Imagine investing significant time and resources recruiting and hiring a high-performing employee, only to greet them on day one with no onboarding plan, no project briefing, no HR orientation, and no clarity on expectations. Most organizations would consider that operational malpractice, reflecting a failure to properly support employees and a breakdown in leadership from the HR or People team.

Yet this is precisely how many employers approach the return-to-work phase for experienced employees who have already proven their value. As an employer, is this how you would set your most important asset — your workforce — up for success?

Professionals returning from parental leave are not new hires. They are trained contributors whose institutional knowledge and leadership capacity have already been developed. Failing to design their reintegration is not simply inconvenient. It is operationally irrational. However, it remains the reality for millions of new parents in the United States.

A recent survey found that 73% of new parents said they consider leaving their company at least occasionally, and one-third actually do leave within 18 months of returning from parental leave. Of those who leave, only four percent drop out of the workforce entirely, emphasizing the opportunity for better retention strategies for new parents. Working parents do not want to leave the workforce; they want to be part of an organization that values and supports them as professionals.

When employers lose a third of their new working parents, the economic opportunity — and cost of inaction — is significant.

A Solvable Design Gap

Even in an employer-driven labor market, preventable turnover is costly. Research from SHRM estimates that replacing an employee can cost between 50% and 200% of their annual salary when accounting for lost productivity, institutional knowledge, and recruitment expenses. Unlike sudden resignations, return-to-work attrition occurs at a moment that can be anticipated months in advance. When exits cluster around a predictable inflection point such as parental return, the financial and operational impact compounds quickly.

A company would never passively onboard a new employee or expect an employee to navigate a major health issue alone. So why is returning to work from parental leave treated as a date on the calendar rather than an intentionally designed process that addresses what happens before, during, and after leave to sustain long-term participation? It's a question that the field's leading experts have been asking—and answering—for decades.

The solution already exists.

While leave policies have evolved – paid parental leave is offered by an increasing number of employers and is mandated in 13 states – reintegration after leave has often remained an afterthought and an ad hoc exercise. In many organizations, responsibility for the return-to-work transition is dispersed across multiple teams or expected to be solved by the employee and their manager. No single owner is accountable for ensuring employees understand available supports or for aligning expectations across the transition. This is a design failure driven by business norms that allow predictable talent loss to occur in plain sight.

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Designing the Return to Work Continuum for New Parents’ Success

Amy Beacom, Ed.D., is an organizational psychologist, the founder of parental leave coaching and consulting as a field of practice, author of The Parental Leave Playbook, and the Founder and CEO of the Center for Parental Leave Leadership. She has spent more than 25 years working with organizations, leaders, and working parents across the full parental transition period, beginning during pregnancy or pre-leave planning, extending through leave itself, and continuing through the months following return.

Beacom’s perspective reframes the conversation. Becoming a parent is not simply a personal milestone. It is a leadership and life transition that reshapes priorities, energy allocation, and team dynamics. When organizations focus only on the time away from work and not what happens before and after return, they overlook the broader arc that determines whether employees remain engaged long term.

**Amy Beacom,**
Founder & CEO
Center for Parental Leave Leadership

Amy Beacom, Ed.D., is an organizational psychologist, the founder of parental leave coaching and consulting as a field of practice, author of The Parental Leave Playbook, and the founder and CEO of the Center for Parental Leave Leadership. As a member of the RMH Compass Standards Advisory Working Group, her expertise has helped inform the evaluation criteria within the RMH Compass Performance Standard.

“If you are focusing only on the moment a new parent returns to work, you’re doing it wrong,” Beacom explains. “You have already missed your biggest opportunity. The transition begins well before someone leaves for parental leave, when you define how work will be covered and how you will stay connected. It continues after they return to work, when you acknowledge they are not the same employee who left. They are now working parents, and that shift deserves both celebration and the same intentionality you would bring to onboarding a new hire to help them succeed.

Her work highlights a consistent gap. Many organizations invest only in paid parental leave policies. These policies are both incredibly important and not the whole solution. Fewer employers operationalize the full transition process, from pre-leave planning through post-return stabilization, with standardized processes that managers can follow consistently, regardless of the length of leave.

Before, During, and After: The Full Return to Work Continuum Supporting Working Parents

If returning to work from parental leave is a structured transitional process, similar in complexity to onboarding a new employee, then the question becomes practical: What does designing it for business continuity and workforce success actually require?

Beacom’s proven three-phase RETAIN framework provides the answer. Designing for continuity requires companies to address each interconnected phase with distinct operational touchpoints that directly influence workforce stability, productivity, and retention outcomes.

Before leave, organizations establish the conditions for continuity by addressing role coverage, documentation of responsibilities, defined communication preferences during leave, and manager preparation. Too often, these steps are informal or entirely manager driven. Without shared processes, employees experience inconsistent preparation and uneven expectations across teams.
During leave, clarity matters. Employees and managers avoid conflict and confusion by leveraging previously agreed-upon communication norms that protect time away from work while preserving connection. Defined “keep in touch” guidelines prevent two common pitfalls: complete silence that erodes belonging or ad hoc outreach that feels intrusive.

After return, design becomes most visible. Reintegration planning should begin before the leave period ends, not after an employee returns to an overflowing inbox. From a business perspective, the post-return phase should prioritize continuity, performance stabilization, and retention. Structured reintegration plans, calibrated workload pacing, and defined performance expectations protect productivity while reducing preventable attrition. From the employee perspective, clarity around travel and availability expectations, lactation accommodations, access to childcare resources, and peer or professional support reduce friction during a demanding life transition. These supports should be introduced and planned prior to leave whenever possible, rather than negotiated reactively after return.

Across all three phases, Beacom emphasizes, the risk is not a lack of goodwill. It is a lack of structure. When these touchpoints are undefined, they result in reduced engagement, quiet quitting, or decisions to leave entirely. Over time, that attrition reshapes leadership pipelines and narrows the pool of experienced talent available for promotion and succession.

“The transition to working parenthood doesn't begin on the day someone returns to work, and it doesn't end there either. Organizations that treat it as a calendar date rather than a designed process are absorbing entirely preventable loss."

— Amy Beacom, Ed.D., Founder and CEO, Center for Parental Leave Leadership

How RMH Compass Operationalizes the Standard for Return to Work

The RMH Compass Performance Standard measures return to work as a structured transition within a broader reproductive and maternal health framework for employers. It evaluates supports using a holistic approach across the full reproductive lifecycle, including pregnancy, postpartum, paid leave, and return to work. The standard generates benchmarks and improvement reports, equipping employers to take immediate action to improve their employee experience.

For new parents, the framework assesses whether employers have intentionally designed support across workplace environment, health benefits, and standard policies, including:

Paid parental leave. Clearly defined, equitably applied leave policies that establish the foundation for transition planning and signal organizational commitment to workforce continuity.
Clear lactation policies and facilities. Written guidance outlining break frequency, compensation during lactation sessions, approval pathways, and appropriately equipped private spaces. Logistical support, including breast milk shipment when work travel is required, ensure continuity of both work and caregiving responsibilities.
Layered childcare support. On-site childcare, funded FSAs to subsidize childcare, emergency backup care, or vetted referral networks that reduce disruption during the transition back to work.
Structured return-to-work options. Written policies providing phased returns, reduced schedules, or adjusted responsibilities during a defined transition period. Reintegration is not left to informal negotiation.
Community and professional support. Access to parent employee resource groups, mentoring, coaching, and leadership development resources that reinforce long-term advancement and retention. Clear organizational guidance ensures managers understand expectations and apply policies consistently, reducing variability across teams.

Taken together, these components shift return to work from a manager-dependent accommodation to a shared organizational commitment. They ensure employees understand their options, managers understand their responsibilities, and leadership can connect reintegration outcomes to retention and equity metrics.

Designing for Continuity

Organizations that recognize reintegration after parental leave as workforce infrastructure, essential to continuity in the same way onboarding, succession planning, and leadership development, protect their talent investment and strengthen long-term performance.

Those employers recognize that return to work is not a parental benefit. It is a leadership decision about how an organization safeguards productivity, protects its talent pipeline, and sustains institutional knowledge.

The RMH Compass Performance Standard translates this vision of workforce infrastructure into actionable practices and policies. Through an evidence-based framework, RMH Compass helps organizations assess their current policies, benchmark and identify practical steps to strengthen support during the return-to-work transition. Importantly, many of these improvements require little to no financial investment. Instead, they focus on aligning existing policies, clarifying expectations, and equipping managers and HR leaders with the tools needed to support employees through a critical transition period.

In addition to free benchmarks and action plans, RMH Compass offers several companion resources designed to help organizations move from insight to implementation.

Why It Matters: The Business Case for Supporting Working Parents builds a clear, evidence-based business case for why structured support during the parental leave and return-to-work transition is essential to workforce continuity. This resource equips HR and People leaders with the data, research, and framing they can bring to their C-suite and CFO to make the case for investing in policies and practices that protect productivity, strengthen retention, and safeguard institutional knowledge.

Putting It Into Practice Guides on Flexible Return-to-Work Transitions for New Parents, Supporting New Parents in the Workplace, and Before, During and After: Parental Leave Transition Guide, provide actionable recommendations and practical implementation guidance to help organizations better support employees throughout the parental leave transition. These resources outline concrete steps organizations can take before leave, during leave, and as employees return to work to ensure a smoother reintegration and stronger workforce continuity.

To learn more about CPLL's RETAIN Coaching methodology and their full suite of parental leave products and services, visit cplleadership.com.