What 3,000 parents said about the parental leave experience

What did nearly 3,000 women say about what companies got right and wrong when they took parental leave?

We surveyed thousands of mothers who took parental leave over the last three years to better understand the parental leave experience, looking at things like:

• Who covered your work? 
• Did you receive a re-onboarding plan? 
• How did your manager support you?
• What were your biggest concerns going into parental leave? 
• What were your biggest wins coming back from parental leave?
• Were you still employed at your company 18 months after you returned?

Then we worked with Edge Research, an independent research firm, to clean up and analyze the data.

And the results are officially in!

In this episode, our head of marketing, Jenna Vassallo, interviews Allison to break down the most interesting and surprising findings.

We also share advice and recommendations on what employers and policymakers can learn from this research to better attract and retain employees through parental leave transitions.

Jenna: Okay, today we are flipping the script, Allison. I'm going to interview you about our parental leave survey that we launched earlier this year.

So for those of you who don't know, we conducted the first comprehensive parental leave survey to understand the experience of parents who are taking leave in the last three years. And so we had a ton of responses. We have a ton of data to dive into. 

So I'm going to just put you on the spot now, Allison. Talk about the background of the survey. Why did we conduct the survey? And for anyone who hasn't taken it, what do we actually address and what was the purpose of it?

Allison: That was so many questions all in one, haha.

Jenna: Haha, you can tell I haven't been the interviewer before.

Allison: I’m like, oh, where do I start? This is fun. So why did we do it? I think, you know, we've seen across thousands and thousands of folks who've gone through our career coaching program through parental leave, both the challenges and the opportunities. And we've seen that there's this huge variability in the experience, but that there are a lot of challenges associated with stepping away from your job for months on end. 

But when we looked around, we couldn't find much research at all on this specific experience, which is really surprising when you think about it because we talk a lot as a society about supporting women's careers and increasing female representation and leadership. And there is a little bit of research that does show that the gender wage gap starts to widen very dramatically at the point in time that a woman has her first child. But aside from that, we don't have a lot of answers. 

And we don't have a lot of research and information about what is happening. And so we felt at Parentally, we are in a really interesting position where this is all we do. All we do is obsess over the parental leave experience. How can we go outside of just what we see, launch the largest survey that's ever been done, we asked 42 questions about the parental leave experience. Now think about that. I mean, this survey took probably 10 minutes plus per person to fill out. That's a pretty hefty survey. 

We put it out into the world and within the first week, I want to say we had over 2,000 responses. We kept it open for a month and we ended up just over 3000 responses and we were just blown away at how much data we got when we put this out into the world. And I think it speaks to the fact that people, they see a lot of opportunity here and they feel very passionately about improving this experience of going on paid leave.

Jenna: Yeah, I remember when the responses were coming in, it was like every hour we're like, my gosh, another thousand people have responded in this short amount of time.

Allison: Well, your goal is a thousand responses total. That was our company goal. And I think we hit it within 24 hours.

‍Jenna: Totally. Yeah, think I honestly think by noon. Yeah, I think it was by noon and we launched at like 8:30.

‍Allison: You're right. Yeah, by noon I was like, shoot, I need to increase Jenna's goals.

‍Jenna: Right? Okay. And so who participated in the survey?

Allison: Well, we put this out for anyone to fill this out, but how we did it is we went to LinkedIn. And so it was a lot of people who are in our network and in our community who see what we're posting on LinkedIn. We also emailed as many people as we could saying, pass this along to your friends and anyone who's gone on paid leave. What we were hoping to get is folks who had returned from paid leave in the past three years, because we wanted this to be not people talking about their experience in 1994, but people talking about their current experience. We ended up focusing our survey white paper and our analysis on women who returned from paid leave in the past three years, who took either partially or fully paid parental leave in the United States. So we removed from our analysis anyone who's outside of the United States, we removed fathers.

And so we really only focused on women who received some or all paid leave to understand, okay, if you've already gotten paid leave, which by the way, I know you agree with me, absolute table stakes, like everyone should be getting paid leave. So we really wanted to look at people who did have what is in the United States, a privilege of receiving paid leave. Then what was their experience like? Because

Paid leave is really important, but it's not enough on its own to ensure the ongoing success and happiness of the workers who take a lot of time away from their job.

Jenna: Yeah. And so we did get responses from more than women. Why did we, when we were analyzing the data with the independent research firm, why did we focus just on women?

Allison: Yeah, so once we got over 3.000 responses, we thought, my goodness, we better get serious about this because this is huge. So we partnered with a research firm who looked at the data and they basically came back to us and they said only 10 % of the responses were from fathers, which is not really representative. Like you can't sort of combine the two groups of fathers and mothers together in one analysis in a I would say like an effective way. And so their recommendation was to remove the fathers, but we did actually, we couldn't help ourselves, of course. So we still looked at it. So we do have, I think like one or two pages in the white paper that gives a very high level overview of what dads say and what were the differences and similarities to what we heard from mothers. But we hope to study fathers specifically at a future point in time, because, spoiler, their experience was largely the same as women's. But there were a few key differences that relate mostly to sort of like perception. Like they're just not as worried about how paid leave will impact how people see them at work, which makes total sense. know, fatherhood bonus, motherhood bias, and a few other interesting differences. But for the most part, we were actually surprised at how similar their experience was to mothers.

Jenna: Yeah, I know we made a really conscious effort to get more fathers, but we have plenty of time to do more research. And also, I think it'd be interesting to do international and see how it differs, of course, with other countries making or having such longer leaves than the US. So, okay, so let's actually get into the data. So I know we have pages and spreadsheets and so, so, so, so much data to look at, but if I had to force you to think about the top three takeaways, what would you say those are?

Allison: Yeah, I spent a lot of time pouring over the results of this analysis and the survey because there's just so much. So I would encourage everyone to take a look at it because I think different people will find different things most interesting. I will say, though, if I had to summarize, like, what are the three core findings? 

The first is just how incredibly prevalent this concern about career is for women who are taking paid leave. This is the world I live in. I expected to see that. Even I was surprised at what percent of women were talking about their career concerns when they step away from work. It was the number one concern that people cited if they receive fully paid leave. So if they're already receiving fully paid leave, then their top concern is, how does this impact my career?

I would say the second, and there's all sorts of additional data around career concerns and what that actually means. But the second big finding from this is how parental leave actually impacts so many other people. So 52% of parental leaves result in team burnout. That is a really shocking statistic. It's something that we didn't expect to find. And I think it really drives home the point that when somebody steps away from work, I think we all oftentimes think of them and their employee experience, but we almost always forget that there are other people that we're now asking to take on the work for them and that this can actually be a really negative employee experience or by the way, positive experience if they're taking on work that is challenging and challenging in a good way for them. 

And then maybe the third big finding would be just the importance of managers. When we isolated women who reported very positive parental leave experiences, we wanted to learn like, why? Why was it very positive? And what are the things that we can sort of take away and teach people to do from that? And everything came back to the manager. I mean, managers are so critical, which is a fairly obvious finding, but I think we were just surprised at how important the manager's role is.

it was correlated to so many positive outcomes. If they rated their manager as effective or highly effective through the parental leave process, they were more likely to have, they had much higher retention, they were more comfortable talking about work -life balance, they had coverage plans, they had re -onboarding plans. Like all of these positive outcomes were correlated with their manager being effective and present for them.

Jenna: Yeah, so that's a lot, a lot to unpack. I almost want to start backwards and talk about the manager piece first. And so, like you said, this is fairly obvious, but I almost wonder like, is it actually obvious? Because I think a lot of times, like what we see with our programs, everyone loves our manager training. Everyone is like, this is the best training I've ever had. I think the one quote I always stick to is like, this is the best training I've ever had in 22 years as a manager. 

But if it is that obvious, do you think…or what's your perspective on if managers play such a huge role, why is there not as much training or focus on equipping managers to do what they can do to support the experience better? Or is that, am I just making an assumption? Do you think that…

‍Allison: No, I think that's actually you're sort of triggering an interesting thought for me that I haven't thought of this way. Like, I think the reason why I think what you're asking is like, well, then why isn't this happening? Like, is this actually that obvious? And I think the truth is, because there hasn't been a lot of research, because so many people when they go through parental leave and they struggle, they wonder, is this me? Am I just not able to do this? They don't believe that it is a systemic problem or that it's because of a lack of support, there isn't enough talk about this challenge. 

So if we're not talking about how difficult parental leave return to work can be, then we're not training our managers and we're not recognizing the important role that managers play in this experience. I mean, the number of times that I have talked about the things that we're talking about today in sales meetings and people have said, this is the most obvious business I've ever heard of. And yet I've never thought of this myself. You know what I mean? 

It's like, once you say it out loud, it's so obvious. It's like, my gosh, well, yeah, of course the manager matters. like, yeah, like who is taking over all this work when these people go on leave? And have we ever thought about what their experience is like and how they feel about covering for somebody who's going on leave. And not to mention, if they're happy covering this work while they're on leave, which many people are, are they then unhappy when that person comes back and they have to hand over those projects that they really liked? It's all this stuff that if we're not talking about it, we're not being proactive and we're not creating the supportive environment. 

And so I actually think that's why we aren't training our managers way more broadly. Of course, Parentaly does this with our clients, but I have yet to meet a company that actually has built manager training on their own and delivered it to their managers as it relates to parental leave. 

And I think that's because one, there isn't as much study or research on this space. And two, maybe they think, well, this is such a niche thing that why would we invest our time and resources in building this? And what I would say is it's not niche because it impacts so many people.

Jenna: Right. It's always seen as, it's the expecting parent who goes on leave. That's the person that will be impacted. And then I believe, like I combed through the white paper two days ago once it was done, so I'm still also digesting. I believe, if you think about the manager effectiveness and then you go back to the team burnout, those correlate with each other where the way that the manager handles the experience will impact the team. 

And if I'm not mistaken, the data showed like 60 or 70 percent of people had more than one colleague cover for them while they were on leave. So I guess when you talk about burnout, like what is your opinion on why people who took the survey saw their teams or felt that their teams were that burnt out after or during their leave?

Allison: And just to be clear, the survey doesn't have causation. So this is just my opinion on this based on what I see in the market, so to speak. I think that what is happening, the status quo at most companies, is somebody goes on leave and either that person or their manager says, well, we'll just split up these projects with the remaining team. 

I always frame this as this is a math equation. Most people are already at capacity. So if you add another thing to their plate, you have to subtract something from their plate. And I think at most companies, people are not going through that exercise. 

I think it's like maybe even just that simple of there just isn't enough thought being put into the coverage plan to figure this out. And I am the first to admit that is exactly what I did with my first parental leave. This was way before our parental leave. But my team was working until midnight. Like I came back and they were like, we worked around the clock while you were gone. And I just think that that is what is happening. And it's a complicated situation because a lot of us want to support our employees when they go on leave. But not at our expense. It's really difficult.

Jenna: Yeah. Yeah. And I think back, both of my leaves, I don't think I even talked to my manager before I started my coverage plan. I just made my list and decided, this colleague would be best suited to take this part. And I made a list, shared the coverage plan, gave it to my manager, and then really have no idea what happened after that, if they used it, if they didn't. So yeah, that's a good point. 

And so then the first point was on the career implications of women. I'm curious about what we saw in the first point you made about career progression and worrying about your career when you're taking leave, I also think that's very aligned to what we see and hear in our own programs. And so, like, of course, as a marketer, I'm reading through all of the testimonials at the end of the program of how helpful we were in the parental leave experience. But so many of them start with, I was so worried about my career, I was so worried about my team, and I went through this program and I learned, you know, how to feel better about the experience through coaching and through coverage planning and all the things that we're talking about. 

Do you also, like when you said you weren't surprised because this is the world we live in, what's your response to that, I guess, in terms of what we see in our programs? Does that track with what we saw from women for the survey?

Allison: Yeah, I mean, everyone's worried about their careers. And I think at its most basic form, if you're looking ahead and you're thinking, my gosh, I'm going to be out of work for four months or six months, even if you have access to Parentaly’s career coaching, you're going to be worried. And I think that that's maybe something that a lot of companies don't understand how intense that fear is and how prevalent it is.

And so for me, you know, one of the most interesting questions that we asked in the survey was what concerns did you have leading up to your leave? And I think that companies will be shocked to see that the results are almost entirely career concerns. In fact, health concerns were at the absolute bottom of the list. And that resonates deeply with me and what we see with the people that we work with every day.

I think it's a combination of both the fears are huge and the support is lacking and oftentimes non-existent. So it's both sides, right? Because like, when you think about health, I do think that people are worried about health, but they have access to so many different resources. They have healthcare, hopefully, at least in our survey set when we tracked that, they tend to be in our survey with higher income. 

And so we can assume that they had access to company paid or subsidized health insurance and medical support and things like that. And so I think it's both the fear and the lack of support that makes this rise to the top consistently of those career concerns.

Jenna: And it has a snowball effect back to the manager piece where I believe the data said most women were afraid or didn't know how to even talk to their manager about their career in terms of parental leave. So it all kind of goes full circle. 

Okay. So I know it takes a lot to surprise you when it comes to parental leave. Was there anything in this data that was surprising to you?

Allison: I was really surprised to see, so we asked people if they returned to work after parental leave or not, because you see a lot of weird data out there. This survey found that 94% do return to work after parental leave, which I think is surprising to a lot of people. That's quite high. But a third of them quit within the first 18 months after they're back at work.

But the first thing I was surprised at is how many people actually do return. And so I think the main takeaway from that is to expect that these employees are returning. I think there's too much motherhood bias thinking, we don't know, will this person return? Virtually everyone does return, whether they stay is a separate question. 

And then of the mothers who quit, only 4% quit to drop out of the workforce. Everyone else either looked for another job at another company or started their own business. I think that is a huge misconception that people think, you know, once you have a child or your second child, like now your priorities shift and you want to stay at home with the kids. 

And when that happens, because it does, that is wonderful. But it is not wonderful to assume that that is likely what happened. I think it's really important that every time a new parent, not even just mother, but any new parent leaves a company, companies should be asking why and where are they going?

Jenna: Yeah. Yeah, because if you assume it's because they're not working, then you're kind of not going to understand the problem to be able to fix it with things like training or coaching. 

Allison: And it's a highly nuanced problem. I'm not suggesting that when people quit, it's because it's the company's fault. Like, there are so many reasons why people quit. And I think that's where this gets really interesting is some people quit because they need a more flexible job because their child has some sort of additional medical needs. You know, there's a million and one reasons why people quit. I think, though, as a starting point, we just need to be aware of some of the biases that we may have and start to question them.

Jenna: Right. Yeah. So what about, like, did we survey, or do we focus much on the reonboarding experience? Were there any good findings? Because I know, like, when we talk to companies, they always say, we have a return to work problem. And we, you know, of course, say it starts pre-leave, and that's how you solve those problems in the return. But was there anything surprising or interesting that you pulled based strictly on the reonboarding?

Allison: Yeah, I mean, we have a lot of data around what percent of employees actually received a reonboarding plan. It's not super high. And that correlates with a worse experience and lower retention if they did not have a re -onboarding plan from their manager. 

A funny statistic that came out of this is that 24% of women returned to work and surprised someone. Like, it wasn't fully announced. Like, people weren't all expecting that which is not good either because that implies that they weren't ready. They didn't have a reonboarding plan. The coworkers weren't prepared to transition some of the work streams back over. So yeah, we asked a lot of questions about the re -onboarding experience. 

Where I also get really excited and interested is when you look at, we asked women, when you returned to work, were you less, I think the word we used was engaged, less engaged, just as engaged or more engaged. And I think people will be surprised how many people said just as or more. I think we assume people are going to come back and they're struggling, right? Which you can be struggling and still be engaged, by the way. 

But I think that there's a really positive side to this survey that is so fascinating because there are a subset of women that returned to work really motivated, really engaged, really ambitious, really happy. And I think it's helpful to also question what we can learn from them. And so much of this comes down to when they returned to work, they had a manager who they felt very comfortable communicating with them, what their needs were, what their boundaries were. And then they also had a reonboarding plan and they felt like they were in a role where they could continue to grow.

And so there are really positive stories that came out of this survey, but unfortunately there's a lot of challenges as well. And so I think we need to look at both sides of kind of the same coin.

Jenna: Yeah. Okay. My last question, I guess it's two part question. I'll end the way that I started with a very complex question, haha, what were the expectations with the survey and what do you hope companies take away from based on all of the data that we're going to be sharing?

Allison: I think that the expectations were that we wanted to be able to present data-driven insights. That was our expectation, that regardless of what the survey found, we would be able to use the data to inform not only how we continue to build our business, but also how we tell others to treat this experience.

Because quite frankly, everything that we do at our business, companies can build themselves. I wouldn't recommend it. They should definitely come to us to do it, but they absolutely could.

‍Jenna: I’m cutting this part out in editing! Just kidding.

Allison: It costs them 10 times as much, they can do it. And it won't be as good. 

Jenna: Yeah.

Allison: So yeah, the expectation was to get data-driven insights, which we absolutely got. 

What I'm hoping that companies do is twofold. Number one, my deepest desire is that companies recognize this as a challenge that is worth solving. Above anything else, I want companies to care about this. And I want them to feel inspired because there are very simple and easy ways to make this so much better. 

And so the goal with this was how do we get these data-driven insights? How do we present the case and make sure that companies understand this is like a really serious thing that they should be focusing on, but also this doesn't need to be scary because it doesn't need to be this doom and gloom. Like there are real solutions. They're fairly straightforward. 

And by the way, if a company does one thing to make it better, that is a huge win. Like we don't need to take on the whole thing and make it like the ideal parental leave experience, take one step. And so I hope that when companies read the white paper, they'll find one or two things that they can activate immediately and drive really significant improvement in the employee experience.

Jenna: Love it. Okay. Well, you've been dripping results all week. People are super excited. So once this episode is live, the white paper will be available. So they will be in the show notes for anyone who's listening to download, share with your colleagues, your HR, anyone who wants to read it. But thank you, Allison, for bearing with me. And we will…

Allison: Jenna, do you want a new job? You want to take this over?

Jenna: Yeah, I don't know. I think I'll let you keep this job, but I can fill in from time to time…haha. Well, thank you.

Allison: Thanks!

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