Routledge Mentoring New Parents at Work: A Guide for Businesses and Organisations

Investing in your returning talent Becoming a parent is life-changing. Our experience as employers, practitioners, researchers and working parents tells us this is a critical time for offering support to new parents as they navigate the transition, plan for their return and re-engage with work and career. At an organisational level, there are huge costs associated with losing experienced and talented employees when they start a family and, in the interest of building a more diverse and balanced workforce, organisations need their people to return engaged and motivated to progress their career. Written in partnership by two established coaching and mentoring professionals, Mentoring New Parents at Work makes the case for dedicated mentoring programmes in the workplace as a sustainable way of supporting new parents and improving talent retention for employers. The authors offer timely, practical guidance for each stage of the mentoring journey, from building the business case through to ideas for mentoring workshops. The book is grounded in theory and practice, and provides tools, techniques and real life case studies from a range of countries and organisations to illustrate good practice. Mentoring New Parents at Work will be invaluable to all HR practitioners and line managers who want to retain and support new parents, helping to pave the way for gender diversity at all levels of their organisations. Its themes and insights will also be of interest to students and researchers of HRM, diversity management, and coaching and mentoring. Review ‘This is an excellent resource for an organisation wishing to support maternity returners; it should be on the shelves of any HR director―and acted on. It is directed at medium to larger organisations but has much to offer to any workplace which wants to encourage working parents (of either gender) to thrive rather than strive in their jobs. The book is helpfully organised to give an overview of the subject, practical exercises, case studies and information on evaluation. Interwoven into the more structured sections are personal reflections from various perspectives, which make the book a compelling read for anyone who has been touched by the issues parents face either directly or as colleague, friend or line manager, which is pretty much all of us. I was personally moved by many of the stories showing the difference mentoring can make, wishing I’d had some for myself many years ago and being glad that the adult children in my family have a better prospect of support.’ - Esther Cavett, Executive Coach and Director of the Cityparents Mentoring Scheme, UK ‘The power of mentoring in internal organisational mentoring programmes never ceases to amaze me. I see people transformed, meaning in life restored and hopes fulfilled. To me a robust parental mentoring programme epitomises what is best about formalised mentoring activity. It creates the opportunity for parents who would not otherwise receive the support they need, to take control and make this incredibly unique and special time in their lives unfold in the way they want it to. From personal experience, managing work and having children is the hardest thing I have faced in my own working life, and having an effective mentor during my maternity transitions would have certainly impacted the career choices I made at that time more positively. I believe this book is invaluable to any employer considering the implications of maternity on the careers of their professional women employees and who genuinely want to know more about how to support them through this fundamental and key transition in their life and career. It is a superb resource on how to implement maternity / parental mentoring and for those who want to learn more about best practice in this specialised field of mentoring. A most comprehensive and robust book, which I wholeheartedly endorse as a resource for both organisations and individuals wanting t