Can you spot the difference?

It’s story time, and I’m going to share the tale of two different organisations who wanted the same outcome when it came to supporting parents returning to the workplace after parental leave.?

Company A have seen other organisations offering returner workshops and coaching, and it feels like the right thing to do. They know anecdotally there are parents struggling in the first few months of returning and feel confident the offer of a workshop will go a long way to help. Coaching could be a follow up if some 1-1 help is needed.?

Company B have also seen other businesses offering workshops and coaching, and want to do the same. They have some budget but know it probably won’t stretch all that far, they’re going to have to be careful with what they invest in. They have a little bit of feedback trickling through from some of the more vocal parents in the organisation about where the pain points are, but acknowledge that they are far from the full picture.?

Both companies approach me with similar emails along the lines of ‘can you send us the costs to run x number of workshops over the year and details of how your coaching packages work’ - it’s a totally understandable approach. I reply to say I can of course send over pricing details, but really the value comes from taking a step back to see if starting with workshops and coaching is the best approach. They will almost definitely feature in a proposal, but can we talk about some of the pain points, the insights you have and a broader returner strategy approach?

And here is where the paths go in wildly different directions.?

Company A?

They agree to a call, take notes on my early ideas of a returner strategy that would roll into a broader parental support strategy, and then ask what it’s going to cost. The response: we really just want to run the parent returner workshop two or three times a year and offer coaching to a handful of people if they really need it, can you do that? Yes of course we can. We start delivering the workshops and they go really well and a couple of people come through as coachees.?

Over our time partnering together, the themes are incredibly consistent about what’s not working (everything from how someone is engaged during parental leave all the way through to a lack of career opportunities for parents and carers, development conversations falling off a cliff, stereotypes, inconsistent approaches to flexibility and the line manager lottery thriving a bit too much).

It gets louder and we keep feeding back about bigger strategic challenges undoing all the good stuff from workshops. We offer insights, suggestions, better ways to invest their budget…but it’s met with ‘we just need to keep plugging away at the workshops, things will change from the bottom up.’?

And I’d love to say that’s what happened dear reader. But it wasn’t. Things didn’t change and we eventually had to call time on the partnership, because although we really, really wanted to help - we couldn’t help like that.

Company B?

They have their call too, listen to our thoughts on where to start with gathering further insights, engaging line managers and linking the business case they have to pull together (to secure funding) to their commercial strategy. They eventually get some elusive budget signed off and it includes strategy support.?

We talk about the role of line managers and how they play a pivotal role. Taking that into account, they decide to invest in line manager sessions alongside the parent workshops rather than pay for 1-1 coaching. They form a longer term plan for year 2/3 to bring the line manager delivery in house and pay for external coaching from then instead.?

The action and conversations are initially driven by the HR function, however, we quickly make sure there is a sponsor for the returner strategy project elsewhere in the business. It sends a strong message that it’s not something for HR to fix and is an incredibly important part of the overall talent and commercial strategies.?

They build an approach to parental support that is responsive rather than reactive and isn’t limited to the returner conversation. They start to see how the line manager upskilling starts to positively impact on a broader scale, not just for parents.

The end point for company B? Well, there isn’t a fixed one. They’re agile, creative and responsive to the changing needs of their valued team members who happen to be parents, and yes we’re still working with them.

All that to say…

You don’t have to attach an elaborate strategy to everything you do, but sometimes giving the gift of organisational headspace can save you time, money and encourage meaningful change. Company A weren’t ‘wrong’ - running workshops and offering coaching can work wonderfully, but if we don’t pay attention to the environment we’re running them in, we might find ourselves unstuck.?

I hope it gives you a bit of insight into what can be the subtle differences between a transactional and transformational approach to supporting parents in the workplace.?You might also be interested in tuning into the latest episode of the Power of the Parent podcast, where we're exploring three things you need to know about parental leave transition coaching.