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Maternity coaching &
Parental leave coaching

with HR4Business
First movers always transform the world and themselves
Parental leave is one of the most undervalued growth opportunities for parents and organizations.
Some may think of maternity or paternity leave as the time you take away from work to welcome your new baby. Others see it as a disruption. But, it is not a holiday nor an event that derails your career. It is a journey during which your personal and professional roles are completely rewritten. It is a brief interlude in the long-term career which, if supported by the organization, comes with tangible benefits for both parents and organizations. It enables returning parents to re-energize, focus on their work, and strengthen their professional relationships. And when parents bring their best selves back to the workplace, organizations improve their culture and bottom line.
Maternity coaching focuses on the time a mother is preparing to become a parent, the time she spends bonding with her baby, and how she adapts to being a working parent. The purpose is to help mothers navigate leave and return to work with excitement and confidence, and companies – managers and organizations as a whole – to retain and develop their key talent. Maternity coaching and parental leave coaching are not perks but forward-thinking and conscious business.
What we do: Elevating potential
Maternity is an essential moment in women’s professional lives, and organizations have the opportunity to remove the barriers when it comes to mothers re-engaging with work and continuing their career development. For companies, this is a strategic approach that strengthens their women talent pipeline.
Through our maternity coaching, mothers return engaged and able to keep up career momentum, elevate their potential while bringing tangible benefits to both organizations and themselves.
Mothers
Fully enjoy your maternity leave and confidently develop your career
  • A supportive process to understand your core values and build your confidence in making decisions for you
  • Open and safe climate to share your strengths, hopes, and concerns and be listened to
  • Perspective on the balance between your career and family life
  • The opportunity to explore your options for career progression
  • The suitable level of challenge and accountability for you
  • The readiness to ensure you accomplish what you defined for yourself
Organizations
Foster your supportive working environment and remain an attractive employer
  • Stronger women talent pipeline
  • Higher levels of communication, engagement, and retention
  • A meaningful way of promoting gender diversity, equality, and equity, closing the gender pay gap, and minimizing the impact of leave on career progression
  • A way of promoting wellbeing at work with a positive impact on productivity and performance
  • Saved recruitment investments due to no knowledge, competencies, and experience gaps
  • The opportunity to grow your reputation as a family-friendly employer, a strategic differentiator
How we help
Our maternity coaching consists of specialized and tailored programs: one-on-one and expert support designed to meet the specific needs of mothers, on the one hand, and guidance to organizations, on the other hand, involving management, HR leaders, and direct managers.
For mothers, we create a safe climate for reflection, open discussion, and focus. We work together to understand your priorities, strengths, and aspirations so you plan and implement a career strategy that complements what is meaningful to you as a parent.
For organizations, we work together on the framework, resources, and tools to actively support you to become or remain an attractive employer to talented women who wish to combine a thriving career with a balanced family life.
We connect mothers’ needs with organizational goals
Maternity coaching is improving both lives for mothers and the results for companies. We are dedicated to supporting and guiding mothers’ intrinsic growth and scope for development and connecting them with a return on organizational investment.
We support mothers to strengthen the focus on career development
Motherhood often occurs near the peak of a woman’s professional life when she has the knowledge, competencies, and experience for career progression. However, research illustrates that women’s careers tend to stall once they become parents (Government Equalities Office, 2019). This influences whether a woman returns to work and how engaged she is when she does go back, impacting the organization as well.
A maternity coaching program addressing career opportunity, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment – mothers feeling recognized, engaged, understood, and fully re-integrated into the organization as a working parent in the first 9-12 months – can change that.
We support organizations to create a culture that is meaningful and a strategic differentiator
Organizational culture can have a direct effect on the retention of women. We work with organizations on building a framework for career development, flexible policies and procedures consistent with cultural attitudes and behaviors, coaching sessions and workshops involving mothers, direct managers, and HR, so the organization is genuinely committed to work-life programs.
For organizations, maternity coaching is a strategic differentiator, an investment in talent development and retention. In particular, maternity coaching results in significantly fewer women exiting during the 12-24 months following their return from maternity leave.
What to expect
Every mother considering maternity coaching is different. So is the organization. Our approach to maternity coaching is personal, flexible, energizing, and tailored to each mother and organization’s needs.
Our maternity coaching is systemic, hands-on, covering four stages: before, during, and after maternity leave – short-term and long-term.
During these four stages, we have a paired approach and involve the mother and her direct manager as she returns to work. This way, the direct manager has the opportunity to understand their role in different stages of maternity leave: managing the transition, communicating, providing meaningful work on return to the workplace.
We also consider the partner’s role and the family as a whole.
1
Before maternity leave begins:
prepare for maternity leave transition
2
During maternity leave, before return:
maternity leave and return-to-work plan
3
After maternity leave – short-term:
Return to work and adapt for parenthood – short-term
4
After maternity leave – long-term:
return to work and adapt for parenthood – long-term
We partner with forward-thinking and conscious leaders and organizations
We have developed strategic and long-term partnerships with national and multinational forward-thinking companies in Automotive, Manufacturing & Materials, Retail & FMCG, IT/Technology, Healthcare, and Utilities/Public services.
We work together with them to ensure that their women talents – working mothers – are supported when they go through the life change that is the maternity transition. By making sure they retain and develop their returning mothers, we contribute to a positive impact on mothers and organizational development and performance as a return for both individuals and businesses.
Partnership with TenarisSilcotub

Program: Gender Diversity and Maternity Coaching Program design and rollout – part of a global Gender Diversity initiative
Duration: 2 years, covering all four stages (before, during, after maternity leave – short-term and long-term)
Impact: over 200 women benefited from training and maternity coaching sessions

Our expert
“Motherhood is one of the most meaningful moments in a woman’s life. It is priceless to have around you the people who believe in you and support you in becoming aware of what matters the most. Edmund Lee pointed out very well – Surround yourself with the dreamers and the doers, the believers and thinkers, but most of all, surround yourself with those who see the greatness in you, even when you don’t see it yourself.”
Carmen Nicula PhD
Carmen Nicula is a Senior Consultant, Trainer, Executive Coach, and Facilitator of leadership and management-focused professional development programs, herself a mother and a business leader, with a 20-year business and leadership background.
Carmen works with you as a strategic and long-term partner to deliver on HR4Business promise:
to enable you, through maternity coaching and parental leave coaching and genuine care for every interaction, to work towards elevating your potential and becoming a high-performer –
lifelong, with more certainty, and well beyond your challenges – while transforming it into a return in business, for life.
Meet Carmen Nicula
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Our conversation
goes both ways
Ready to talk about how to turn maternity coaching into a people and organization growth opportunity?
We work with forward-thinking and conscious leaders and organizations that want to prepare for the future.
Together, we are elevating your potential and are future-ready.
Connect with us