Returning from maternity leave with peace of mind: a shared responsibility

Will your employee be returning to the team after several months’ maternity leave? This transition represents a pivotal stage in your employee’s personal and professional life, and can generate many challenges, roller-coaster emotions and questions. As an employer, you have a major role to play in ensuring that these changes go smoothly. You need to facilitate a sense of well-being at work.

According to the HR Reporter_¹, 52% of mothers feel anxious, 43% feel stressed and 41% feel overwhelmed about returning to work after maternity leave.

A plural return to work

Indeed, the return to work is often combined with several important changes in the employee’s personal life. These range from the integration of their toddler into daycare (including microbes galore), to a sometimes radical severing of the close bond with their child. A new family organization has to be put in place. It goes without saying, then, that the employee has to ask himself whether his new family priorities are compatible with his work.

Returning home is an important step

But that’s not all: the HR Reporter reports that 33% of mothers say that the most difficult part of career-related maternity leave is losing confidence in their ability. This compares with almost half (49%) for whom it’s the feeling of having to prove themselves when they return, and 36% for whom it’s the fear of being sidelined by their organization.

Few tips to help employers minimize these negative feelings:

• Be proactive

Don’t wait until the week before your contributor’s return before preparing his or her reintegration. If it’s realistic for you, and the contributor has the flexibility to telework, send him his equipment so that he can settle in before his first day if he so wishes, and even refamiliarize himself with his workstation, find his bearings in your server and consult his calendar.

• Keeping in touch 

During your employee’s absence, don’t hesitate to check in, invite him or her to the holiday party and even keep him or her abreast of the organization’s greatest successes and achievements, so that the employee feels that his or her return is expected and that his or her place on the team is still warm.

• Communicating expectations

Why not invite your employee to lunch before he or she returns to work? It’s a great opportunity not only to let them know what to expect in a more concrete way, but also to reassure them that you’re listening carefully to their concerns about the changes ahead.

• Offer flexibility

Perhaps your employee needs a refresher on all the resources available to him or her in terms of working conditions, but also on training budgets, for example. There is a wide range of accommodations available in the workplace.

And don’t forget, as my colleague Caroline mentions in her article “Fulfillment at Work: Breaking Taboos to Cultivate Well-Being in the workplace” , cultivating well-being at work also cultivates productivity! Finally, according to a study conducted in 2022 by the Conseil du statut de la femme , over 93% of women and 86% of men aged 19 plan to have more than one child in their lives.  Why not take advantage of this unique life event for our employees by turning it into a retention lever, an opportunity to solidify the employment bond, an avenue where everyone wins.

[1] 2 in 5 Canadian mothers not given financial top-ups for mat, HR Reporter, 2024 leave

[2] Portrait des Québécoises, La situation familiale, Édition 2022, Conseil du statut de la femme, Gouvernement du Québec