This year coaching consultancy, Talking Talent has seen a rise in demand for maternity coaching webinars.
Chris Parke, CEO of Talking Talent, commented: ‘The webinar format is proving popular as it enables companies to roll out consistent coaching to employees globally; the online sessions are cost effective and in spite of popular belief, they encourage open discussion. They are ideal for companies who want to deliver interactive, group-based coaching to their employees and managers.’
Ernst & Young is an advocate of webinar-based maternity coaching. Since February this year, Talking Talent has been delivering maternity coaching programmes to employees taking maternity, or adoption, leave, and line managers/counsellors. The webinars are being run in conjunction with Talking Talent’s one-to-one maternity coaching sessions for senior women in the business.
The coaching covers the stages of pre- and post-maternity leave and help staff to more effectively manage the transitional periods successfully. Subjects include: ‘Pre-Maternity, The Juggling Act (0-six months after return to work), Managing Your Career (six+ months after return to work), Counsellors Pre-Maternity (managers of women pre-maternity), Counsellors Return to Work (mangers of women returning to work). So far, 500 people have booked onto the webinars, including 170 Counsellors.
Liz Bingham, people partner at Ernst & Young commented; ‘The maternity coaching webinars have been received exceptionally well. They are very accessible, interactive, and cost effective and they seem to really encourage open and candid discussions and information sharing. The feedback has focused on how people have benefitted from sharing their experiences, the high quality information and tips they received from others and how much they learned from the collective insight of the groups.
‘The coaching is also enabling women to build contacts with other women in the business, form friendships and develop an informal support network to supplement the support they receive from the firm. And, with the extended paternity legislation now in place, all our maternity coaching offerings are available to men and expect the webinars will be particularly valuable for these reasons. Some of our European offices are interested in rolling out these webinars. Ultimately, our goal is to support all employees taking a leave of absence and make it as easy as possible for them to return to work successfully and we see these programmes as being one way to achieve this goal,’ she added.
Chris Parke concluded: ‘Webinar coaching encourages communication, and proactive responses from attendees. Whilst they won’t replace face-to-face coaching; we anticipate that many more companies will be using them to coach their employees in conjunction with face to face coaching in the future.’
