The post-maternity-leave return to work is not an experience which is widely known for its relaxing qualities. I mean, it's true that I spent the last two weeks of my own maternity leave joking to my friends that the workplace would feel like a spa weekend in comparison to looking after a small child 24/7. I fantasised about wearing clothes that weren't covered in baby bodily fluids. I would tell my husband how amazed I was that I would no longer have to sing "The Wheels on the Bus" seven times a day. Please don't think I wasn't grateful, or that I hadn't loved it - my daughter and I had had a blissful time together. But I couldn't help but be a little bit excited at the prospect of leaving the cocoon and entering the outside world again. Of continuing to build my career. It was such a huge part of who I was, after all.
But then real life intervened. Of course it did. The night before I was due to return to the office, my 11 month old came down with hand, foot and mouth disease. My husband was away with work in the US. Our fledgling childcare arrangements, so carefully tended, had already fallen off their metaphorical perch; we had a new nanny, who we had only met for the first time 72 hours earlier. I sat on the northern line, almost frozen in terror. How was I going to make this work?
A survey by the Fawcett Society suggests that I wasn't the only one who found the return to work stressful, nor the only one who found that if I wanted to advance my career, I was now going to encounter extra challenges I hadn't bargained for. It makes for disheartening, but sadly not shocking, reading.
For a start, some women don't return to paid employment at all - and of course, that's an absolutely valid choice. If it is, in fact, a choice. Increasingly, though, women are reporting that they simply aren't able to go back to work - often because they can't access, or can't afford, sufficient childcare. Figures released by the Office For National Statistics indicate that in 2023 there were more than 300,000 adults of working age who wanted to work but weren't able to do so because they had caring responsibilities.
Then there are the mothers who do go back to their workplace. The study suggests it's far from plain sailing for this group either. In fact, it outlines a wide range of challenges faced by those who do return - challenges so extensive that a whopping 19% of those who do return very quickly consider leaving, and 11% of working mothers say that they've resigned due to the lack of support they've encountered at work. And of those who stay, their chances of working their way up the professional hierarchy are often seriously impacted by motherhood and - crucially - the lens through which working mothers are viewed by their employers. A full 66% report that their career development has suffered since becoming a mother. Sometimes, their ambitions receive a blow from which they never recover – the effects are felt all the way to the end of their working lives. And the impact is reported to be particularly acute for single mothers and working mothers from marginalised communities.
But why should this be the case? Surely in this enlightened day and age, these issues shouldn't be insurmountable? After all, our workplaces have never been so family-friendly - er, have they...? Our HR departments are clued up, our managers are trained to within an inch of their lives, and we have more senior female role models than ever before. Surely? Perhaps. But nonetheless, working mothers are reporting that their workplace policies don't always reflect their experiences at the coalface. Perhaps our workplaces, however good their intentions might be, might be missing the mark? And if so, why?
For a start, there is a problem of perception. Quite simply, too many organisations believe that women don't care about their careers once they become mothers. And fighting against that sort of cultural backdrop makes everything ten times as difficult as it needs to be. (What with, you know, it already being so simple to be a woman in professional fields that have been populated solely by men for hundreds of years and all...) It's a fairly widespread problem. In fact, one third of managers wrongly believe that working mothers are less interested in career progression than their female childless and male counterparts. When we look at it that way, it's not a surprise that 22% of working mothers report that some of their professional responsibilities were taken away from them when they returned from maternity leave - compared to 11% of fathers returning from parental leave. Even worse, 7% of women are demoted at this point. It might be why a full 60% of working mothers feel that they are undervalued and their capabilities and contributions are now more likely to be overlooked. The inevitable consequence of this? Well, it's now depressingly normal in some industries for women to avoid mentioning their childcare commitments at interviews, for fear that they'll be considered less dedicated.
Except that this way of looking at the world is completely and utterly misguided, for huge swathes of the working female population. Actually, 40% of working mothers feel that they’re more ambitious after returning from maternity leave, rather than less. Perhaps years of being told that we can have it all have made us bolder and more confident - and thank goodness for that. Perhaps families are having to chase higher salaries in order to stay afloat in the current Cost of Living crisis, especially given the increasing economic impact of raising a child in modern-day Britain. Perhaps it's an unforeseen logistical benefit of our new circumstances - we all know there’s nobody more efficient and driven than a working parent who has to make it to nursery pick-up through the rush hour traffic before the doors close. But either way, with the right support and flexibility, there's no reason why working mothers shouldn't climb their professional ladder at the same rate as their male colleagues.
Hand in hand with this outdated viewpoint, perhaps, is the issue of dwindling professional support networks. Perhaps before you went on maternity leave, you had a wide range of colleagues who you knew well. You built relationships with your peers and those higher up the tree than you - in practice, it might often have amounted to informal mentoring. Maybe you enjoyed spending time with your colleagues at work events, or you ate lunch with them regularly. You might even have classed them as "work friends". These people were your support network. Your champions in the workplace. They gave you a helping hand when you needed advice on a tricky professional issue, cheered on your successful projects, and sang your praises to others around you. Access to the workplace grapevine alerted you to new development opportunities and that feeling of belonging might have given you the confidence to apply for promotions as they arose.
But what about when you return to work? Well, in some cases, the tumbleweed silence can be deafening. A significant minority (15%) of working mothers report that they've been excluded from social and networking events. As a result, 41% say they feel detached from their colleagues - and this rises to 60% of single mothers, who are perhaps considered by peers to have even fewer opportunities to attend events outside normal working hours. It'd be naive of us to claim that this change is always accidental. But we still believe that most people are pretty decent and so, honestly, in many cases, it might not be a deliberate move by an organisation. Those impromptu Friday night drinks after work? You may need to leave to get to nursery. Your old lunchtimes sitting in the sunshine may get fewer and further between when your working days, of necessity, can no longer extend for as long into the evening as you want them to. It can be harder to seize opportunities for career advancement as and when they come up when you're not plugged into the workplace network. It can be difficult to gather together enough confidence to even apply for new roles if the other applicants already have close relationships with senior managers and you haven't been able to access the evening work events where those relationships have developed. But knowing that that's the case, and understanding the benefits that diversity can bring to a business, organisations might want to be thinking about these changes when making decisions about team building events, career development opportunities and promotions.
Then there's the fact that many working mothers feel that they've received little support upon their return to work. This doesn't necessarily mean that this cohort wants special treatment, you understand. Actually, the things which can complicate a return to work can sometimes be fairly basic. For example, some returnees (15%) feel that their roles haven't been adequately covered during maternity leave. Others (28%) reported a lack of training and guidance to help them to reintegrate - particularly difficult if there have been changes to the structure of your team, or new systems brought in, whilst you were away.
And finally, childcare is an obvious hurdle when returning to work, but historically, it's also been an obstacle to accessing more senior roles. Maybe this isn't a huge surprise. After all, we've discussed in previous blogs the difficulties faced by many in accessing childcare in an age when nurseries are closing at a rate of knots. Of the soaring costs of childcare, and the fact that many are simply priced out of increasing their hours or out of the job market completely. Of the fact that the government's new scheme, billed as "free childcare", has rather a lot of small print involved, and that many childcare providers are claiming that they cannot afford to implement it. As we've discussed, it's not necessarily the case that women don't want to take on more professional responsibilities. But it's still depressing to read that 41% of working mothers have declined promotions or career development opportunities because they simply couldn't make them align with their childcare arrangements, and that 31% feel they're stuck in their current jobs because the roles they really want to be doing don't offer the flexibility they need to make their careers work.
In fact, the number one request of the women surveyed by the Fawcett Society was greater access to flexible working arrangements. We've long believed this to be the case, but once again, it's been backed up by research - flex really is the key to enabling women to return to work when they want to do so, to stay in work, and to build their careers. And research has also shown time and time again that flexibility shouldn't be considered a concession - some sort of kindness shown to a particular group. On the contrary, it's in the best interests of businesses too. It improves productivity, reduces sickness absence levels and increases staff loyalty. It reduces overheads and makes the organisation a desirable place to work. In short, then, it's a win-win for everyone. Luckily our forward-thinking clients are well aware of this! If you're thinking about re-entering the workplace after a career break, if you're finding that your current role just isn't giving you the support or flexibility you need, or if you're looking for flex at a more senior level to take the next step along your career path, than please do get in touch.