Maternity Coaching

Maternity is a key time for women to leave the workforce, greatly impacting the female talent pipeline and ultimately the gender pay gap.
Maternity coaching supports women through this significant time of transition, enabling new mums to take a long view of their career and encourage retention.
Companies committed to increase diversity and reducing its gender pay gap benefit.

I offer a maternity coaching programme that comprises a series of 1:1 coaching sessions and/or maternity workshops.

Why Offer Maternity Coaching?.

Maternity (the time during pregnancy and shortly after birth) is a significant time when experienced, talented women leave organisations, narrowing the female pipeline and widening the gender pay gap.

Maternity coaching supports women through the major life transition of becoming a parent, encouraging them to take a long view, develop strategies for juggling their priorities, and improve their ability to negotiate with stakeholders, both at work and at home. All this enables them to better balance parenthood and career, and to be able to have a longer-term perspective on their career.

Providing coaching support at this critical life stage aids retention by giving women the support they need while they are making their biggest life transition, into becoming parents. A time when perspective and priorities radically change.

Career-returner programmes are well known for encouraging women back into the workforce after taking a career break. However, retaining high-potential women through this transition is much more cost effective than trying to hire them again further down the line. With coaching, new mums will have the support they need to be able to manage the changes they need to make, so that they don’t feel they have to leave in the first place.

Introducing a maternity coaching programme directly impacts on:
•   Retention – women feel valued and are supported through a time of major life transition, and are given the tools to enable them to balance parenthood with career
•   Productivity – helps sustain performance at a time when it could otherwise dip, through facilitating a smoother return to work
•   Engagement – knowing that they are a valued and supported employee increases levels of commitment and motivation.

Improved retention of talented women directly affects the bottom line both through reduction of recruitment fees and maintaining productivity levels. It also impacts on the gender pay gap, keeping women in the pipeline so they are able to progress into higher levels of the organisation. It has wider business benefits too, enabling the organisation to be more representative of its client base, and improve its brand as an employer.

How Maternity Coaching Benefits an Organisation
•   Organisations are reporting widening gender pay gaps.
•   Research for the Government Equalities Office undertaken on the 2018 gender pay gap survey indicated that the pay gap often opens up in an organisation when women become mothers.
•   To close gender pay gaps, companies will need to do more to retain female talent through the maternity transition.

Why Maternity Coaching Makes a Difference
Maternity is the time when women are most likely to step off the career ladder, taking time out or working in roles that are lower paid, in order to meet family commitments.

Maternity coaching provides a confidential, supportive and impartial space that mitigates this attrition by helping women in a supportive and confidential space, to:
•   Retain levels of confidence and ambition
•   Manage the transition to parenthood so it has less impact on their career choices
•   Understand the effect that becoming a mother has on their identity and perspective
•   Explore and set up the boundaries necessary to have sustainable a work-life balance
•   Prioritise competing demands on their time
•   Delegate to others
•   Manage relationships both at work and home
•   Manage the return-to-work process effectively
•   Understand that they are valued by the organisation during this time.

All this gives women the clarity and confidence to enable them to make the transition to working parenthood without it having a detrimental impact on their career. It encourages them to take a long-term view and helps them work with others to make the changes they need to sustain their career.

The Programme
Maternity coaching takes place through three key phases, starting before maternity leave and continuing until the employee has settled back into work after leave:

•   Phase 1 - Pregnancy: preparing for maternity leave and the impact that has on identity, confidence, perspective and relationships (typically 1 session)
•   Phase 2 - Maternity leave: considering options; taking the long view; deciding whether to return to work immediately after maternity leave; managing the negotiation if a change in hours, location or role is desired; how to get support in place to be able to make a smooth comeback (typically 2 sessions)
•   Phase 3 - Return to work: how to ease in; how to manage relationships; juggling work and family life; building a support network (typically 3 sessions).

Exact details can be customised to requirements.

A supplemental or alternative option is a Maternity Workshop, which is a 1-day seminar focussing on preparing for maternity leave and beyond, for up to 10 delegates.

For more details on maternity coaching and workshops, please get in touch.

Emma Waltham