How to support mothers returning to work (part3)

How to Support Mothers Returning to Work

Part 3:
6 Things you can do as an employer.

By Rose McCarter-Field

Want to know how companies such as Google have reduced the number of new mothers leaving by half?

Women represent half of the workforce. How can you as an employer best support women through maternity and beyond?

Here are our 6 top tips for employers supporting returning mums.

Focus on their return to work. Planning their return should start from before they go on maternity leave. Before they leave, establish a plan of gradual reintegration. This plan can be flexible and change on their return. This way, they know that there are plans in place to assist them in successful reintegration. This provides them with confidence that their needs will be supported on their return.

The transition back into work can bring on physical and emotional rollercoasters for mothers (and fathers). To know that an employer is understanding can reduce concerns and allow for open communications about the needs of your employees.

One rarely discussed subject is miscarriage and still births. 10-20% of pregnancies end in miscarriage and 1 in 160 end in failed births. A member of staff returning from maternity in the case of a miscarriage or failed birth, will still have gone through significant physical and psychological changes. A supportive and structured reintegration is just as important as it is to new mothers.

In the following weeks and months after their return, arrange scheduled discussions about what their needs are, how progress is going, and how the company can support them in being the best in their role. These discussions should be part of a planned reorientation programme.

What flexibility do they need at work? Do they need a condensed work week? Part-time hours? Or flexible hours? Where possible, ensure the return to work process supports the new needs in their life. They will still be accountable for delivering on their job responsibilities. Flexibility in certain areas may help them to achieve this.

Flexible work has been linked to reduced stress levels as well as attracting and retaining talented staff. Parents have circumstances that arise that they didn’t anticipate. Such as a sick child, a spouse’s work needs, and the emotional or physical pain after maternity.

Workplaces can be supportive of the needs of new parents, after maternity or adoption. And flexibility can be built into post maternity reintegration.

Breastfeeding for the first 6 – 12 months has a multitude of health benefits for the mother and the baby.

Nursing mothers need a private place in which to express breastmilk. And ideally access to a fridge where this milk can be stored.

Having a breastfeeding policy in the office (physical or virtual) supports mothers in balancing their home and work life. These policies go a long way to show your female employees that their needs are understood and welcomed.

Affordable childcare is a pain point for many parents.

Are you able to provide on-site access to day-care? This can go a long way to supporting work life balance. It reduces additional stops on the route to and from work. Having their baby cared for near the office removes the guilt of being away from their child which also allows them to remain engaged as they transition back to work.

Or can you subsidise childcare costs to make childcare more accessible to parents? And make the financial decisions around work vs childcare costs easier? It also shows that you as an employer are supportive of employees that are parents.

Returning mothers have most likely been away from work for 10 to 12 months or more. They may feel out of touch from the workplace. They may benefit from being kept up to date with important milestones and changes, to keep them in the loop. Make good use of your Keeping in Touch (KIT) days, they are important.

Or if they prefer not to have this communication while they are on maternity leave, you can record milestones for them to see on their return. Make a list of events and activities that you feel are important and relevant to them. You can provide this list on their return. This will reduce the amount of catching up they have to do and ensure they are in touch with current agendas.

Who are the new employees in the team? What changes have there been in processes, communications, or software? Have they missed any training that they would benefit from, and is there a chance for them to do this training now they have returned? This list could go as far as to include notable happenings, lessons learned, challenges met, and team wins.

Companies including Netflix, Microsoft, and Google now offer extended maternity leave. The reasons for this are primarily to retain and attract top talent. When Google increased its maternity leave from 12 to 18 weeks, they saw a 50% reduction in new mothers leaving work.

It may be tempting to get your talented staff back fast, but it might harm the company in the long run.

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August 3, 2022March 19, 2023

How to support mothers returning to work (part2)

working mother on maternity leave breastfeeding

How to Support Mothers Returning to Work

Part 2:
What employers are doing in 2022

By Rose McCarter-Field

In 2018, PwC carried out research with 3,627 professional women, to understand what was important to them when returning to work after maternity. 95% of the women that took part in the survey felt that a greater degree of work flexibility on their return would assist them in operating at their best in their roles. This included flexible work practices such as movable start and stop times and flexi-time.

But what are forward thinking employers doing presently about their maternity policies? Which companies are changing their outlook on supporting staff in their return to work? And how is it effecting their companies? Here are a few examples from some global technology companies.

Vodafone

This UK based employer now offers reduced hours, such as a 30 hour week, during the first three to six months following return after maternity leave. Their revised maternity policy was implemented to allow mothers in tech, IT, sales and data roles the flexibility to return in a way that enables them to be the best in their role as they experience significant life changes.

Netflix and Microsoft

Netflix and Microsoft are among a number of Technology companies who have revamped their maternity policy to support mothers returning to their jobs. They have extended the length of their parental leave policies from 12 to 16 weeks. The aim of this change is to retain and attract the best talent to their companies. As a result they have seen an increase in staff retention following maternity leave.

Google

Google increased its maternity leave policy from 12 to 18 weeks. This was implemented across the board from their London based IT staff to their Germany based data analysts. Following this change of policy, the rate at which new mothers left the company was halved, an incredible statistic.

A number of other global companies, many in the IT, finance, and data analytics sectors, have reported that doubling their leave from 8 to 16 weeks has resulted in their turnover rate for new mothers falling by 40%. It can be tempting to encourage staff to return to work quickly. However, this is not always beneficial to the company in the longer term.

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July 28, 2022March 19, 2023

How to support mothers returning to work (part 1)

How to Support Mothers Returning to Work

Part 1:
Supporting new mums returning to work

By Rose McCarter-Field

Did you know, nearly half the workforce are female? Maternity and motherhood is a significant event that changes the lives of a large percentage of our staff. As employers, we need to be supportive of such an important event. Let’s take a look at how we can best enable our staff during such a time.

Are doing enough? Take a look at the below feedback from recent research on mothers returning to work.

1 in 9 returning mothers report feeling forced to leave their job.
1 in 5 mothers said they experienced harassment related to pregnancy.
Google halved the amount of women leaving work following maternity by increasing their maternity leave .

So what can we do to enable half our workforce at such a time? During maternity leave, a mother will have gone through significant physical and emotional changes and strains. Whatever the situation – her life has just changed monumentally. Employers should consider what they can do to help returning mums get back up and running after maternity leave, and how they can support them at work whilst they settle into their changed lives at home.

We’re currently researching how other companies have seen positive change through improving their return to work policies and ethos. Watch this space for our next article with more detail on how to support mothers returning to work.

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May 19, 2022May 19, 2022

Want more female leaders in your company?

Find Out How

By Rose McCarter-Field

Do you look around and see only or mostly men on your board? On your leadership team? Do you ask yourself, why? Maybe you have already searched for the right women for these positions and just haven’t found the right people yet?

What do you think would inspire women to join your leadership team? To join your company? So that you become the employer of choice for talented female leaders.

Perhaps you are finding it difficult to find women in your industry with previous leadership experience? This is a vicious cycle. Some companies have taken on an apprenticeship approach to find skilled women and build up their leadership skills prior to them fully taking on a new role. In the same way that some governments such as Saudi Arabia are funding female run start-ups, companies are investing in training and apprenticeship programmes to tackle the challenge of equality in leadership. These women can then become figureheads for your company, in turn attracting more women to your company and helping you to equal out the gender balance.

How do you choose your shortlisting criteria for jobs and promotions? Are they written by men? Could they contain unintentional biases? One way round this is to get a diverse group of people involved in writing job descriptions and involved in the shortlisting. This helps to provide a wider perspective on the skills, experiences, and personality types appropriate for a role.

You could even specifically target women in your internal and external job advertising. Simple factors such as the imagery and wording that you use, can make a job advert appear less bias towards men. For help on this, ask us how!

If you want to become an employer of choice for women in your industry, you need to visibly be attracting them. The talent is out there. You need to position yourself in such a manner that draws them to your company. Visible female leaders will help, so will reflecting on the unintentional internal biases that are likely to be present in your workplace. For more information on this see our article on 3 Tell Tale Signs of Unintentional Gender Bias.

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January 19, 2022August 3, 2022

Become the employer of choice for working parents

By Rose McCarter-Field

Want to become the employer of choice for motivated working parents? How in 2022 can you adapt your working practices to attract more skilled parents into your company?

And how as an employer, can you effectively support parents returning to work?

Losing top talent is a massive expense in money and time for any team. When we have staff members and contractors that we can trust to carry out their work to a high standard without detailed monitoring, it makes our lives as managers significantly easier. And it makes our company run more smoothly. So keeping top talent for me, is a priority.

In the current work climate, enabling staff to live their best life, is a big win for staff retention. Parents are at the forefront of this movement. With multiple high priority tasks at home and at work, parents are increasingly seeking a job that improves their work-life balance. But how as an employer can you provide this?

Understand Their Needs

Develop an understanding of their lives. How much support do they have? How do they share their responsibilities at home? What events or day-to-day activities would they like to attend? Get to know what they care about and what their work prevents them from doing. Take time to understand how their work commitments increase their home stresses.

Find out which aspects of home life they have CHOSEN to sacrifice, to work with you.

Know What You Need

How often do you need people in the office? And at what times? How much flexibility can you give, whilst ensuring your team(s) are carrying out their jobs successfully and communicating effectively?

It is important to be clear about what you need from your staff, and for these expectations to be reflected in your reporting and appraisal processes. This will provide a clear line between flexibility and work expectations.

Be Flexible

Be open to changes in working practices that will improve the lives of your team members. You CAN positively impact their lives and the lives of their whole family, simply by being flexible.

Some staff may benefit from flexible working hours, others from going part time or a job share. Others may benefit from changing their working hours, or having the ability to work from home.

Prevent Negative Impact

It’s important to consider the impact of your flexibility. For example, a member of staff in my team reduced their hours to 3 days. They now work from Tuesday to Thursday. However, this would mean that if I or a client wanted to get in touch with them on Friday, they would not get the message until Tuesday. So, we built in buffers of time to enable timely communication. We created a 0.1 hour buffer, so that messages are checked and responded to on Monday and Friday, enabling us to maintain our reputation of seamless and timely communication.

Or as an alternative, 5 half days may be a better option, from the perspective of you as a manager. This enables you to contact them every day, and enables them to collect the children from school every day.

Understand what they need, be clear about what you need, and create a flexible culture that benefits everyone.

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November 17, 2021July 5, 2022

Boosting Women in Tech

23rd September 11.30am BST

ABOUT THIS TALK

17 June 2021 at 11:30am for 45 minutes

Ada Lovelace is credited as the first computer programmer and was an early trailblazer for women in tech!

But despite Ada, and many other pioneers like her, women are vastly underrepresented in the tech industry today. Women represent only 19% of the tech workforce…

In this webinar, you’ll discover the practical steps tech leaders can take to attract and retain more women. You’ll learn how to: spark early interest, introduce job diversity and flexibility, create inclusive roles, build diverse recruitment and how apprenticeships can help empower women to build their career in the tech industry.

Our expert panel will share best practice, case studies and success stories from women tech talents, recruiters and employers. We share insights on how to source the best talent for a gender diverse team, how some industries are putting women off joining their companies and how to increase your talent pool by attracting talented women.

We have the power to create a more diverse workplace. So, why not join the movement and help the tech industry discover the next generation of Adas!

September 21, 2021July 5, 2022

Creating A Diverse Company Culture (Do’s and Don’ts)

Diverse,Professional,Business,Leaders,Posing,With,Multicultural,Workers,In,Office,

Creating A Diverse Company Culture
(Do’s and Don’ts)

By Rose McCarter-Field

Truly creating a diverse company culture, means having a diverse team. Processes and initiatives to promote diversity can help you get there. But to retain a diverse culture, a diverse team is essential.

The more diverse your team, the more the company will naturally become a diverse workplace. A diverse workplace will appeal to a greater number and variety of people.

But how do you get there?

Research has shown that recruitment initiatives focussed at specific minorities will increase your applicants from those underrepresented groups. Recruiting based on familiarity with a person, will prevent the development of diversity in your company.

Many promotions happen internally, based on referral. It’s easy to fall into the trap of favouring people that remind us of ourselves. And this approach to internal promotion is one sure way to iron out any potential of creating diverse leadership in your company. This is what your HR processes are for, promote based on skills and experience, reduce the bias.

Another trick you can try is talking to staff in minority groups. Ask them if their experiences in your company are different from other people’s. You’ll learn a lot about your company culture by doing this. And don’t just ask once, you won’t get honest insight unless you make a point of asking them three times. On the third time, they will know you are serious and want their honest opinion, this is when you will get the real insight.

We are holding a webinar on women in technology, it covers everything from recruitment, to retention, and promotion. If you’d like to attend you can sign up on the link here.

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September 20, 2021July 5, 2022

How Gender Inclusive is your Company? 3 Tell Tale Signs of Unintentional Gender Bias

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How Gender Inclusive is your Company?

3 Tell Tale Signs of Unintentional Gender Bias

By Rose McCarter-Field

In a sector where women are underrepresented, it’s no secret that exclusion has hindered gender equality in tech. A lack of female applicants and increasing numbers of women leaving tech has contributed to the staff shortages that we see today.

Research has shown a disconnect between leadership awareness of gender biases, and women’s experiences in the workplace. But as a leader, how do you know if your company is excluding women? Here are 3 tell tale signs that your company culture is excluding women, even if you don’t realise it.

How many women are coming back after maternity leave?

If the answer is not many, perhaps it’s time to take a look at your HR policies. If someone is away for a while, will they come back to find themselves on catch-up? To find their counterparts up-skilled and promoted? Are you providing a structured system to enable them to fill any skills gaps? To catch up on training or experiences they have missed? Even promotion opportunities? And do your working practices support a reasonable work/life balance for new parents?

If the above signs are present in your organisation, it’s worth having a look at the reason for this. We are holding a webinar on women in technology, it covers everything from recruitment, to retention, and promotion. If you’d like to attend you can sign up here.

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September 15, 2021July 5, 2022

Why women are the solution to your staff shortages

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Why women are the solution to your staff shortages

By Rose McCarter-Field

While the world of tech finds it’s new normal, staff shortages are causing delays in development.

Finding the right talent has never been easy. But in today’s world we have hit a talent shortage in tech. We need to branch out.

Women represent 50% of the available workforce. For the past ten years they have represented 17% of the staff in science, engineering, and technology (SET). With increasing staff shortages, perhaps it’s time we looked at why staff in SET seem to fit a certain stereotype.

Harvard Business Review research has shown that companies in the US that have carried out female focussed recruitment drives, have seen an increase in their female staff.

If we can’t find high calibre staff in our usual pool of talent, we need to branch out. Perhaps it’s time to focus on the female talent pool?

We are holding a webinar on women in technology, it covers everything from recruitment, to retention, and promotion. If you’d like to attend you can sign up here.

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July 28, 2021July 5, 2022

How to get the best out of your female candidates in an interview

How to get the best out of your female candidates in an interview

3 Top Tips for gender inclusive recruitment.

By Rose McCarter-Field

Every one of your job applicants is a unique individual. Getting the most out of them at an interview will help you to find the right person.

Research has shown that women typically respond differently to interview questions than men. Being aware of these differences can help to iron out inherent gender biases in your recruitment process. Here are my top tips for getting the most out of your female interviewees.

And of course interviews are two way. Are you selling the culture of the company? What work-life balance does the company provide?

Women are more likely to research company culture and values before they have even applied. Remember to share insights into what it will be like to work with you.

How to Support Mothers Returning to Work

Part 3:6 Things you can do as an employer.

By Rose McCarter-Field

Reintegration

Flexibility

Expressing

Childcare Access

Stay in Communication

Extended Maternity Leave

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How to Support Mothers Returning to Work

Part 2:What employers are doing in 2022

By Rose McCarter-Field

Spread the word

Our Services.

How to Support Mothers Returning to Work

Part 1: Supporting new mums returning to work

By Rose McCarter-Field

Spread the word

Our Services.

Want more female leaders in your company?

Find Out How

By Rose McCarter-Field

Spread the word

Become the employer of choice for working parents

By Rose McCarter-Field

Spread the word

ABOUT THIS TALK

17 June 2021 at 11:30am for 45 minutes

Creating A Diverse Company Culture (Do’s and Don’ts)

By Rose McCarter-Field

Spread the word

How Gender Inclusive is your Company?

3 Tell Tale Signs of Unintentional Gender Bias

By Rose McCarter-Field

How many women are on your leadership team?

How many women are coming back after maternity leave?

How many women are putting themselves forward for promotion?

Spread the word

Why women are the solution to your staff shortages

By Rose McCarter-Field

Spread the word

How to get the best out of your female candidates in an interview

3 Top Tips for gender inclusive recruitment.

By Rose McCarter-Field

Be Inquisitive

Check your own Biases

Get a Woman on the Panel

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Specialisms

About

Policies

Part 3:
6 Things you can do as an employer.

Stay in Communication 

Part 2:
What employers are doing in 2022

Part 1:
Supporting new mums returning to work

Creating A Diverse Company Culture
(Do’s and Don’ts)