Most employers benchmark parental leave. Few measure whether it works.

Parental leave policies have evolved – but how do organisations decide what good looks like? In a recent conversation with HR, reward, wellbeing and DEI professionals, we asked one simple question: What informs your organisation’s parental leave policies?

The most common response was benchmarking against similar employers. The least common? Tracking outcomes.

While 63% of attendees said benchmarking influenced their parental leave approach, only 5% said outcome data informed their decision-making.

Many organisations know exactly how their parental leave provision compares with competitors. They can quote the number of weeks offered, understand market norms and see where they sit alongside their peers. Far fewer know whether those policies are delivering the outcomes they were designed to achieve.

As parental leave provision continues to mature, that gap is becoming harder to ignore.

The question is no longer simply, “What does our policy offer?” Increasingly, the more important question is: “Is our policy working?"

Benchmarking tells you what others do. Measurement tells you what works.

Benchmarking remains an important tool. Understanding what similar employers offer can help organisations stay competitive, guide investment decisions, and strengthen talent attraction.

But benchmarking has limitations. It can tell you whether competing organisations offer 12 weeks, 18 weeks or 26 weeks of enhanced leave. It cannot tell you:

• Whether employees feel supported.
• Whether they take their full entitlement.
• Whether they return confidently.
• Whether they stay long term.
• Whether they continue progressing in their careers.

Put simply, benchmarking shows what employers offer. Measurement reveals what employees experience.

Without both, organisations risk making policy decisions based on assumptions rather than evidence.

As Rebecca Ormond observed during the discussion: “If you don’t understand the barrier and what’s really going on, how do you design interventions that are actually going to make a difference?”

Are organisations measuring the right things?

One of the clearest themes to emerge from the discussion was that provision and outcomes are not the same thing. Employers often focus on inputs:

• What benefits are available.
• How much leave is offered.
• What support programmes exist.

These measures matter, but they do not necessarily show whether employees are thriving.

A generous parental leave policy can coexist with low confidence around the return to work. Strong headline benefits may sit alongside inconsistent manager support, while high return rates can mask challenges with retention, progression or long-term engagement.

The reality is that parental leave journeys do not end when an employee returns to work.

Success should not be judged solely by whether somebody comes back. It should also be judged by whether they remain, progress and continue to feel able to succeed within the organisation.

Measuring what matters

As parental leave strategies develop, employers may benefit from looking beyond policy inputs to the outcomes that matter most. Rather than asking: “What do we offer?” they might ask: “What happens next?”

Key questions include:

• Are employees using the support available? A policy cannot deliver value if employees feel unable to use it. Understanding entitlement uptake can help reveal whether support is genuinely accessible in practice.
• How successful is the return-to-work experience? Returning employees often face a combination of practical, professional and personal adjustments. Measuring confidence, preparedness and the wider employee experience can offer a fuller picture than return rates alone.
• Are parents staying? Retention is one of the clearest indicators of whether support is having a meaningful impact. If talented employees continue to leave after returning from leave, organisations need to understand why.
• Are careers continuing to progress? Progression data can reveal patterns that may otherwise remain hidden. For example, employees may successfully return after parental leave but subsequently experience reduced visibility, slower progression or fewer opportunities.

These issues rarely appear in policy documents, but they can have a significant impact on employee experience and long-term retention.

The manager effect

Again and again, the discussion returned to one theme: managers. Policies are typically designed centrally, while employee experiences are often shaped locally.

When attendees were asked how they would describe their managers, 67% said capability was variable, while only 17% felt managers were well equipped to retain talented employees through the parental leave transition.

That finding raises an important question. If organisations are not measuring employee outcomes, how would they know when inconsistent manager support is creating vastly different experiences across the workforce?

As Hannah Porteous-Butler put it: “Managers are your biggest variable. You can have two people in the organisation, the same policy and the same process, but completely different experiences.”

The challenge is not simply to establish whether managers have received training, but to understand whether employees consistently experience effective support before, during and after leave.

From HR metric to business metric

The discussion also highlighted the need to connect parental leave outcomes with wider organisational priorities.

Parental leave is still too often viewed solely through an HR or policy lens, even though its impact reaches much further.

It influences:

• Talent attraction
• Retention
• Employee engagement
• Productivity
• Workforce planning
• Organisational reputation

Without meaningful measurement, it becomes difficult to demonstrate these links or build a compelling case for investment.

Meaningful measurement gives organisations a clearer view of what is working, where gaps remain and where targeted action could make the greatest difference. As Rebecca Ormond noted: “It stops being an HR thing and starts being a business thing.”

The true measure of a strong policy

A strong policy is only part of the picture. Employers may benefit from looking beyond policy inputs to the outcomes that matter most.

But the next stage of that journey may be less about what organisations offer and more about what those offerings achieve.

• Are parents returning successfully?
• Are they staying?
• Are they progressing?
• Do they believe they can build long-term careers within the organisation?
• And do employers have the data needed to answer those questions confidently?

Ultimately, the organisations creating the strongest parental leave experiences may not be those with the most generous policies. They may be the ones that understand, measure and continually improve the outcomes those policies create.

Download the Parental Leave Benchmark 2026 report

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