Coming out of maternity leave is one of the most underrated career crises. Almost no one writes about it, but it is comparable to changing jobs in terms of the intensity of emotions. The stress is so high that only 24% of new mothers return to their pre-maternity hours, and many accept lower-paying or lower-responsibility roles as a compromise. 

The challenge is that a woman returns to a profession that has changed, so the processes have been updated, and even corporate slang has changed. At the same time, the woman herself has a completely different person inside. She has a new experience of multitasking, but also a load of insecurity.

At Drofa Comms, we work with women's career agendas within the Women Leading The Way project and regularly collect their stories. This time, we decided to look at our own team and spoke about what a woman feels on the first day after maternity leave and what really helps the company to return an employee to a full professional form.

The Fear of a “Maternity Vacuum”

The main barrier to getting out of maternity leave is not the loss of skills, but the fear of losing them or the feeling that you have forgotten everything. Our PR manager, Ksenia Sokolova, who spent three years there, describes the maternity leave paradox this way: 

“Before the first day at work after my leave, it seemed that I didn’t remember anything; I had forgotten how to work, and the market and colleagues had long gone ahead. I had a feeling that I was in a maternity vacuum — all I thought about in recent years was my child and the way I raised her."

But after experiencing the first day, she realised the opposite — her knowledge and skills were still there, and the maternity leave unexpectedly boosted her multitasking.

This is not an isolated case, but a pattern confirmed by research on neuroplasticity and professional adaptation. The basic competencies are long-term memory (up to 8 years!) and stable neural connections, which are not erased after a couple of years' pause but require reactivation through practice. It’s just like knowing how to ride a bike — you can never unlearn it. 

Simply put, this problem of coming back is mostly not cognitive, but emotional. It leads to anxiety, tunnel thinking around everyday life and children's affairs, and a feeling of falling out of a professional context.

So, as an employer, it is necessary to help a woman even before the official first day. A simple but effective technique that our HR Director, Anna Lekomstseva, describes is to start warming up the professional context a couple of months before returning. 

The employee needs to gradually integrate, which can be done, for example, by watching industry webinars or even scrolling through the latest market cases. This reduces the cold-shower effect and restores a sense of inclusion long before the first working day.

What Really Works on the Employer's Behalf

So, what else, beyond helping to get into the context, can the employer do to help the woman? HR practice shows that several specific mechanics work here, instead of flashy claims of support.

Onboarding from scratch

The employee needs to be adapted as if she came to the company for the first time. This means fully immersing her in the new processes, introducing her to new people and tools, and providing a clear onboarding plan. 

It was such a plan that became a decisive factor in the story of Ms Sokolova. She also shared that thanks to the understandable onboarding, she began pitching on the third day of her work. 

“HR and the buddy prepared the materials for study in advance and provided constant support, which helped me focus on actual work and have great results in the first weeks.”

Buddy, not a mentor

Speaking of a buddy, formal mentoring is often hierarchical and kind of stressful. After maternity leave, a woman needs an equal colleague who, in a friendly way, introduces what has changed and how everything works now. 

A Microsoft study highlights that 97% of new hires who meet with their buddy at least 8 times in their first 90 days feel their productivity is quickly boosted and that transition stress is reduced. This also decreases social anxiety and brings back a sense of belonging to the team faster than formal meetings with a supervisor.

Flexible schedule and reduced hours

Another way of reducing stress is the ability to shift the start of the working day and work on a part-time schedule for the first 2-3 weeks, while maintaining full pay. 

Our HR director also notes the need for a policy of providing sick leave on demand without unnecessary questions and proof. As she puts it: “It works not so much legally as psychologically, creating a sense of security and trust among her colleagues.”

No KPIs in the first months

A tight schedule and KPIs in the first weeks after maternity leave is a direct path to burnout, because the employee is physically torn between deadlines and household duties. 

What can be an alternative then? The answer is a system of focus and minimum workload instead of strict KPIs. After some time, when an employee feels included, the workload can start gradually increasing.

Restarting a Career Is a Skill That Can Be Learned

The main conclusion we can draw from our employees' experience is that returning from maternity leave should not be based on luck or a woman's personal resilience. As we see, this is a controlled process with clear risk points and equally clear tools that can help you cope with the workload and integrate without burnout.

Finally, Ksenia gives the advice that best summarises the experience of women who have gone through this path: "Feel the fear and do it anyway."

“Professional skills do not disappear over the years of maternity leave — they temporarily go into the background, and the familiar work environment returns them as naturally as the body remembers that it has not forgotten how to swim.”

And that's why the company's task is not to test this hypothesis that the woman can handle it, but to create conditions in which it will be confirmed faster.