What is maternity leave coaching and why is it important?
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Is your workplace offering maternity leave coaching?
There’s growing focus on the concept, which seeks to address the challenges working mothers face in more meaningful ways – beyond the obvious obligations such as pay and flexibility.
While maternity leave rights are protected by law, there’s a lot more employers can do to support working mothers as they navigate the transition and return to work – and these are also essential considerations when it comes to retaining talent and ensuring teams thrive.
After all, mothers make up a significant proportion of the UK workforce. According to ONS figures, the percentage of mothers in work reached its highest level in 20 years in 2021, with 75.6% in work, equating to around 4.8 million.
So, what is maternity leave coaching, and why does it matter?
Guidance and support
“Maternity leave is an absolutely pivotal time in the career of women who take it,” says Hannah Bradshaw, co-founder of BlueSky, a parental coaching platform for women in law. “The expectations and perceptions of their working capability and future career path get brought into question from others, all whilst they’re undergoing huge physical, mental, and practical changes to their lives. It’s a time where guidance and support is needed more than ever.
“So, maternity leave coaching is a coaching programme (usually with an executive coach) where an individual is able to explore their thoughts, concerns and aspirations in a 1:1 or group setting around the transition to maternity leave and parenthood, and – eventually – the return back to work as a parent.”
BlueSky’s coaching programme is specific to the legal profession. “So it entails a mix of 1:1 coaching with an expert executive coach from a legal background, and group coaching with 12 peers across the legal industry with a similar pregnancy due date. The result is a safe space to explore one’s individual challenges, and a support group of women who directly understand what you’re going through,” notes Bradshaw.
However, numerous consultants and agencies now offer maternity leave coaching, with programmes tailored to suit different professions. Employers could also develop their own in-house frameworks to work from.
Tailored support
Having that tailored support and understanding can ensure coaching is genuinely helpful, both practically and mentally. For Bradshaw and BlueSky co-founder Sarah Lyons, this all stemmed from lived experience – who ultimately “left the [legal profession] due to our experiences of maternity return, and the lack of support we received on our returns”.
Bradshaw continues: “Both Sarah and I had our own children while we were private practice lawyers, and we both experienced the complete lack of support for new mothers returning to a notoriously fast-paced legal career, first-hand. And there are some unique career challenges in law that make this so desperately challenging: the ‘always on’ expectation, in tandem with the widespread emphasis on billable hours, makes it impossible for those with caring responsibilities to balance family and work.
“Meanwhile, lawyers’ careers are benchmarked around how many years they’ve been working since they qualified, known as post-qualified experience (PQE). Their PQE keeps running when they’re on leave, so they return, technically, a year more senior with higher expectations, and increased pressure to perform.”
Understanding the challenges
While specific pressures can apply in certain professions, Bradshaw adds that “all women experience challenges returning from leave. We’re seeing higher and higher rates of parental burnout (alongside general burnout), and coaching can be an essential tool to help,” she says.
“Despite advances in shared parental leave and maternity leave policies, it’s still the case that women are taking on the majority of parenting. As a result, they return to work sleep-deprived and exhausted, often with extremely patchy childcare because the cost has risen astronomically over the last decade. Often, managers with older children are completely unaware of how much more difficult parenting has become in recent years because of this. “An ability to take stock, think through the challenges, troubleshoot ways to make things easier, and simply have their feelings heard and validated, is essential for all returning mums.”
Wider culture shifts
“Employers are constantly being told about the benefits of supporting maternity leavers – greater employee retention; improved productivity on return; attracting graduates who care about gender balance; reaching their diversity targets. But too often, these messages are understood by those in HR or DEI, but aren’t filtered down to the managers of the women themselves,” says Bradshaw. “Ultimately, these are the people who matter when it comes to actually delivering that support to the women returning.
“Employers need to understand that policies are great, but the real difference is made by individual managers. Meanwhile, equalising maternity pay and shared parental leave is positive in some ways, but is certainly not a simple answer that solves all of this. Mothers face unique challenges that fathers don’t, and employers that don’t recognise this are selling their women short.
“Also, maternity leave isn’t just a retention issue or a diversity issue. It’s a wellbeing issue. Burnout around this time in a woman’s career is extremely high – so doing this well means happier employees. This has a direct impact on wider company culture.”
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