Parental leave transitions: 10 ways HR and leaders can support new parent colleagues

The reintegration back into work after welcoming a baby into your family isn’t a week-long 'okay, now life is back to normal' transition. Rather, when an employee returns from parental leave and rejoins a team, this transition is often a several-month — or even a full year — of work in progress.

Few employers, however, have comprehensive, longer-range integration strategies that are specifically designed to help their new parent employees transition back in a thoughtful, intentional, and effective way. Few new parents also realise what a long process the maternity or paternity leave transition can be.

What could possibly go wrong in the transition? Sadly, plenty. From sporadic communication, to misaligned expectations on the part of both the employee and the employer, to assumptions being made that aren’t true, to new parent overwhelm, childcare challenges, and a lack of flexibility. The challenges can be many.

HR professionals and leaders have equally as many incentives, though, to find ways for parental leave returns within their organisation to go more smoothly. With a well-supported leave and return process in place, employers can retain their valuable and dedicated employees and avoid high recruitment and turnover costs. New parents can also return to work with a sense of pride in their employer and fulfilment in their new working-parent lives.

The return to work after parental leave is a two-way street, with effort required on both sides.

What steps can lead to the most successful transitions?

Here are 10 specific things HR and leaders can do to achieve effective post-leave reintegration for their new working-parent colleagues.

Ten specific ways HR and leadership can support new parents

1. Believe in the new parent for the long haul. Reintegration periods can have their ups and downs, but this period of navigating change is just a tiny part of an enthusiastic employee’s long career.
2. Avoid assumptions; encourage dialogue. The most helpful mindset a leader can adopt during this transition period is one of checking all assumptions at the door. As a manager, for example, you may find yourself assuming that your new-parent colleague will take a certain amount of time off, that your own plate of work will now be impossible to manage, that your new-parent colleague won’t want certain projects upon their return, or that they will or won’t want to engage in any work travel…none of which may be true. When you catch yourself making an assumption (which is something we all do as humans), simply recognise the assumption. Then start a conversation with your colleagues and team.
3. Offer liberal telework policies and flexible work hours, where possible, particularly during the baby’s early months of life. Beginnings and ends of days, in particular, can be especially challenging for new parents. Allowing for remote and flexible work where possible can help employees start and end their days in a way that more successfully accommodates a baby’s schedule, particularly during these early months. It also helps to provide support for any schedule changes that need to be made to accommodate a new mother’s nursing/pumping schedule.
4. Prepare some work for the returning employee for their first day. One new-parent colleague who works in a billable hour environment recently shared the following advice: “Having no work when you go back is just as bad as having too much work. It really slows down the re-entry, and I’ve seen some new mums fall into a funk of being unchallenged at work and so completely focused on what they are missing at home. They end up leaving. I’ve been a strong advocate for having at least a few, time-flexible projects lined up when junior associates return from leave. But too often, I’ve heard ‘let’s just see how it goes.’ It goes poorly. Plan for actual work.”
5. Keep work as steady as possible in the first weeks. In addition to the first day, think through what the first few weeks will look like. You want to avoid leaving a new parent feeling like they have a “fire hose to the face”. A gradual return of responsibilities and projects to the employee is ideal.
6. For the first year, check in every month or so with the employee. With pre-planned and pre-scheduled check-ins, you will have a built-in time and space to determine whether everyone is on the same page about the reintegration process. This also allows you to have open lines of communication when adjustments need to be made.
7. Provide back-up child care as an option. Babies get sick a fair amount during their first year of life, day cares close for various reasons, nannies get sick, etc. Helping new-parent employees through these challenges will mean that they are more able to focus on work and be absent less frequently.
8. Have open conversations around work travel. Employees who travelled for their work before the baby arrived may need to think through how travel will be part of their working-parent life. Some new parents may be fine travelling right away, while others may prefer a grace period on overnight travel. Consider covering the cost of shipping breastmilk if an employee goes on work travel, and providing a stipend for a nanny/partner to travel with an employee who may still be nursing.
9. Connect your new-parent employees to company resources and groups. If your organisation has supports and programs in place, remind your new-parent colleague that they exist. These may look like new-parent mentoring programs, courses, coaching, and employee resource groups. Even if there aren’t any formal parent groups or email lists, you can help connect them to other new parents within your organisation.
10. Have compassion for the employee’s new situation, and watch your language. The more empathy you can bring to the new parent’s situation, the smoother this transition can go. As one new parent described, “setting unrealistic deadlines, not offering support, and expecting coverage after normal hours can all upend home life”. Do not refer to a colleague’s leave as a vacation, and remember to talk about caregiving and parental leave with new fathers in the same way you would with new mothers. Remember to view family leave as a universal experience that anyone may need to take for any family-related reason, and normalise conversations about the leave and return process.

Lori Mihalich-Levin, JD, is the founder and CEO of Mindful Return