An experienced senior manager will be returning to work part-time after her maternity leave. Can she effectively maintain a professional and personal life within the hours of her post-maternity contract?
Susan is a service manager of a global company that contributes to the growth, profitability and efficiency of the parent company. She is a member of the division that is based in the UK and has a long-standing and well-established career with the company.
Susan is shortly going on maternity leave and will soon have two children under the age of five. She would like to continue to develop herself against her personal and professional objectives while also raising a family.
This could be a challenging task in an environment where the company has just successfully bought another large global brand, which means her department’s workload could increase at a time when her contracted hours will decrease.
Susan’s male line manager is very supportive of her ambitions for both her career and family life. The company is also mindful of gender diversity and actively encourages women into leadership positions in a sector that has a predominance of male managers.
How realistic are her post-maternity work-life expectations and concerns?
Karen Frost
Director of coaching, Values Based Leadership
There is no such thing as a defined work-life balance when it comes to being a manager and a mum!
Differentiating your time around when you work and when you look after your children will not work in a world where global organisations are working 24 hours a day and the needs of children are unpredictable.
Statistics highlight how common it is for women returning to work after maternity to re-contract with their existing employers. Often this leads women down one of three paths:
1. They struggle on and do the same hours they would if they were full-time – often working late or very early, creating stress and burn-out.
2. They leave their employers and start a new job with a well-defined, clear contract that they can manage.
3. They leave their profession and start their own business, often hobby-based, so they can manage their own career and time.
None of these will work for the organisation because their talent is lost.
To retain Susan, one option is to establish both Susan’s and the employer’s career expectations pre-leave. Ideally, this would be done along with her manager using maternity coaching.
Pre-natal coaching would help Susan define her objectives for managing her career during maternity. This might include helping her find a sponsor in the business who will connect with her through the leave and communicate her progress to others.
Post-natal coaching would help Susan re-evaluate her career objectives, her sponsor negotiating a realistic contract that works for everyone.
Jessica Chivers
Director, The Talent Keeper Specialists
It’s fantastic that Susan has an enlightened manager. Maternity comeback coaching could provide a supportively challenging space for Susan to consider, plan and prepare for her return, as well as think about broader career aspirations and actions.
Three areas to explore in coaching could be: 1. How Susan can reshape her role given the shift to part-time hours; 2. How she might need to adapt the way she delivers, and 3. How to signal organisational commitment while having a life beyond work.
Time with a coach could be useful for Susan to get clear on what will enable her to perform at her best, how to pitch for those things and how to position changes to the way she works to show that she has considered the impact on her colleagues.
Given that Susan works for a global firm, there could be scope to work atypical hours in response to different time zones, which may help her have time with her family. As the business is in a high growth phase, she might also use coaching to see how much she will flex to accommodate business needs.
Involving her line manager in a coaching meeting just before she returns, as well as around a month in, could be valuable. In the first meeting, the coaching triad could build a 90-day plan for what success will look and sound like for Susan. The second meeting would review the first month, making adjustments as necessary.
Ultimately, maternity comeback coaching is about reducing time taken to perform at pre-leave levels – and building belief about future careers.
Coaching at Work, Volume 8, Issue 5