each child, and 90 days are exclusively reserved for each parent. The days don’t expire until the child turns 8 years old, and parents get about 80% of their income (with a cap,) which allows lots of Swedish parents to have great quality time with their children.

According to OECD, while only about 18% of fathers take parental leave internationally, 45.3% of Swedish fathers are taking parental leave. Also the number of days used per child born by men is 131.1 days on average, which is the highest in Scandinavia. This is resonated by the fact that lots of dads at DICE are taking long parental leave with an extra company benefit, and this is one of the good examples of how people in our studio appreciate work-life balance and drive gender equality. 

In this post, Mattias Hansson, Producer, is talking about his parental leave experience and DICE culture around it. 

What is your role at DICE?

I’m a Producer. Currently leading the team that is responsible for hardware such as vehicles, weapons and also core gameplay  

Tell me about your family! 

We have 2 kids. The first kid is now 2 and half years old, and I had my first paternity leave with him about a year back. Now we have a daughter and she is almost 9 months old, so this is my second time around and it’s gonna be fun this time again.

How long will you be away?

I’m going to take one month of vacation and then will be on parental leave for 6 months, so I will be away for 7 months in total. 

How did you and your partner come up with this arrangement? What are the points that you took into consideration when making the decision? 

It was a mix of multiple things, both my wife’s situation at her job (she is a medical doctor) and my situation. We’re also trying to balance the time between us as much as we can. Then we’re trying to get a clear cut, trying to find a good timing for handover. 

This time around we made sure that we had enough time to overlap our time at home. As I go on vacation in the first month, she is still on parental leave. And then we have another month when we both are on parental leave. So we’re gonna have 2 months during summer with the 4 of us. This overlap was also a consideration when we discussed timing.  

We’ll be having those 2 months with both kids, both my wife and myself being at home at the same time, which is really nice. It’s definitely something that I look forward to. 

Obviously there is lots of work with both kids at home, but it’s gonna be great fun. Your children are only young once, so I think it’s important to cherish the opportunity and the moments together. 

Sounds nice! Did you have a similar arrangement with your first one?

For my first time, it was different due to the timing and the project I was working on. We made a special arrangement and I divided my parental leave into 2 parts. The idea behind it was to try to disrupt the project as little as possible. 

I was at home for 4 months first, I went back to work for half a year, and then I took 3 more months off. It was nice in one way because it allowed me to experience different periods of our son’s first year and first year and half. Kids are very different when they are 8 months versus 1 year and half, for example. It was really nice, although it became slightly complicated from a planning perspective. That said, I really appreciate it and I love the face that I was able to do that and the flexibility my job allowed me to have. Although we have strict deadlines at work we still allow everyone to be as flexible as possible with the parental leave. 

This time it’s gonna be an extended parental leave.

Yes, it’s going to be slightly different this time. It’s one longer period but slightly shorter in total.

Also if you compare to the first child vs. the second one, at least for us the second child will start daycare earlier. That was also a factor. 

What made you decide to let your second child start daycare earlier than the first one?

When we took the first kid to daycare for the first time, he was almost 18 months old, and we noticed that we could have done it earlier. He really enjoyed it, and I think my second one will as well. There are so many great things that you can get out of it by having them there because of the type of interactions and such. So we will do slightly differently this time, our youngest is going to start daycare when she is around 1 years and 3 months old.

When to start daycare totally depends on individuals. For example, whether they can crawl, whether they can walk, I think those are important factors. When my first one started daycare, he was able to walk by that time. I think there are some small things that make big differences in terms of how kids experience as they start daycare. 

How do you feel about taking a long parental leave?

I’m really looking forward to spending time with my family. That said, we’re in a very interesting stage with the project right now, and I feel a bit sad to leave now! Another way of putting this is that I’m really looking forward to getting back and seeing where we are at (in the project.) I’m really fortunate to have a job that I love and to feel that I want to come back. A pretty nice problem to have, right? 

Definitely! What do you look forward to the most?

That’s a good question...I think just spending focus time with my family, in this case especially with my daughter. Normally days are kind of rushed, picking up from the daycare, cooking, putting the kids to sleep etc. I’m spending lots of time at work right now, and it’s a big chunk of the day. So getting a different type of focus, winding down a little bit and just spending time with my daughter and also with my son as he’ll spend quite some time at home as well, it’s going to be a different pace of life.

Also I think there are fewer things to think about (when I’m away.) I’m currently working from home and kids are here, while there are still lots of things at work. Now I have an opportunity to not think about work on a daily basis. I think that it's good for you to have varieties and different pace in your life. 

Do you have any plans for summer?

Given the current  Covid-19 situation we haven’t made any plans yet. We will see what we can do. We moved into a house a year ago, so we might do some house work. 

When I was off with the first kid, one of the things we did was to go down to Miami, just to have 2 weeks of vacation. It was really nice, we had some time to relax, and spend some time with the family. 

Now obviously things are different. Hopefully we can have some time to meet up with family, in a controlled manner, of course. But there will be lots of days without any plans, and it's a nice change of pace. Once you accept that, you get almost into zen state, which is a new world. You have children around, obviously, but you are able to disconnect, at least I was able to do that with the first kid. That’s something I really appreciate.

Why do you think it’s possible in Sweden/DICE for dads to take such a long parental leave?

Ultimately when it comes to Sweden as a whole, there’s obviously a big cultural difference between Sweden and other countries. We’ve been working for quite some time on equality, and try to incorporate at all levels. Also obviously when it comes to all the rules and regulations on the parental leave, it’s really important for us. 

Looking back when I was little, even though my father had opportunities to be at home, he wasn’t at home for an extended period of time. He was probably at home just for a few weeks, while working at the same time. Since then, lots of things have happened over the past 30-40 years. I think now especially many people talk about equality and there is a big focus on it. Personally I really appreciate that. We’re trying to be as equal as possible with the time we spend (with family.) Me as a father, I appreciate all of that, and that’s why I want to take the opportunity. 

When it comes to DICE, just looking at the benefit that we have with the additional payment when we get during the parental leave to cover any gaps (*1,) it’s really amazing. There are only a few that have this type of benefit. It obviously helps and I really appreciate that. With this benefit the financial part is sorted out and I don’t have to care about. This obviously helps push me to take more time off, which is really good. 

In terms of culture, I love the fact that we have culture that allows us to take this kind of parental leave and also the type of flexibility that I talked about earlier, and there is more or less no question asked. Lots of us were in the same situation, and there is good understanding between everyone working at DICE. 

(*1 DICE offers to full-time regular employees parental salary benefit that would bridge the gap between employees’ normal salaries and what they get from the state up to 90% of their regular salaries. How long they’d be paid would depend on how long they have been at the company. Terms apply and are specified in our collective bargain agreement.)

That definitely helps us feel comfortable. 

It’s not only the parental leave part but also the flexibility that we have on a daily basis. Especially now with the situation where everyone is working from home, it’s even clearer that we have much flexibility. If I have my kids around during my meeting, there is nothing strange about that. Everyone understands the situation you’re in. Even before the pandemic, if you need to go pick up your kid at daycare because he is sick, everyone understands that. That level of understanding, and the level of flexibility that we have, it is really amazing and I’m really happy about it.

Lots of parents outside Sweden are still hesitant to take extended parental leave because of the potential negative impacts, which eventually prevents lots of dads to take parental leave. Do you feel any concerns about being away from work?

No, I think that comes back to the trust between employer and employee. At DICE in my case I think our relationship is mutual, at least that’s how I feel it. I like working at DICE, and DICE likes having me, working there. There is nothing that I worry about at all. Having worked with this for quite some time now, I know that our roles and focus areas are going to evolve with the projects. At least with my producer role I can be producing and leading the team that does one thing in one week, and then we’re doing some sort of changes with the product that we’re building that requires a different team constellation. That means I might need to lead another team with another product. It’s just part of the job. 

The big change for me if I think about that aspect is, obviously getting kids eats up focus and energy. Personally at least, with that comes different priorities. That is the biggest difference that I noticed. Before I had kids, I was able to focus more on work. After I got kids, at least timewise, I have to figure out how I optimize the same kind of work but with less time. That’s a big challenge. 

Why do you think that is?

The way I see how we invest in people’s time at DICE is that we hire for a long term, not for a short time. When we say long term, it’s not really just half a year or a year, it’s more than that. Then It’s just a blip on a very long timeline being off for a half a year for parental leave. It definitely shouldn’t be something that hinders your career path. At DICE we invest in our people for a long-term.

But I think it’s very important for us to look at this in a long term span. Being away for parental leave is just a blip of time. Once I’m back, and in a few weeks no one's gonna think that I was out, it’s just a past and we continue to work as a team.

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