In the UK, 82% of women will be mothers by the time they’re 40 according to official figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS). That figure equates to 43% of the nation’s workforce.
But how well is the world of work ‘working’ for mothers? Worryingly, some recent research shows that retention of mothers could be a big issue for employers in the UK.
Jess Heagren is the founder of That Works for Me, an online service that helps women to find flexible work. In 2022 she commissioned her own study when she was unable to find ‘definitive research’ into workplace retention of new mothers.
“In the four years I’ve been running the business, I’ve never managed to find definitive research into the extent of the problem,” Jen told Raconteur business magazine.
“Last summer, I attended a meeting of the Women and Work All-Party Parliamentary Group. Wanting to feel fully informed for the session, I searched yet again for some hard data on the proportion of women leaving the UK workforce after having children. I still couldn’t find any.”
So Jess commissioned her own survey – of 848 women nationwide – asking how their careers had gone once they’d become mothers. The result is a report called Careers After Babies. Jen describes some of the responses and findings as ‘deeply concerning’ for employers.
One stark trend the data reveals is the change in women’s working patterns after they have children. In the survey results, 98% of the respondents said they wanted to return to work after becoming mothers. However, three years after having children, a whopping 85% of them had left full-time employment.
How can businesses plug the retention gap with mothers of young children? And what part can benefits play in ensuring that the workplace keeps working for women after they have children? Let’s take a closer look at factors affecting retention for mothers.
Flexibility for families
When a baby arrives, parents’ lives are changed forever. There’s a new person to nurture, care for and love. Life at home usually takes on a much greater significance than before.
Mothers returning from maternity leave often want to continue to focus their time on their baby as well as their career. It can be difficult to get this work-life balance right.
Flexible working options can prove a key factor for women returning to their workplaces.
In the Careers After Babies report, most respondents said that they had struggled to make a full-time job work alongside having children:
Only 24% returned from maternity leave to their pre-maternity hours, while 57% left the workforce, with many citing redundancy, mental ill-health and the impossibility of managing their work and family responsibilities as the causes.
It’s clear that flexibility is a key factor in retaining working mothers, as well as provision for working from home at least some of the time. Homeworking and hybrid working are things that the coronavirus pandemic helped to normalise, though many businesses are now returning to an emphasis on office working.
Formal or informal flexible working agreements can help working mothers fit caring responsibilities around their working days. In addition, our Holiday Exchange Benefit allows staff to buy or sell extra days of holiday. Click below for more details.
Find out more about our Holiday Exchange Benefit.
Costs of childcare
With the rising costs of living, childcare costs can be ‘make or break’ in a mother’s decision about returning to work. Our Workplace Nursery Benefit can save parents literally thousands of pounds off the cost of childcare each year, and it is our most popular benefit.
Here’s what Enjoy Benefits director Vic Johnston told the podcast How to Be Happy at Work about why it’s so one of the most meaningful benefits you can offer employees:
“Nurseries are expensive, with some people paying over £1,000 every month. Individual staff members can save thousands a year with it, and it offers the most significant transformation for employees.
It allows them to return to work because they can afford it, work fewer hours, take holidays, or take more expensive holidays. And it impacts women particularly, making a significant difference in the choices they can make about their careers.”
>> Listen to Vic Johnston discuss the Benefits of Benefits on the How to Be Happy at Work podcast. >>
Workplace Nursery Benefit
Here’s how the Workplace Nursery Benefit helps employees financially. (Note that average childcare fees must be over £650 to be eligible, but there is no upper limit.)
- The Tax and NI savings are on the full amount of your nursery fees; savings of between 32% and 47% can be achieved
- If your monthly nursery fees are £1,000, you can save around £4,200 per year as a higher rate tax payer and over £2,900 as a basic rate tax payer
And here’s how employers benefit:
- Helps you retain staff, their experience and talents at no extra cost to the business. And it helps you attract a high calibre of new staff.
- Makes the return to work decision for new parents far easier and improves their work/life balance.
- The scheme is fully managed by Enjoy Benefits for you and integrates easily into your payroll.
Visit our Workplace Nursery Benefits microsite for further information about this employee benefit – or contact us to find out more.
The evidence from the Careers After Babies report shows that mothers want to come back to work. And as Jess Heagren adds, mothers deserve to return to a job that matches their capabilities and performance levels.
“Our study indicated that it was taking more than a decade on average for women to return to their pre-maternity salaries and status levels,” she said.
Employee Benefits that make mothers’ decision about returning to work easier, and that support them after they return to their roles, work for everyone – employees and employers alike.
To find out more about offering rewards through Enjoy Benefits, get in touch with us today to start a conversation that can help your organisation with staff attraction, retention and performance.
You can download the 2022 Careers After Babies report here.
About Us
At Enjoy Benefits, we have great experience in helping companies of all sizes introduce benefits that are suitable for their workplace.
Benefits are easy to set up and ongoing administration is then run through a hub, allowing employees to manage their own benefits while the employer can see which benefits are proving popular and what level of take-up each has had.
If you would like an obligation-free chat to discuss which benefits might work for your business and your employees, please contact us by calling 0800 088 7315 or using our Contact Form.
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