What the parental leave task force discovered
Heidrick & Struggles’ parental leave task force took a global, employee-centered approach to better understand the leave experience of their employees.
The team reviewed parental leave policies across regions, benchmarked industry best practices, and conducted focus groups, surveys and one-on-one interviews with employees.
By gathering insights from employees worldwide, the task force identified seven potential solutions and prioritized three based on their impact and feasibility:
- Parental leave manager training: Employees emphasized that a manager’s support during parental leave was essential to their experience. Many managers wanted to help but lacked the tools or knowledge to do so effectively.
- Parental leave planning templates: Both employees and managers needed a clear, repeatable process to navigate the logistics of leave, from preparing for parental leave to reintegrating smoothly after returning.
- Parental leave resource library: Employees wanted centralized access to tools and guidance for navigating each stage of the parental leave journey to ensure a consistent experience for the global workforce
These areas addressed challenges for employees, managers and their teams, and would create an opportunity to improve the overall experience for everyone involved.
Partnering with Parentaly: “The stars were truly aligned”
After the parental leave task force identified the top three priorities, Heidrick & Struggles was determining whether to build the solution in-house or partner with a vendor to provide this critical parental leave support.
Fortunately for us, Parentaly was on their radar due to internal referrals. Our offering perfectly aligned with their needs, which led to the start of our partnership:
“The decision to partner with Parentaly was a natural outcome of the task force findings. When we explored your offering, we realized they aligned perfectly with our top three solutions: comprehensive manager training, detailed leave planning and a robust resources library.” - Dom Dickson
Here’s how Parentaly supports Heidrick & Struggles’ parental leave support priorities:
- Manager training for people leaders: Parentaly provides quarterly comprehensive training programs to help managers understand their role in the parental leave experience. Managers receive tactical steps on how to support expecting employees and their coverage teams before, during and after leave transitions
“One of the biggest wins is that we’re making our managers better people leaders.” - Cecilia Nelson-Hurt
- Career coaching for expecting employees: Parentaly provides 1:1 coaching to expecting employees to help them navigate the entire parental leave planning process with a certified career coach. Sessions are designed to meet the individual’s personal needs, from pre-leave planning to return-to-work success
“Parentaly directly supports our goals because it helps us to foster a workplace and a culture that values and supports our employees at every stage of their parental journey.” - Cecilia Nelson-Hurt
- The Parentaly Toolkit: Expecting employees and managers at Heidrick & Struggles have access to Parentaly’s comprehensive library of resources, offering a customized, centralized hub that includes leave planning templates, conversation guides and a robust checklist covering the most critical steps in the parental leave process
“It's been so invaluable in helping us to be better equipped with the insights, the strategies and actionable solutions that are needed to create a globally consistent and inclusive parental leave program.” - Cecilia Nelson-Hurt
The business case for investments in parental leave support
Heidrick & Struggles took a thoughtful, data-driven approach to reimagine the parental leave experience. And the work of the task force demonstrated that parental leave support isn’t just an HR initiative—it’s a business imperative.
By prioritizing manager training, leave planning, and accessible resources, Heidrick & Struggles set a new standard for parental leave programs—one that supports employees while driving business success.
For organizations considering similar investments, Heidrick & Struggles’ experience offers a compelling blueprint: leverage data to identify challenges, prioritize solutions with the greatest impact, and collaborate with experts to drive meaningful, scalable outcomes.
‘You’re more than likely going to end up with [something] that doesn’t check every single box, but we’re lucky Parentaly was going to do exactly that for us. We had already defined the challenges and identified key priorities, which meant we could hit the ground running with Parentaly. Your team's expertise really complemented our internal efforts and allowed us to deliver a more seamless and impactful solution for our employee community.” - Dom Dickson
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