Secondment or Parental Leave?

Secondments are such a brilliant career opportunity.

You don’t get offered a secondment unless there’s trust that you can deliver, represent well, and keep standards high. It’s typically a high-stakes, demanding role in a completely different environment that requires agility, attention to detail, and self-awareness.

It can allow leadership track employees to cultivate skills that their usual role doesn’t, preparing them for the next stage of their careers.

The secondment is usually only intended as a strategic move for everyone.  So if you did find people were going on secondment and then feeling like their next step wasn’t going to be with you, it would raise eyebrows and warrant a review.

You’d look at all the moments where you’d been slowly losing them in the years prior to secondment, during it and returning from it. You’d want to know where the leaks were.

It costs far too much not to.

In the UK, the average cost of losing an employee who is mid-senior stage of their career is between £30k and £120k in direct costs, and that’s before you consider all the indirect organisational costs that come with team disruption, knowledge and relationship loss, leadership pipeline gaps, succession planning, further attrition risk and the higher reputation costs.

You’d do everything within your power to protect that talent, diving into make sure that challenges during secondment were supported and that you were staying in touch with your people talent throughout.

And doing that, you’d fully expect to get all that growth of secondment back into the business in the future.

Well, how you feel about secondments? All that investment, all that leadership stretch?

That’s exactly how I see parental leave.

Same stretch. Same skill-building. Same risk if you don’t pay attention.

Think about it. The very qualities we ask of our best leaders; resilience, strategic thinking, empathy, problem-solving, discernment, are all being honed in real time, with higher stakes and deeper personal investment than any leadership programme could ever replicate.

So why do we glorify secondments and whisper about maternity or parental leave like they’re swear words? Risky career and business kryptonite?

Because we’re all conditioned to.

But like I said, it’s not that different from secondment. And it really doesn’t need to be an awful lot more complicated.

A more intentional attitude and language, better understood touchpoints, communication and engagement, coach-led input.

You can keep throwing your hands up and bemoaning the state of things. Or you can get curious about tweaking how you do things and reap the rewards.

As Dr Pepper would say, what’s the worst that could happen?

This mindset shift is already happening in companies who want to lead, not lose, during leave. Some are charging ahead, some are taking small intentional steps. All are doing it in a way that meets their company, culture and people exactly where they’re at. If you’re not sure where to start and would like a quick blether to get my take on it, just get in touch. Lynn