Designing better maternity & parental leave experiences
Helping your organisation balance business and manager needs with employee expectations.
Better experiences don’t happen by accident.
Every interaction before and during maternity or parental leave shapes how someone experiences your organisation.
The conversations with managers. The emails they receive. The wording of policies. The support that’s available. The moments where nothing happens at all.
Individually, these moments may seem small. Together, they become someone’s experience of your part in their maternity or parental leave experience. And that experience can influence engagement, trust, belonging and long term career progression long after they return.
Creating a better experience isn’t about adding more initiatives.
It’s about intentionally designing the right ones for your company and people. And that’s what builds the culture.
Every organisation is different, which means the same ideas won’t produce the same outcomes everywhere.
That’s why we don’t just give you a menu of services. We begin by understanding your organisation and identifying what’s really getting in the way of how you’d like parental leave to contribute to your organisation’s growth.
Looking beneath the surface
Sometimes organisations know exactly what they want.
“We want a KIT event”
“We want to provide coaching”
“We need to train our managers”
Sometimes they’re right. But sometimes they’re just treating the symptom rather than the cause.
People will only engage with what it feels psychologically safe to. Perhaps managers aren’t lacking knowledge but confidence. Perhaps employees don’t need more communication, they need better conversations.
We don’t want to just apply a sticking plaster to a deeper issue. With the experience to ask all the right questions, our role is to help uncover what’s really happening before recommending where time, energy and investment will have the greatest impact.
Combining insight with confidentiality
One of the unique aspects of our work is that we see maternity, paternity, adoption and shared parental leave from both perspectives. Through coaching, workshops and events we hear directly from employees about what’s helping, what’s challenging and what’s missing. Those conversations remain entirely confidential. We never report individual stories or identify employees.
Instead, we look for recurring themes, patterns and opportunities that can help organisations strengthen the experience for everyone.
That means organisations gain meaningful insight while employees continue to benefit from a space, trusted space to think openly.
And that confidentiality goes both ways. Our employee work and organisational work inform but never compromise one another.
Reviewing the employee journey
Employee guides and resources
Event planning
Mapping key touch-points
Designing leave contact
KIT day design
Frequently asked questions
Designing the manager journey
Parent network planning & support
Getting out what you put in
Thoughtfully designed experiences don’t just help employees. They help everyone feel more clearer and more confident in their conversations. They create consistency, strengthen trust and improve engagement. And they demonstrate that parental leave in all its forms is not just something to be managed, it’s an opportunity to grow both people and the organisation.
Growing your culture with you
We’re interested in more than delivering sessions. We’re interested in helping organisations create maternity, paternity, adoption and shared parental leave experiences that genuinely work for everyone.
Our clients often begin with piloting one aspect of what we do. It gives you, and us, a sense of the fit and the potential. Then we get to work at a pace that meets your resources, culture and objectives.
Listen | Identify | Design | Deliver | Learn | Evolve
“Thank you for what has been an incredible success story within MFMac. I would just like to add what an amazing impact Talent On Leave has had on our new families and employer brand. ”
Martin Glover, Chief of Staff
“Talent On Leave’s approach has really brought Baillie Gifford’s vision to life but also inspired us to innovate in certain areas and focus on those ‘moments that matter’. Employee feedback from individual, group coaching and our KIT days continue to be extremely positive ”
Ailsa Buchanan, Family Network Lead
“I am so proud of the word we continue to do with Talent On Leave. Our employees rave about the coaching support you provide but the ripple effect has been just as positive”
Catriona MacLachlan, Blackhall & Powis
Let’s explore what’s really happening
Every organisation already has a parental leave experience. The question is whether its happening by design or by default. Let’s discover where small, thoughtful changes could have the biggest impact.