A good maternity policy is not the same as a good return-to-work experience. Here's the difference.
I have sat opposite many women who have said some version of this: 'On paper, everything was fine. They did everything right. But it felt like nobody really saw what had changed.'
She came back to the same role, the same desk, the same team. Her enhanced maternity pay had been generous. Her phased return was arranged. All the boxes were ticked.
But nobody asked what she needed now. Nobody acknowledged that she was a different person returning to the same space. And within twelve months, she had handed in her notice.
Policy and experience are not the same thing
Most organisations with good maternity policies believe those policies are working. The compliance metrics say so. What the metrics don't capture is the lived experience — whether the return felt supported or perfunctory, whether managers knew what to say, whether flexibility that was promised on paper existed in practice.
The gap between policy and experience is where retention is lost.
What good actually looks like
Good return-to-work support is not complicated. It requires managers who are trained to have genuine conversations — not scripted ones — about what has changed and what is needed. It requires flexibility that exists in practice, not just in policy. It requires an acknowledgement that the person returning is not the same person who left, and that this is not a problem to be managed but a reality to be met.
The line 'how was your time off?' — said cheerfully, meant kindly — is almost always the wrong thing to say. Not because it's offensive, but because it signals that what happened has been filed under holiday. It hasn't.
The business case
Losing experienced women in the years following maternity leave is one of the most significant and preventable sources of talent attrition in most organisations. The cost of replacement — recruitment, onboarding, the knowledge lost — almost always exceeds the cost of getting the return right.
If you'd like to understand how return-to-work experiences land in your organisation, the Women at Work Listening Project can help. nataliemccandless.com/working-with-me-organisations