22 | Hey Manager! Your Employee Just Had a Baby. Now What?

So one of the things I wanted to point out, first things first, is the gal sitting next to you returning from maternity leave, she may look like the same gal, but she's not.

She is not the same person as she was before she left.

So we need to treat her like a new person.

We need to welcome her with open arms and have an open mind with what she might need, because what she might need and want and feel and think is different than before she left.

So we all know that momhood changes you, but we really need to recognize this at work as well.

So I wanted to point out too, when I was preparing for this podcast, I was thinking a lot about, you know, why do companies, you know, why do companies not do a better job at this? And some companies I think do.

I was chatting with my bestie, Julie, who works in corporate as well.

And we worked at a company together for seven years and she was in my wedding and I love her and yada, yada.

And so she works in HR.

And she works on the benefit side of the house.

And I was telling her about this.

I was like, companies need to do a better job of welcoming women back.

And we were talking about just some of the suggestions that I had.

And she's like, yeah, those are all totally doable.

And they actually, her company does a re-onboarding program.

whole cycle where there's a whole re-onboarding for the woman after maternity leave.

And I was like, that's amazing.

I love that companies are doing that.

So if you're at a company that's doing awesome things for re-onboarding women after work, I want to hear from you.

What are they? What are you doing? And how do you do that well? Because I was thinking a lot about how, you know, a woman coming back to work is essentially a new employee.

So why don't we treat her like a new hire? And then my thought, my wheels started turning and I did some research on just exactly what companies are spending when it comes to hiring.

And they spend thousands of dollars on onboarding for every single new hire.

I came across a report from SHRM, the Society for Human Resource Management.

And their 2025 benchmarking report said that on average, it costs about $5,500 per hire just to onboard the person.

And then for executive roles, it's upwards of $35,000 for onboarding.