Does your business actually need parental transition coaching?

Maybe yes. Maybe no. Regardless of whether you’re a statutory leave provider, or you’re enhancing in lots of ways, here are some questions worth exploring.

What are the maternity/parental leave headaches in your business?

Many HR teams and line managers work hard to support employees through parental leave. There are checklists, shared documents, flexible policies, and open-door encouragement. But despite the good intentions, familiar issues persist:

• High-performing talent not returning—or returning and quickly leaving - massive cost in lost talent, experience, investment in training and client confidence. It can be anywhere between £35k & 150k attrition cost per employee depending on level.

• Managers unsure how to support someone in the ‘in-between’ phase - often means unintended miscommunication or discrimination cases.

• Friction between individual needs and business priorities - often shows up in conversations about flexibility, working patterns and ambition. Not sustainable and makes the relationship feel super transactional and fragile.

• Inconsistent experiences of manager support or leadership - sometimes managers just don’t know what words to use, how to handle nuance (of which there is plenty) and by saying not a lot, leave too much open for assumption and misunderstanding.

• Confidence dips and slow re-acceleration post-leave - it’s impossible to engineer the discomfort of the parent transition out of maternity/parental leave. It’s personal and professional.

• Talent stagnation after becoming a parent - usually because nobody prepared them for the identity shift and confidence of being able to success across the board plummeted.

These aren’t signs of a lack of effort. They’re signs of a missing link.

What are your business’ maternity/parental leave objectives ?

Level 1: For some, it’s just about staying on the right side of employer legislation and avoiding any mishaps that may lead to discrimination cases that harm the business’ pocket, reputation and ability to attract more talent. In these cases, good HR has your back. You’re protecting your company’s reputation and meeting your duties as an employer.

Level 2: You might want that plus making sure you retain good people by having the right conversations with them at the right time. You might be managing that really well yourself with great leadership. And if you’re not, a great leave focused platform can come into its own to complement the work of your HR team. Or you might have a consultant be your outsourced lead for leave transitions to keep the conversations flowing and build that trust and confidence. You’re keeping everyone right and making sure your people don’t become disengaged by your lack of initiative or managers that aren’t sure what to do/when.

Level 3: Maybe your business wants all of that and to give employees access to further support. It might be through your employee assistance programme or maybe through a leave transition platform that offers self-serve content with the option to speak to a coach as and when.

Level 4: Some sectors and businesses have seriously talented individuals in strategically important roles and on a leadership track. Losing them to another company because of overlooked conversations or experiences that could have been avoided (personal and professional) is really costly. It stings at every level. This is where leave becomes an opportunity to protect their relationship with you, with themselves and their ambition. And that’s where tailored coaching that speaks to their level, walks alongside them, and grows them really comes into its own. It’s where talent can come back stronger than pre-leave with a scaffold and tools that help them power up without feeling like they’re trading in their personal or professional values. You can’t get that impact from a policy, process, platform.

If you’d like some more examples of what comes up in coaching conversations, you might also enjoy this blog.

How will I know which coaching provider is right for our business?

Honestly? Check out testimonials, have a conversation with the provider and if it feels good, run a pilot and see how it goes. Here are some great questions to ask:

1. What’s your training and experience specifically with parental transitions—not just general coaching?

2. How would you describe your coaching style?

3. What CPD do you do in this space?

4. What experience do you have coaching senior leaders?

5. Do you offer wraparound support where my employee can contact you at any time e.g in-between sessions?

6. What’s your approach to lost confidence/ambition?

7. Are sessions online or IRL and can that be flexible?

8. What was your own experience of maternity/parental leave and have you done the work to be objective?

9. What formats do you offer and how flexible are they?

10. How do you tailor your approach to fit our company culture?

11. Do you have experience working in the corporate world?

12. How do you integrate managers in the relationship?

If you’d like to chat about how coaching might be right for you or your team (without feeling sold to), you can get in touch here.