Companies increasingly are creating formal ‘reboarding’ programs to help new parents transition back to work more easily
5 min
Sarah Tucker-Ray, a partner in McKinsey’s Washington, D.C., office, felt a lot of trepidation when she took a six-month parental leave in 2022.
“There is fear about, ‘Am I going to get written out of the story?’ ” says the 36-year-old Tucker-Ray, whose daughter, Viviana, was born in August 2022. “Is someone going to step in for me and take over? How will I come back?”
She addressed those fears in a reintegration plan that she drafted before going on leave. It included instructions for those who would be covering her workload while she was out, and it laid out what she wanted her job to look like when she returned. For example, Tucker-Ray didn’t want her role to change significantly, but she asked to not be given any internal projects—those focused on McKinsey’s own operations versus those of outside clients—during her first six months back. She also thought about small stuff, such as writing down all of her passwords, and she connected with other working mothers at the company who served as peer counsellors before she went on leave.
“They told me that the goal for week one is to get dressed, have breakfast with my baby, get into a suit without getting spilled on and get out the door,” she says. “It sounds so basic but I hadn’t had to do that yet.”
The days, weeks, and months after a new parent returns to work after leave can be a critical and challenging time for an employee. Many experience anxiety about how they are going to manage work and parenting, and some end up feeling like a failure at both.
To address that, some organisations have launched formal “reboarding” programs that structure those first months back after leave so they aren’t overwhelming for new parents, while also providing them with emotional support. McKinsey tested such a program in Europe and then expanded it globally
Many see it as a business imperative. Organisations are making substantial investments in paid maternity and paternity leave—in 2023, 40% of organisations in a Society for Human Resource Management survey offered paid maternity leave and 32% offered paid paternity leave—and they want to ensure new parents return to work and are productive and content when they do.
A successful reboarding program requires planning, and it and starts long before an employee goes on leave, consultants and HR leaders say. It begins with mapping out a comprehensive work-coverage plan, including if and under what circumstances the employee wants to be contacted about work while out on leave. The plan also should create clear expectations about what the return-to-work will look like, including the employee’s job description post-leave and even an explanation of what that first daunting day back might entail.
Many reboarding programs also connect new moms with experienced working parents or colleagues who have recently returned from parental leaves, as well as a coach (often an outside consultant) who can help set priorities and guidance on best practices.
When Maria del Mar Martinez became head of McKinsey’s diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in Europe in 2018, she learned that working moms left the management-consulting firm at nearly double the rate of their childless female peers with similar tenure. In exit interviews, women shared common grievances, including the challenge of balancing parenthood with a demanding job, a lack of support from their managers and few role models.
She heard similar sentiments in Asia and the U.S.
“That was a business problem,” says del Mar Martinez, now the global head of DEI at McKinsey. “I don’t want to lose those amazing women coming up the pipeline.”
To combat attrition, del Mar Martinez created a reboarding pilot program in Europe that included coaching employees before, during and after a parental leave. (Men are eligible to take part in the program if they have taken 12 weeks or more of leave.)
Built into the plan was a guarantee that new parents would have “meaningful work” upon their return, with the option of slowing down if that’s what they wanted, says del Mar Martinez. One issue, she and others say, is that managers often incorrectly assume that new mothers want lighter workloads or don’t want to travel, which is why it’s important for employees to spell out their preferences in a reboarding plan.
The McKinsey pilot required managers to confirm they understood their employee’s reintegration plan and to calibrate goals in performance reviews to ensure the person taking leave wouldn’t be penalised.
It worked. McKinsey closed the European attrition gap in 18 months, del Mar Martinez says, and later expanded the program globally.
Other companies are increasing the support they offer to new parents, too, including Wall Street’s Morgan Stanley, which in 2019 appointed Allyson Bronner head of family advocacy at the company’s institutional division, a full-time position that focuses on supporting employees before, during and after parental leaves.
Bronner says one of the best ways to ensure a successful return experience for new parents is to include managers in the process.
To that end, she meets with an expecting employee’s manager between the 25th and 30th week of pregnancy to preview what the employee’s return-to-work will look like and discuss best practices for easing the transition.
“It’s important to set the scene and give them tools to manage their employees,” she says.
She says her next meeting with the manager occurs about a month before the employee is due back to discuss how the first month should be structured. She suggests the manager call the new parent two to three weeks ahead to preview what the first few days back will look like—namely, checking email and showing colleagues baby pictures.
The support continues throughout the first several months, with managers having weekly check-ins with the employee for the first six weeks and then monthly check-ins after that. Bronner encourages managers to ask new parents how they are doing and how their child care is going to determine whether they would benefit from more support or advice in that area.
Since Morgan Stanley created the family advocacy role, “it feels like there has been a culture shift,” Bronner says. “It’s hard to quantify in numbers, but culturally it feels like we’re moving in a more positive direction.”
A culture shift is also under way at chip-equipment maker ASML, which recently expanded the paid parental leave it offers and in May joined forces with employee-benefits firm Parentaly to create a support system for new parents.
ASML is in a male-dominated industry, says Karen Reinhardt, the firm’s chief human-resource officer in the U.S., so retaining women is critical to having a diverse workforce.
As of December, 82 employees had registered for the reboarding program, “more people than we expected,” Reinhardt says.
Among them is Meredith Polm Sheain of San Diego, a knowledge-management developer who went out on maternity leave in late August. In her reboarding plan, she made clear that she wanted to be notified while on leave about any bumps in a recently launched product. She also laid out her priorities for the first two months of her return.
“I felt so much better about the concept of returning to work once I gave my team this plan,” says Polm Sheain, who returned to work on Dec. 22. “I left them and myself in the best position I could.”
Reboarding isn’t the only new benefit companies are offering to make life easier for new parents.
McKinsey’s Tucker-Ray was asked to attend a partner conference in Atlanta about six weeks after returning from maternity leave. The firm covered the cost of her daughter and caregiver (her husband) to join her on the trip since she was still breast-feeding.
“I would have been torn about going away for nearly a week for an internal event but it became a nonevent,” she says. “It got rid of the barrier to feeling you can’t participate fully in parenting and be a leader.”
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Subsidised minivans, no income taxes: Countries have rolled out a range of benefits to encourage bigger families, with no luck
7 min
Imagine if having children came with more than $150,000 in cheap loans, a subsidised minivan and a lifetime exemption from income taxes.
Would people have more kids? The answer, it seems, is no.
These are among the benefits—along with cheap child care, extra vacation and free fertility treatments—that have been doled out to parents in different parts of Europe, a region at the forefront of the worldwide baby shortage. Europe’s overall population shrank during the pandemic and is on track to contract by about 40 million by 2050, according to United Nations statistics.
Birthrates have been falling across the developed world since the 1960s. But the decline hit Europe harder and faster than demographers expected—a foreshadowing of the sudden drop in the U.S. fertility rate in recent years.
Reversing the decline in birthrates has become a national priority among governments worldwide, including in China and Russia , where Vladimir Putin declared 2024 “the year of the family.” In the U.S., both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump have pledged to rethink the U.S.’s family policies . Harris wants to offer a $6,000 baby bonus. Trump has floated free in vitro fertilisation and tax deductions for parents.
Europe and other demographically challenged economies in Asia such as South Korea and Singapore have been pushing back against the demographic tide with lavish parental benefits for a generation. Yet falling fertility has persisted among nearly all age groups, incomes and education levels. Those who have many children often say they would have them even without the benefits. Those who don’t say the benefits don’t make enough of a difference.
Two European countries devote more resources to families than almost any other nation: Hungary and Norway. Despite their programs, they have fertility rates of 1.5 and 1.4 children for every woman, respectively—far below the replacement rate of 2.1, the level needed to keep the population steady. The U.S. fertility rate is 1.6.
Demographers suggest the reluctance to have kids is a fundamental cultural shift rather than a purely financial one.
“I used to say to myself, I’m too young. I have to finish my bachelor’s degree. I have to find a partner. Then suddenly I woke up and I was 28 years old, married, with a car and a house and a flexible job and there were no more excuses,” said Norwegian Nancy Lystad Herz. “Even though there are now no practical barriers, I realised that I don’t want children.”
Both Hungary and Norway spend more than 3% of GDP on their different approaches to promoting families—more than the amount they spend on their militaries, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Hungary says in recent years its spending on policies for families has exceeded 5% of GDP. The U.S. spends around 1% of GDP on family support through child tax credits and programs aimed at low-income Americans.
Hungary’s subsidised housing loan program has helped almost 250,000 families buy or upgrade their homes, the government says. Orsolya Kocsis, a 28-year-old working in human resources, knows having kids would help her and her husband buy a larger house in Budapest, but it isn’t enough to change her mind about not wanting children.
“If we were to say we’ll have two kids, we could basically buy a new house tomorrow,” she said. “But morally, I would not feel right having brought a life into this world to buy a house.”
Promoting baby-making, known as pro natalism, is a key plank of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán ’s broader populist agenda . Hungary’s biennial Budapest Demographic Summit has become a meeting ground for prominent conservative politicians and thinkers. Former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson and JD Vance, Trump’s vice president pick, have lauded Orbán’s family policies.
Orbán portrays having children inside what he has called a “traditional” family model as a national duty, as well as an alternative to immigration for growing the population. The benefits for child-rearing in Hungary are mostly reserved for married, heterosexual, middle-class couples. Couples who divorce lose subsidised interest rates and in some cases have to pay back the support.
Hungary’s population, now less than 10 million, has been shrinking since the 1980s. The country is about the size of Indiana.
“Because there are so few of us, there’s always this fear that we are disappearing,” said Zsuzsanna Szelényi, program director at the CEU Democracy Institute and author of a book on Orbán.
Hungary’s fertility rate collapsed after the fall of the Soviet Union and by 2010 was down to 1.25 children for every woman. Orbán, a father of five, and his Fidesz party swept back into power that year after being ousted in the early 2000s. He expanded the family support system over the next decade.
Hungary’s fertility rate rose to 1.6 children for every woman in 2021. Ivett Szalma, an associate professor at Corvinus University of Budapest, said that like in many other countries, women in Hungary who had delayed having children after the global financial crisis were finally catching up.
Then progress stalled. Hungary’s fertility rate has fallen for the past two years. Around 51,500 babies have been born there this year through August, a 10% drop compared with the same period last year. Many Hungarian women cite underfunded public health and education systems and difficulties balancing work and family as part of their hesitation to have more children.
Anna Nagy, a 35-year-old former lawyer, had her son in January 2021. She received a loan of about $27,300 that she didn’t have to start paying back until he turned 3. Nagy had left her job before getting pregnant but still received government-funded maternity payments, equal to 70% of her former salary, for the first two years and a smaller amount for a third year.
She used to think she wanted two or three kids, but now only wants one. She is frustrated at the implication that demographic challenges are her responsibility to solve. Economists point to increased immigration and a higher retirement age as other offsets to the financial strains on government budgets from a declining population.
“It’s not our duty as Hungarian women to keep the nation alive,” she said.
Hungary is especially generous to families who have several children, or who give birth at younger ages. Last year, the government announced it would restrict the loan program used by Nagy to women under 30. Families who pledge to have three or more children can get more than $150,000 in subsidised loans. Other benefits include a lifetime exemption from personal taxes for mothers with four or more kids, and up to seven extra annual vacation days for both parents.
Under another program that’s now expired, nearly 30,000 families used a subsidy to buy a minivan, the government said.
Critics of Hungary’s family policies say the money is wasted on people who would have had large families anyway. The government has also been criticised for excluding groups such as the minority Roma population and poorer Hungarians. Bank accounts, credit histories and a steady employment history are required for many of the incentives.
Orbán’s press office didn’t respond to requests for comment. Tünde Fűrész, head of a government-backed demographic research institute, disagreed that the policies are exclusionary and said the loans were used more heavily in economically depressed areas.
Government programs weren’t a determining factor for Eszter Gerencsér, 37, who said she and her husband always wanted a big family. They have four children, ages 3 to 10.
They received about $62,800 in low-interest loans through government programs and $35,500 in grants. They used the money to buy and renovate a house outside of Budapest. After she had her fourth child, the government forgave $11,000 of the debt. Her family receives a monthly payment of about $40 a month for each child.
Most Hungarian women stay home with their children until they turn 2, after which maternity payments are reduced. Publicly run nurseries are free for large families like hers. Gerencsér worked on and off between her pregnancies and returned full-time to work, in a civil-service job, earlier this year.
She still thinks Hungarian society is stacked against mothers and said she struggled to find a job because employers worried she would have to take lots of time off.
The country’s international reputation as family-friendly is “what you call good marketing,” she said.
Norway has been incentivising births for decades with generous parental leave and subsidised child care. New parents in Norway can share nearly a year of fully paid leave, or around 14 months at 80% pay. More than three months are reserved for fathers to encourage more equal caregiving. Mothers are entitled to take at least an hour at work to breast-feed or pump.
The government’s goal has never been explicitly to encourage people to have more children, but instead to make it easier for women to balance careers and children, said Trude Lappegard, a professor who researches demography at the University of Oslo. Norway doesn’t restrict benefits for unmarried parents or same-sex couples.
Its fertility rate of 1.4 children per woman has steadily fallen from nearly 2 in 2009. Unlike Hungary, Norway’s population is still growing for now, due mostly to immigration.
“It is difficult to say why the population is having fewer children,” Kjersti Toppe, the Norwegian Minister of Children and Families, said in an email. She said the government has increased monthly payments for parents and has formed a committee to investigate the baby bust and ways to reverse it.
More women in Norway are childless or have only one kid. The percentage of 45-year-old women with three or more children fell to 27.5% last year from 33% in 2010. Women are also waiting longer to have children—the average age at which women had their first child reached 30.3 last year. The global surge in housing costs and a longer timeline for getting established in careers likely plays a role, researchers say. Older first-time mothers can face obstacles: Women 35 and older are at higher risk of infertility and pregnancy complications.
Gina Ekholt, 39, said the government’s policies have helped offset much of the costs of having a child and allowed her to maintain her career as a senior adviser at the nonprofit Save the Children Norway. She had her daughter at age 34 after a round of state-subsidised IVF that cost about $1,600. She wanted to have more children but can’t because of fertility issues.
She receives a monthly stipend of about $160 a month, almost fully offsetting a $190 monthly nursery fee.
“On the economy side, it hasn’t made a bump. What’s been difficult for me is trying to have another kid,” she said. “The notion that we should have more kids, and you’re very selfish if you have only had one…those are the things that took a toll on me.”
Her friend Ewa Sapieżyńska, a 44-year-old Polish-Norwegian writer and social scientist with one son, has helped her see the upside of the one-child lifestyle. “For me, the decision is not about money. It’s about my life,” she said.
