Retaining our Top Female Talent

I have a confession to make. I got my current job while on Maternity Leave. Many would think this is not a big deal. But it is to me. I have my dream job, and I was not overlooked for being a reproductive person. Even though I couldn't start straight away.  This is not the case for many women out there; where their potential or actual reproductive state could count against them in the promotion stakes. Being appointed to this position has made a big difference to our organisation, and I’d like to tell you why on this International Women's Day!

Our organisation has integrity

My appointment was a great example that our organisation values quality and will not overlook a good candidate based on anything other than merit. I am proud to tell others I was promoted on Maternity Leave (ML). This speaks volumes for the panel who hired me and also for the culture of the team where I work. In other organisations I have heard tales of people being advised ‘not to bother’ applying, or ‘to apply if they want, but know they won’t get it’. I would never tell a story like this about my organisation. I am proud of this and am not shy in letting other people know about the principled approach we take to recruitment.   I encourage good people to apply for positions- regardless of their parental plans. We value the right person for the right job.

Women are a large proportion of the Workforce

In my industry (health) approximately 68% of our workforce are female. If this proportion of our workforce feel disempowered to apply for positions they would excel in, then we miss out. We miss out on their talent, their time, their energy and what they would bring to their roles. Women are the majority of our workforce, but are widely under-represented in senior executive roles within many health organisations. We have been letting our top female talent down. One of the ways we do this is when they become Mothers. They take time off work to have the baby and then to spend time with their little one.

 Knowing women are such a large proportion of our workforce, we need to be finding ways to help them stay engaged even while having families.

Recent studies have shown that:

·        1/3rd of women have had to express milk in toilets when trying to return to work from maternity leave due to not having private places to go to express

·        Over 50% of women expressing milk at work have had to throw away their milk as they had nowhere safe to store it and

·        1/3rd of women returning to work have ended their breastfeeding early due to difficulties in expressing/ storing milk in their workplace.

(Info sourced from: The Guardian Feb 2019.)

Hearing this was something which upset me as a manager and as a Mum.  I want to find ways for our staff to have the best of both worlds. We know it is good for our team to have a career that enriches their lives but also feel that they are doing their best possible for their family. As a person who was given a great opportunity in my maternity period, I would like to support other people to ensure that they are given the same fairness, support and opportunity that I was graced with by our executive leadership team.

We have implemented some strategies which have made it easier for our team to return to work post Maternity Leave. To be honest, when implementing these I thought it would probably make one or two peoples lives easier (which is still worth it!). In reality over 40 women have used our breastfeeding room in the year since it opened. There were many more women than I realised who needed this service, and not just in our department either. And there have been unintended consequences in a positive way.

Just last week I had a male nurse visiting our team, and I pointed our breastfeeding room out to him even though I joked that he probably wouldn’t need that feature in our workplace. What he said changed how I through about that room. He agreed that he wouldn’t need to use it, but let me know that seeing it made him happy. Happy because he knew the female staff were being supported and happy that as a parent himself we were family friendly, and thoughtful. I hadn’t considered that before (thanks James!).

So, what can we do as health leaders to help our top female talent stay in our workforce? I have listed a few practical strategies below that have helped with our transition to motherhood and back to us below. Feel free to reach out if you have any questions on these (or to give me any of your helpful tips).

How we can retain our top female talent (through motherhood transitions):

·        Encourage great applicants to apply for positions regardless of if they are in a reproductive period or on ML. One of our staff members saw a leadership development workshop we sent out via email while she was on ML. She came in for the workshop, and after returning applied and was successful in gaining a temporary higher duties position. I feel proud to see that we have retained and are developing our future leaders while they are also growing a family. Staff that know you are committed to them, will be committed to you.

·        Be supportive when you hear the lovely news. Many women feel scared or anxious about how their manager or team will react when they share their happy news. Anecdotally some colleagues have shared horror stories from this conversation with their respective managers. This is happy and exciting news. It would be great if all our team members only felt happiness when sharing it with us, rather than a burden and concern that their career will forever be stunted.

·        Create a Congratulations Pack. We have developed a handy manual for how ML works, and what we can commit to when our staff return to us after this time. This pack contains helpful articles, smartphone app suggestions and considerations for the staff members to discuss with their partners prior to returning to work. There is other useful stuff in there too, be creative and make it fun.

·        Make it easy to return. We are flexible with our teams hours when they return from ML and do our best to accommodate to childcare hours. We have a breastfeeding room (with a fridge for milk storage) and we are happy to share this with our wider facility. A win for them is a win for us. And we all need to win at keeping our top female talent.

I hope some of these strategies have been helpful and help you keep your top female talent in your organisation. Also, next month in the 2019 wellness week, WRAPEM.org have a ‘How to’ section coming up which details how to keep your staff engaged while they are on maternity leave.

If you have any great ideas we can implement, please don’t hesitate to share by contacting me on LinkedIn. 

This post is dedicated to all the great women who have shared their knowledge and experience with me on my journey, and have no doubt helped countless others a long the way. I hope to further the tradition of supporting and developing great staff so we all enjoy the benefits.

 Happy International Women’s Day!