This is the top concern for the majority of women who take parental leave

When Parentaly CEO Allison Whalen gave birth to her first child in 2017, she knew it would be a challenge to adjust to her new life as a parent. But she eventually realized she was far less prepared for how difficult it would be to return to the workplace, despite having 12 weeks of parental leave—a policy that seemed generous at the time. 

“I walked back into work after 12 weeks, and I found that my team was overworked and had been totally burned out,” she says. “One [person] actually quit as a result of her experience.”

Whalen also felt like she had been unintentionally cut out of projects while out on leave, despite a track record of strong performance and a good relationship with her manager. “I found myself, in that moment in time, thinking it would be so much easier to quit and start somewhere else than to dig myself out of the hole of this parental leave,” she says. “That was when I thought: Oh my gosh, is this what’s happening to everyone?”

The challenges of returning to work

Since starting Parentaly, Whalen has helped countless companies craft a superior parental leave experience that offers more comprehensive support for their employees. In her conversations with employees and managers, she often heard that people faced similar challenges upon returning to the workplace, even when their employers had generous leave policies. But she found there was little data on the issue, despite plenty of anecdotal evidence that suggested employees were struggling with the transition. 

So Whalen and the team at Parentaly tapped into their network to conduct their own study, polling more than 2,750 women about their experiences taking and returning from leave. The findings captured many of the hurdles women experience when they go on leave, from figuring out coverage plans to reacclimating to the workplace after they return. The findings also highlighted how entire teams can suffer when someone goes on leave without adequate support and planning—and the importance of managers ensuring things go smoothly when people take leave.

Progress on offering leave

Over the past decade, a generous parental leave policy has become an essential benefit for companies looking to attract and retain top talent. In the tech industry, which has been a leader on parental leave, it’s not uncommon for large employers to provide at least 16 to 20 weeks of leave, with companies like Google and Salesforce offering up to six months. 

Despite this progress on parental leave—at least in certain corners of the workforce—Parentaly’s survey echoed what Whalen had experienced herself and encountered in her work with companies (not to mention prior research on the subject). While the majority of respondents—64%—worried about how parental leave could derail their career progression, the concern was most acute for people who worked at companies with fully paid, longer leaves.

For women who had generous leaves and earned more than $100,000 or held managerial roles, career progression was the leading issue. “We spend our whole work lives thinking about the career impact of leave,” Whalen says, “and [we] were still surprised that came in as the number-one concern.” (Among women who make less than $50,000, on the other hand, only 33% reported concerns with career progression.)  

Why women quit after leave

For many respondents, those concerns were borne out as they lost out on raises and promotions. Some 45% of women surveyed said their leave had a negative impact on their career progression. Those who had longer leaves—in the range of six months—were 38% less likely to get a raise, and half as likely to get promoted in the 18 months following their return to work.  

Employers who offer many months of parental leave often see it as a benefit that yields higher rates of retention and an astute financial decision, given only a fraction of their workforce takes leave in any given year. But it’s clear that without adequate support, even women at companies with best-in-class policies are likely to leave their jobs in the aftermath of taking leave for the birth or adoption of a child.

Among the third of women who left their jobs within 18 months of returning to work, the study found that only 4% dropped out of the workforce altogether; more than 60% simply accepted another role or quit to find another job. “I think what’s so fascinating about this data is it calls into question why people are quitting if only 4% of them are dropping out of the workforce and everyone else is going to find another workplace that feels more supportive in that moment,” Whelan says.

Providing resources

That’s one way managers can play a crucial role in shaping the leave experience for parents, especially in terms of coverage plans and easing the transition back to work. Nearly a quarter of women surveyed by Parentaly said their return was not properly announced to their team. The experience of going back to work can already be fraught for many new parents—especially in workplaces that aren’t built to fully support their needs. 

“When I returned there was a complete lack of information about resources available for pumping mothers,” said a survey respondent who works for one of the 100 largest U.S. companies by revenue. “In addition, my manager was supportive, but she is not a parent, so she struggled with knowing exactly what I needed support on. It would have been helpful for her to receive some resources about how to welcome a new parent back to work.”

Another respondent said returning to work was the hardest thing she had ever experienced. “No one knows what I’m going through,” she said. “No one understands I’m up all night with a screaming baby and at work trying to function on two to four hours of nonconsecutive sleep.”

How parental leave affects men

While this survey focused on women and birthing parents, Parentaly also separately collected data from male respondents—which signaled a persistent disparity along gender lines when it comes to the impact of becoming a parent. Women felt the effects of parental leave more intensely, but some men also expressed concerns about taking leave: Of the nearly 300 men surveyed, about 38% said they were worried about career progression, but just 20% said they felt a negative impact on their career after returning from leave.

The top issue for the men surveyed was how they would be perceived for taking too much leave, with 66% citing that as a concern. (They also took shorter leaves on the whole—only about one to three months—though that may partly reflect the lack of parity in parental leave.) 

Mitigating team burnout

Some companies have already taken steps to address certain aspects of the return to work—for example, allowing parents to ease back in with a part-time schedule. But perhaps employers should be looking at this issue more holistically: Beyond the immediate impact on parents, Parentaly’s findings indicate that a bad parental leave experience can have ripple effects on the rest of a company’s workforce.

More than half of leaves led to team burnout, according to Parentaly, largely because other people at the company were saddled with more work while their colleague was on parental leave. (“Burdening other team members” was also an issue that nearly half of respondents cited as a concern they had about taking leave in the first place.) 

“Often companies view parental leave as impacting only 5% of [their workforce] per year,” Whelan says. “And I think what was so eye-opening about the team burnout statistic is that yes, only 5% may go on leave per year, but it’s actually impacting all their direct reports, the management, the leadership, the product road map. It is a much bigger challenge—and opportunity—than I think we’re all giving it credit for.”

Designing a leave that works

Mansi Kothari, Parentaly’s VP of product, notes that companies can think more expansively about how to address coverage gaps, rather than relying on existing team members to pick up the slack. “Are there ways for this to potentially become a stretch opportunity for other individuals within the organization to try out being on a new team, or to learn a new part of the business? There are creative ways that companies can think about the coverage [plan],” Kothari says.

Parentaly found that the most positive leave experiences went beyond just a clear coverage plan; those women also felt empowered to have open conversations with their manager leading up to their leave, and they often established a re-onboarding process.

“It is so exciting and good that companies are rushing to roll out paid-leave policies,” Whelan says. “That is great and extremely necessary. If I were to point out one key takeaway for any company reading this white paper, it is that there are very simple things they can institute to improve this experience that are actually really good for the business, too.”