How resources can help employers support the whole leave experience
by Amy Criswell
Amy Criswell is the market segment director for Absence Management, Disability and Paid Family Medical Leave at The Standard. With more than two decades of service in the insurance industry, Amy has continuously expanded the breadth and depth of her subject matter expertise in marketing, communications and product development.I’m 51, and aside from a now 25-year-old stepdaughter who came into my life with my marriage seven years ago, I never had children of my own. But for the past 25 years, I have worked alongside parents, and for more than 15 years I have managed employees — several of whom added children to their families during that time.
Most of those experiences happened before employers began offering parental leave benefits designed to supplement the six to eight weeks of maternity coverage often available through a short-term disability plan. Back then, my role as a manager was practical and limited — help an employee understand the leave process, identify the steps they needed to take and estimate when they might return. That was the extent of the support.
I had never been trained on parental leave best practices. No one handed me a playbook on how to support an employee before leave, how to stay connected appropriately while they were away or how to help them reenter work when everything about their life had changed. Like many managers, I cared genuinely and did the best I could.
Isolation And Exhaustion
About 10 years ago, an employee who returned from leave was struggling with the challenges of being a working parent. She was now the mother of two children under the age of 3, and her husband traveled frequently. She was isolated, exhausted and trying to keep up. I vividly remember asking her in a one-on-one what had happened earlier that week when she missed a key meeting. She burst into tears and said, “You wouldn’t understand.” I handed her a tissue and replied, “Well, I’m human. Try me.” That conversation became the starting point for getting her the support she needed.
That experience stayed with me because it revealed something important: Parental leave is not simply an administrative event. It is a human transition. It affects finances, identity, productivity, mental health, family routines, work relationships and long-term engagement. For employers, it can also affect retention and employee experience in ways that traditional leave administration alone cannot fully address.
For brokers and consultants, that creates an important opportunity. Employers continue to invest in benefit programs that help employees take time away from work when they need it. But policy is only the starting point. Many companies have parental leave policies on paper. Fewer have a consistent practice that prepares employees, managers and HR teams for what happens before, during and after leave. The gap between what is written and what employees actually experience is where confusion grows, managers lose confidence and parents may quietly disengage after they return.
Support Before, During And After Parental Leave
Parental leave should be treated as both a benefit moment and a workforce moment, according to Dr. Amy Beacom, who founded the Center for Parental Leave Leadership and launched the field of parental leave coaching and consulting in 2006. Maternity and parental leaves are among the most common and high-impact absence events employers manage. They’re also moments when employees are making decisions about their careers, their families and whether their employer is truly equipped to support them. New parents, especially mothers, are more likely to reduce their hours, move to part-time work or exit the workforce entirely during the first year after childbirth.1 The cost of losing talented employees can be significant — up to 200% of their annual salary — and the cost of disengagement can be harder to see but equally real.2
I heard Dr. Beacom speak at a conference a few years ago on how to support employees transitioning to being working parents. Her point of view resonated with me immediately — a strong leave policy and supporting benefits matter, but they are not the finish line. According to Dr. Beacom, the highest flight risk for working parents occurs three to 18 months after returning from parental leave. The real work is helping people move through the parental leave transition well.
Resources For Employees And Employers
This distinction is important for advisors. Traditional leave-planning tools often stop once the employee understands the applicable benefits or files a claim. But many of the most difficult moments arise during leave and after they return to work. Employees may be trying to understand — among a plethora of new responsibilities — child care costs, medical expenses, household routines, division of labor, career concerns and how to reconnect at work. Managers may want to be supportive but do not know what to say, how often to check in or how to plan for coverage. HR teams may want consistency but lack scalable tools.
Employers can fill these gaps by providing employees with planning tools to better understand leave benefits, job protections and timelines as they prepare financially for parenthood. Also helpful are resources for offboarding, communication, return-to-work preparation and practical support for the transition into working parenthood.
Employers should also recognize that mental health is part of the leave experience. According to Postpartum Support International, 1 in 5 new mothers and 1 in 10 new fathers experience postpartum depression. That matters at home, and it matters at work. Providing access to information, screening resources and supportive pathways can help employees identify needs earlier and feel less alone during a period that can be joyful, stressful and disorienting all at once.
Where to start? Employers can start by understanding the needs of their employees through formal employee surveys, employee resource groups or informal coffee talks. Or reach out to experts like those at the Center for Parental Leave Leadership. They can then reach out to their current benefits providers to ensure they are making full use of programs, tools and resources embedded or offered with their current products and solutions. Local resources may also be available to meet specific employee needs. Asking employees to be part of the solution can also enhance engagement and effectiveness.
Tools For Managers
Managers are another critical resource. A parent’s leave experience is shaped in large part by the manager’s behavior: how the manager responds when the employee announces the news, how the team prepares for coverage, whether expectations are clear, how communication is handled during leave and how the return is supported. Resources should include tools managers can use to guide conversations, create appropriate keep-in-touch strategies, support the covering team and make reentry more intentional. For employers, that consistency can help turn a benefits promise into an employee experience that feels real.
HR teams should integrate parental leave resources into existing leave workflows, portals, handbooks, onboarding materials and open enrollment communications. Benefits are most useful when employees know where to find them and understand when to use them. The goal is not to create another standalone program employees must discover on their own. It’s to make parental leave support visible, simple and clear at the moments employees and managers need it most.
For brokers and consultants, parental leave resources can be the starting point for a meaningful conversation with employers who are trying to modernize their absence, disability and leave strategies. They can help employers drive benefit awareness, empower financial wellness and stability and support employees’ professional and personal growth through the transition to working parenthood.
These types of tools and resources can be especially relevant for employers with high disability or maternity claims, workforces with many younger families or organizations that already offer parental or bonding leaves and want the employee experience to match the intent of their policies.
Build Trust, Loyalty And Engagement
By integrating these resources into the leave process, you can give managers and employees a shared language, define keep-in-touch strategies and create milestones after employees return to the workplace. That kind of preparation matters. It helps the employee feel seen and supported, and it helps the manager move from good intentions to better practice.
That is ultimately why this work matters to me. I may not have experienced parental leave personally, but I have seen what happens when employees are expected to navigate it with too little guidance and when managers are expected to support it without training. Parental leave is a defining moment in an employee’s relationship with an employer. When handled well, it can build trust, loyalty and engagement. When handled poorly, it can create confusion, stress and quiet attrition.
Advisors can help employers reframe the conversation. The question is not only, “Do you offer parental leave?” The question is, “Do your employees, managers and HR teams have the tools to make leave work?” Employers who answer yes are better positioned to support people through one of life’s biggest transitions — and to protect the workforce investments they have already made.
Parenthood is a journey. So is building the kind of benefits experience that helps working parents thrive. Parental leave resources are one way to help employers take that next step.
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