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Returning well - a shared responsibility
We’re delighted to welcome guest writer Kirstie Sneyd, a valued member of the TWPC Coaching Team, for this edition.
Returning well – a shared responsibility
For many people, returning to work after maternity, paternity or adoption leave is one of the biggest life changes they will face. Although there is hopefully great joy upon becoming a parent and a sense of excitement about returning to work, the transition from being a working professional, to a stay-at-home parent, to then a working parent, can feel like a significant challenge.
Challenges for parents can range from feeling guilty about leaving their baby, concerned about getting up to speed with changes at work or worried about dealing with expectations and assumptions from others. For many returning parents this can lead to a real sense of feeling overwhelmed, and they may not have the strategies and tactics in place to be able to most effectively help themselves.
In addition, however well-meaning the line-manager of a returning parent is, they may unwittingly not fully understand the challenges of returning from parental leave and lack the experience, time or skills to effectively manage those returning from leave.
Types of support
Taking a truly systemic approach, there are five types of support that can help a working parent return after taking parental leave.
| Level | Types of Support |
| National | Legislation around parental leave, flexible working, keeping in touch days, maternity, paternity and adoption pay. Societal attitudes to working parents, parental leave and flexible working. |
| Organisation | Organisation culture. HR policies and practices for flexible working, support networks, career management, breast-feeding support, reorientation HR support. |
| Leaders | Manager’s communications and feedback, support for flexible working, role modelling, empathy and advice. |
| Team | Co-workers’ attitudes, behaviours and support. Team culture. |
| Self-Support | Creating priorities and boundaries. Cognitive coping. Reaching out. |
Support in practice
Delving into a couple of these areas in more detail, here are a few examples of what this could look like in practice.
As the manager of a returning parent it’s really vital to think about the frequency and level of communication and feedback you are having, as during the initial return it normally needs to be stepped up.
“We used to have regular chats about the work I was doing, but also how I was finding it generally. It was great that I knew that I could talk to him [my manager].”
“It would have helped to have more regular feedback and contact with my manager, to see how I was getting on. I’m not naturally an anxious person, but I did feel I needed that confidence boost to say, ‘you are doing the right things’, and I didn’t feel I had that. My confidence had taken a knock, and I needed my manager to say, ‘you are doing a great job, of course you are, why are you worried, we want to have you back’.”
As a returning parent, creating priorities and boundaries is one of the key strategies to help ease the transition back into the workplace, allowing working parents to manage the challenge of feeling overwhelmed and help alleviate guilt around struggling to feel both a good parent and a good professional.
“Before I was so career driven, whereas now, and this initially it was quite hard for me to get my head around, now I have a work life and a home life.”
Areas that returners decide to consider as part of their boundary setting include: what is an acceptable level of travel, deciding to turn off emails when at home, leaving on time for nursery pick-ups and focusing on their child when at home and awake, rather than getting distracted with work.
“I was very clear about my boundary for my pickup time, which was just a real agreement that I made with myself.”
Those returning from parental leave often find they naturally increase their productivity rate, are able to focus more and reduce their procrastination.
“I might only be working 3 days but trust me you’re going to get a 5-day job out of me.”
“I’m much more productive since I’ve come back. You just don’t have that time for standing by the coffee machine chatting. Get in, make those decisions, get out.”
This article is adapted from the forthcoming book Returning well by Kirstie Sneyd, a member of the TWPC Executive Coaching team.
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Feature image credit: Photo by Klara Kulikova on Unsplash