Parental leave. Where experience and identity quietly shape career progression.
Supporting high achievers across parental leave and return .
“Career progression? After leave? Most people are just trying to manage the juggle”
You’re right. But most people don’t suddenly lack ambition when they become parents. Just as organisations don’t suddenly want ambition to stall in their talent.
But in a world full of grim headlines and statistics, despite growing policy investment and family-friendly initiatives, it’s easy to wave the white flag. To assume guilt, burnout, or stepping back are the inevitable outcomes. That juggling is all there is.
It doesn’t have to be that way.
Next to adolescence, the transition into parenthood is the most neurologically active stage of a person’s life. Across pregnancy, parental leave and return, there are dozens of moments that quietly shape how someone relates to their work, confidence, ambition, beliefs, relationships, values and direction.
Each of those moments is an opportunity, not to push through, but to pause. To recognise the noise, be intentional about what’s changing, and allow identity and confidence to strengthen rather than fragment.
What We Do
Talent On Leave works with organisations to design and deliver parental leave support that strengthens identity, confidence and career momentum.
Support is always flexible and tailored, and may include:
1:1 coaching (online and in person): Wraparound support for expectant, new and returning parents, shaped by stage of leave, personality, circumstance and organisational context.
Group coaching and workshops: For expectant, new and returning parents, creating space to navigate the personal and professional shifts, wobbles and opportunities that parental leave presents, from career to baby and back again.
KIT day events: Thoughtfully designed sessions that reconnect people with their workplace, peers, sense of self and return planning without the pretence.
Internal communications: Clear, human, and tailored comms that create the conditions for meaningful conversations, and help organisations make the most of their policies and processes.
Our work is shaped by close partnership with each organisation and individual, allowing support to be deeply tailored rather than generically delivered.
Why it matters
Even in organisations with strong policies and well-intentioned leaders, parental leave outcomes often unfold in ways no one planned or wants.
As an organisation or manager for example, you might see your people talent returning after leave with lower confidence or ambition or a sticky change in team dynamics that is costing team effectiveness. Or you might have a senior role you planned your returner to fill but you’re now not sure if you have the right fit and will have the cost of additional recruitment.
We’re conditioned to think this is ‘just how it is’, that parents (women in particular) change during leave and want different things but that’s rarely the case.
What’s actually shifting is a person’s relationship with themselves. Confidence, identity, expectations and internal narratives are all in motion during leave, and if that recalibration is left unsupported, the cracks tend to show later in ambition, performance, presence, and progression.
What this work makes possible
When parental leave is understood and supported as a meaningful transition, subtle but important shifts begin to happen.
- People move through pregnancy, leave and return with greater steadiness, able to name what’s changing without immediately assuming something has gone wrong.
- Confidence is less likely to wobble in silence, and ambition is less likely to be quietly edited down before anyone has noticed.
- Managers feel more able to support and lead leave with less pressure to have all the answers.
- Return-to-work moments become less about proving performance and more about orientation, direction and integration.
Over time, this shows up in less career drift, fewer unnecessary career compromises, stronger re-engagement after leave, and a greater sense of continuity between who someone was before leave and who they are becoming after it.
Not because parental leave is easy — but because it’s been understood properly.
Who this work is for
This work is for organisations who recognise that parental leave is about more than logistics, and who are curious about what’s really shaping confidence, engagement and progression during this transition.
It tends to resonate most with organisations who:
care about retaining and progressing parent talent, not just supporting return
recognise that good policies alone don’t guarantee good experiences
are open to working with the realities of parental leave
It’s also for leaders, managers and parent networks who sense that something important is happening during parental leave and want better language, frameworks and support to navigate it well.
If you’re looking for a quick fix, a platform solution, or a one-size-fits-all programme, this probably won’t be the right fit.
If you’re interested in thoughtful, tailored support that works with the reality of parental leave rather than around it, then it might be.
How we’re different
The Talent On Leave approach is built on lived experience of the personal and professional shifts, and addresses them all whilst strengthening what comes next.
Our success comes from working closely with people, in context, over time. We understand what gets in the way of good intentions at organisational, manager and individual levels. And we know that it’s the deep tailoring of that understanding that creates meaningful shifts for your organisation and people.
Each of our clients will give you different reasons for why they continue to choose us over other options but here are the ones we hear most often.
Forward focus: Helping your people and culture really develop and grow beyond the transitions.
Flexibility: Tailoring around different budgets, pathways, paces, personalities and circumstances.
Presence: When you become our client, we’re there with you, responding between sessions as well as in them.
Creativity: Sharing re-frames, insights, ideas and coaching that makes the complex feel simpler.
Cost-effectiveness: Our tailoring translates into ROI that goes far beyond time for money reducing the high costs of disengagement, attrition and unnecessary re-recruitment.
Accessibility: We make it easy for you to experience us without risk.
If something here has helped you name what’s been sitting just below the surface of parental leave in your organisation or team, you’re welcome to get in touch.
Most partnerships begin with a conversation. Not a pitch. A chance to explore what’s really happening for your people, and whether this approach would be useful or timely.
If Talent On Leave isn’t the right fit for your organisation or your people, we’ll say so. And if it is, we’ll take it from there, thoughtfully and without rushing.
