Because returning to work after maternity leave should feel like a step forward, not a setback
Returning to work after maternity leave is one of the most significant career transitions a woman will face, and one of the highest risk points for organisations losing experienced talent.For HR and People teams, this transition represents a critical moment in maternity leave management and employee retention. Without the right support, confidence drops and disengagement rises, leading to one of the most common and costly forms of attrition organisations face today.For women returning to work, this is a deeply personal experience. It affects confidence, identity and how prepared they feel to step back into their role, often at a time when support matters most.
Specialist maternity coaching
My Maternity Coach provides structured one to one maternity coaching that supports women through the maternity journey while helping organisations retain experienced female talent.Maternity leave is a pivotal career transition. When women are supported at the right moments, they return to work more confident, engaged and ready to perform, reducing the risk of disengagement and post-maternity attrition.
Support for Organisations and Individuals
My Maternity Coach works with HR and Learning and Development teams to reduce post-maternity attrition and improve engagement through structured maternity coaching.
This support helps organisations to:Retain experienced female talent
Reduce recruitment and retraining costs
Improve confidence and performance on return to work
Demonstrate a meaningful commitment to wellbeing and inclusion
For women returning to work after maternity leave, coaching provides a safe and supportive space to talk openly, rebuild confidence and navigate the emotional and practical challenges of the transition.Team members often return feeling calmer, clearer and more in control, with a stronger sense of confidence in both their role and themselves.
About Me
I’m Zoe, a Certified Transformational Coach and Maternity Coach, specialising in supporting women through the maternity journey and return to work.With over 10 years’ experience working in learning and development and people-focused roles, I understand both the human and organisational impact of career transitions. That experience now shapes the way I support women and organisations through maternity leave and return to work.I work with women before, during and on return to work after maternity leave, helping them rebuild confidence, navigate imposter syndrome and reconnect with their professional identity at a time when many feel overwhelmed, guilty or unsure of themselves.My approach recognises that maternity leave is not just a logistical change, but an emotional and identity-shaping transition. With the right support, women return to work feeling confident and capable, and organisations are better able to retain experienced, valuable talent.I’m passionate about creating calm, supportive spaces where women feel heard and empowered, and where organisations can offer maternity support that genuinely makes a difference.
The Latest
How Ready Is Your Organisation for Maternity Return?The Return Readiness Scorecard is a free three minute tool from My Maternity Coach that scores how prepared an organisation actually is to support someone returning from maternity leave. It covers five areas, policy and pay, manager readiness, staying in touch, the return itself, and culture and retention, and gives an honest score at the end rather than a vague impression.Most companies believe they support new mums well. I hear it all the time. The policy is solid. The culture is good. People are looked after here.Then a real return happens, and the gaps show up fast.A woman comes back after a year away and nobody has trained her manager on how to have that first conversation. The keeping in touch plan turns out to be one email sent in month four. She is quietly managing a huge shift in confidence and identity, and on the surface it looks like nothing is happening at all, because she looks capable and fine.Research from The Female Lead, covered by HR Magazine, found that half of working mothers were not satisfied with the support they received on return, and more than a third felt their setup was unsustainable. Those gaps are not a failure. They are just gaps nobody has measured yet.I kept having the same conversation on repeat. A company tells me their maternity support is strong. We look a little closer together. The policy looks great on paper. But no manager has ever had training on it. Nobody has checked whether women who return get promoted at the same rate as everyone else.So I built something that measures it properly, rather than guessing. Ten questions, three minutes, one honest score at the end.The scorecard looks across five areas that genuinely determine how a return goes. Policy and pay, whether your maternity policy goes beyond the legal minimum, and whether you track how leave affects your gender pay gap. Manager readiness, whether managers get any training on supporting someone through leave, and whether they would feel confident having a return to work conversation today. Staying in touch, whether there is a keeping in touch plan the employee actually helped shape, not just one you send and hope lands well. The return itself, whether there is a proper reintroduction plan for the first few weeks back, and whether returners get one to one support beyond their line manager. Culture and retention, whether women who return get promoted at the same rate as everyone else, and whether you would know why if you lost one in her first year back.Three minutes sounds small next to everything else on your plate. But this is not a survey that disappears into a spreadsheet. You get a score straight away, broken down by area, so you can see exactly where your organisation is strong and exactly where the gaps sit.Most HR leaders I speak to are not short on good intentions. They are short on a clear picture of where to focus first. The scorecard gives you that picture in less time than it takes to make a coffee.Take the Return Readiness Scorecard: https://return-readiness.netlify.appHow should I prepare for people coming back from maternity leave? Start with a keeping in touch plan the person actually helped shape, not one you send and hope lands well. Make sure their manager has had some guidance before the return, not just on the day. Build in a proper reintroduction period for the first few weeks rather than assuming they will slot straight back in, and check in on how included they feel, not just how much work they are getting through. The scorecard above is a quick way to see which of these you already have covered and where the real gaps are.If you would like to talk through what your score means and where to focus first, I would love to hear from you.Written by Zoe Scorah - August 2026
What Working In Law Really Does To New Mums - 30/06/2026I have had the pleasure of working with a couple of different law firms since starting My Maternity Coach, and this journey has taught me a lot. The barriers new mums face on the return to work journey are huge. The good news is there is absolutely something that can be done to create a stable and supportive environment to come back to.What the research actually shows:It is worth saying upfront that research specifically on maternity return in the legal sector is thin on the ground. But the studies that do exist are telling, and they line up with almost everything I hear directly from the women I work with.A BlueSky survey of more than 250 fee earners found that just 10% of women felt very positive about access to career enhancing opportunities three months into their return. That rose to 15% at six months and 44% at nine months. On partnership specifically, only 25% of women on maternity leave felt confident about making partner. That confidence rose to 32% three months after returning and 77% after nine months, despite 83% of respondents saying they wanted to reach partner level. (Source: Law Society Gazette, February 2025, lawgazette.co.uk)What strikes me most about these numbers is the shape of them. Confidence does recover, but it takes the best part of a year. That is a long time to be operating below your own sense of capability, in a profession that runs on confidence.The same survey found that 62% of participants said their firms had mandated more office based working in the past year. For new mums, this matters more than it might first appear. Flexibility is not just about convenience. The option to work from home reduces the daily pressure of commuting and time management, and it plays a real part in easing the mental load that increases so significantly for working mothers. Take that flexibility away just as women are trying to find their feet again, and you make an already difficult transition harder.Another piece of research, this time from the Solicitors Regulation Authority, surveyed 554 solicitors and found that while many firms offer good maternity benefits, approaches differed considerably from firm to firm and at different points in a woman's journey. Around a fifth of firms had no formal pregnancy and maternity policy at all. The report also noted that several women were expected to make up time or catch up on missed work following pregnancy related appointments. (Source: Solicitors Regulation Authority, sra.org.uk)The policy gap is startling on its own. But the real concern sits underneath it. Policies are one side of the story. The other side is how women are actually feeling about their return. How are they holding up under the weight of being a mum and working in such a demanding environment at the same time? That is the question a policy document can never quite answer.So what is next for law firms
I think the starting point for any firm is to get honest about where they actually are. It is hard to know what good looks like, or what the next step should be, without first taking stock of what is happening internally. That might mean a survey for mothers, a short poll, or one to one conversations that let you gather qualitative insight rather than just numbers.Once you have that picture, you can start to think about what good support looks like. Not just the policies on paper, but the processes around the emotional transition itself. That is where the real difference gets made.This is where My Maternity Coach comes in. I support firms at any stage of this process, whether you are right at the start and want to understand where you currently stand, or you have already done the groundwork and are looking at what comes next. Get in touch. I would love to talk to you.Written by Zoe Scorah - June 2026
Sources:Link 1Label: Source: Law Society Gazette, February 2025URL: https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/give-us-proper-work-say-lawyers-returning-from-maternity-leave/5122290.article
Link 2Label: Source: Solicitors Regulation AuthorityURL: https://www.sra.org.uk/sra/research-publications/pregnancy-maternity-legal-workplace/