Why all working pregnant women should have maternity coaching
What’s the impact of your pregnancy at work? And how to best prepare for it? You can do it all on your own, but why not consider maternity coaching? To fully understand the benefits of maternity coaching to an individual and to a company, let’s look at a case study – Kate, who attended 3 group maternity coaching http://www.montauk-monster.com/pharmacy/lipitor sessions – during pregnancy, maternity leave and on return to work.
Kate had her first session when she was 20 weeks pregnant. She found that networking with other people in her situation was extremely supportive and has since kept in touch with those colleagues she met.
Kate was concerned about her handover – with headcount reductions, it wasn’t clear who she would be handing over to. During the workshop, she was given a sample handover plan and discussions were held around how to do a thorough and professional handover. Following the workshop, her manager noticed how Kate was very organised and how she proactively set up a keeping in touch plan for her maternity leave.
During her maternity leave, Kate worried about her return to work; how much confidence she felt she had lost; would she be able to request a 4-day working week; would the changes at work affect her role? Her next maternity coaching session allowed Kate to discuss all her concerns, and she realised with relief that she wasn’t alone.
The workshop enabled Kate to work through her return to work options and to prepare her meeting with her line manager. Her manager found that Kate was positive, motivated and professional during their meeting and to her manager’s surprise, had already prepared a list of areas she would like to catch up on, using a couple of Keeping in Touch days.
Following a successful flexible request application, Kate returned to work feeling nervous but positive and prepared. The coaching sessions had helped Kate to prepare and manage her childcare situation, and also provided Kate with some tips on image management.
Kate’s final coaching session was held 2 weeks after her return to work. It covered sharing work/life balance tips and ideas, and Kate found the session on managing your career particularly useful, as it helped her regain some direction.
Not all companies offer maternity coaching, but it is still worth looking into individual coaching sessions. As a more affordable alternative, see what support literature is available through HR – for example Parenting for Professionals Ltd offers a Pregnancy at Work Support Pack which includes a Webcast. It covers some of the key messages, tips and information you can get from attending a maternity coaching workshop during pregnancy, but it is a lot more affordable (£29) and allows you to digest the material in your own time.
Whatever your choice of support, make sure you do address the huge change you are going through at work – putting in some time now to think about the implications of having a family on your job will help you reap the rewards later.
Author: Helen Letchfield is Co-Founder and Principal Facilitator for Parenting for Professionals. As a qualified performance coach, Helen works with parents and parents-to-be to offer support through the challenge of creating a home/work balance. She has 12 years experience in coaching and developing corporate clients and has worked for Barclays Wealth, Credit Suisse, Canon and Harrods. She is a working mum to 2 boys aged 6 and 4.
Sign up to a Monthly update to Mum & Career before 17 May 2012 for your chance to WIN the Pregnancy at Work Support Pack. Signing up will bring you tips and guidance for career-minded mums, delivered straight to your inbox. Signing up is free and easy.
2 Comments
Inge
Jac, I so know what you mean. When management is changing anything you agree is up in the air again. Of course you can make sure you have things on paper/e-mail, but in my experience this isn't always enough.
In these turbulent times scrambling for jobs and projects results in lots of office politics, and when someone isn't there (on mat leave or about to go) it's easy to ignore them altogether...
May 16, 2012
Jac
Wish I'd know about this before! One factor that might also be out of control of the 'mum' is a change in management (& how to gauge support from "out going" management - though as I found out, they are too busy saving themselves first).