An important group that needs support in your organisation is working parents coming back from parental leave.
That’s because coming back to work after a long break can be difficult, which is why employers need to ensure their people feel like the organisation is invested in helping them get back on track.
So how can you better understand and support this very pivotal group of people? Read on to learn more.
Why Working Parents Need Your Support
First and foremost, it’s important to put yourself in your employees’ shoes. As working parents come back from parental leave, a lot is changing for them: their day-to-day schedules, new responsibilities as a parent, and even their identities. It’s an intense physical and psychological adjustment that they’re going through, so be kind, gentle, and empathetic.
Remember: They’re not only dealing with changes at home, they’re also dealing with changes at work.
It’s likely they’ve missed out on some developments in the organisation while they’ve been away, including some key decisions and new hires. Therefore, make sure to keep them apprised of all the new developments off the bat so they don’t feel lost or out of the loop later on.
How to Offer It
You may want to offer your team members a few options depending on what’s right for each individual situation: Employees can start by easing back in by working part-time at first, or can choose to go back full-time immediately. Here are the benefits of each approach.
Working part-time allows team members to:
- Remove some of the pressure of juggling their new home life
- Learn how to do the job they did before differently
- Focus more while getting work done
- Prioritise and concentrate on things that make a real difference to your organisation
On the other hand, going back to work full-time immediately allows your employees to:
- Resume the career they had before
- Maintain expectations
- Conduct data gathering and test things out at their usual work pace/in their ‘normal’ work environment
- Cut back on hours if need be
How Mentoring Can Help
We once had a client that realised they had a disproportionately high rate of turnover for their employees—most of whom were female—that were returning back to work after parental leave. They found that the loss of this talent was also having an impact on the number of women moving into leadership positions.
Therefore, the client decided to implement an opt-in mentoring program. This would enable those on parental leave to opt-in to a community of peer mentors from the business—colleagues that had personally gone through this experience and transitioned back to work themselves.
This is highly effective because often the best mentors are just slightly ahead of their mentoring partners. That’s because their advice is often highly relevant, timely, and relatable—they’ve recently lived through these experiences and are more than willing to share what they’ve learned with others who are going through the same thing.
Does this sound like a good idea? Here’s how you start implementing such a program at your own organisation.
Matching
Your organisation can choose to match newly returning parents with those who have come back from parental leave in the last six months to one year, a peer mentor so they can navigate this big change together and offer support, or both!
You can do this via manual matching, self matching, or a blend of both matching styles.
Manual Matching
Manual matching allows you to be in full control of the pairings in your program. You’ll manually review participant profiles, and then connect each participant with their partner(s). This is great for smaller, targeted programs—like one for those returning from parental leave—and when you have intimate knowledge of the people involved.
Self Matching
Self matching allows participants to organise themselves into their own matches at a time that’s convenient for them. Participants can search the platform for a mentoring partner, reach out and connect with them, and then wait for the other party to review and accept or politely decline the match. This is great for larger programs or if you don’t have the time to dedicate to manually matching your entire cohort.
From here, make sure to check in on your matched participants and see how their mentoring experience is going. You can then make adjustments yourself or nudge participants to do so themselves if need be.
Ultimately, such mentoring programs catered to those who need them most in your organisation can lead to higher retention, increased engagement, and a boost in how connected people feel to the organisation and one another. What’s not to love about that?
Want to learn how the Mentorloop platform can help get your targeted mentoring program off the ground?
