Speaking at a Diversity and Inclusivity Finance Forum (DIFF) Leadership Forum, Sophie Maunder (pictured), founder of Matri Coaching, said: “We all lose valuable trained talent right at the height of their own potential and career advancement; it costs so much to replace them.
“The return on investment (ROI) is, in fact, startling. Supporting women engenders huge rewards in terms of loyalty, effectiveness and positivity, and helping one woman to stay can save the company tens of thousands of pounds in recruitment fees and pay for a programme like Matri up to 30 women.”
She pointed to research that Matri Coaching had done that shows that businesses lose £500m in recruitment costs to replace lost talent.
Maunder continued: “We know that it takes up to 10 years for a woman’s career to recover after maternity leave, and then she’s probably heading for menopause. The good news is that, whilst these issues are very real, with very physical symptoms, a huge amount can be overcome just by being a company where they are acknowledged, showing them support by having coaching programmes and policies and training for managers that signal your understanding.
“Even more impactful, I would argue, and entirely free: just being brave enough as an executive leader to own and share what you were going through.”
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She pointed to her own “health career”, noting that her own experience of going on maternity leave and coming back to work, having had no communication with the company in her absence, combined with the “unique brain- and body-melting exhaustion” of raising a child, was challenging.
Looking across her career, the guilt of being a working parent, requesting and managing flexible working pre-pandemic, going through perimenopause – which undermined her confidence at work – and consequently going on sabbatical, are not unique experiences.
“I don’t think my experience is remotely unusual. In fact, I truly believe I’ve had it easy. I’ve had a company that supported me and wanted me and a boss who is a superb advocate always promoted me into roles my imposter syndrome screamed I couldn’t do.
“I didn’t suffer endometriosis like 1.5 million women in the UK do, or crippling monthly migraines or the emotional and physical turmoil and rollercoaster of fertility treatment, as 11% of women in the UK do now.
“I didn’t have postnatal depression, as 15% of women experience, or actually managed to quit my job, though I tried, as one in 10 women do thanks to the effects of the menopause. I’ve just been doing life, life as an executive woman, with some of its twists and turns,” she said.
Maunder said that following her own experiences, she was “passionate about ensuring women don’t get tripped up whilst going through a physically vulnerable and emotional place and transitioning from working person to working parents”.
Matri Coaching is a programme designed to ensure women “leave feeling strong, understanding the mindset of setting themselves up to support their return to work in a successful way”.
This includes finding a community of working mums in and out of their company to support them and allowing them to “return having had the right conversations with the right mindset for a reciprocal, balanced and fair, for the company, mindset to ensure they can do their jobs and progress their career – if that’s their choice”.
