What Happens to Employees Covering for Co-Workers on Leave?
When someone goes on parental leave, medical leave, or caregiving leave, most companies default to the same playbook: split the work among the remaining team. It feels practical. It feels fair.
And according to new research from Aflac, it’s quietly wrecking the people left behind.
The Aflac 2025 Time Away Study surveyed 1,000 U.S. employees who covered for a co-worker on leave and 500 benefits decision-makers. The findings should challenge any organization that treats leave coverage as an HR checkbox rather than what it actually is: an operational design challenge.
How Do Most Companies Handle Leave Coverage?
The most common approach is dividing the absent employee’s workload among co-workers. According to the study, 58% of employees report that’s exactly what happened when their colleague went on leave. Only 14% saw a temporary replacement brought in. Only 13% saw an additional full-time hire.
Leaders tend to think this works. More than three in four gave their own organization’s leave coverage an “A” or “B” grade. But satisfaction varies dramatically based on proximity to employees. HR managers—the people closest to the ground—report the lowest satisfaction with employee productivity during leave periods (68% very/extremely satisfied). Owners, furthest from the day-to-day reality, report 98% satisfaction.
That gap between perception and reality is where the damage happens. And it means the people making decisions about leave coverage are often the least informed about its actual impact.
Does Covering for a Co-Worker on Leave Cause Burnout?
Yes. The data is unambiguous.
73% reported moderate to very high workplace stress and anxiety
67% reported burnout
Mental well-being dropped from 71% to 60% (good/great ratings)
Physical well-being fell from 72% to 65%
Full-time salaried workers saw the steepest declines in both
These aren’t people who resent their co-worker for taking leave. They resent the system that left them absorbing an unsustainable workload without adequate support. Nearly half (48%) expressed resentment toward their company, and 45% toward their manager or supervisor.
More than one-fifth of employees reported feeling more negatively about their employer after the coverage period ended. This isn’t a temporary mood. It’s a retention risk.
How Does the Length of Leave Coverage Affect Employees?
Longer leave coverage takes a significantly greater toll. For extended leaves lasting nine or more weeks—which is common for parental leave, medical leave, and caregiving leave—the numbers get worse across every metric.
Workers covering extended leaves reported higher rates of new health condition diagnoses: 21% developed a new mental health condition, compared to 9% for those covering two-to-three-week absences. Burnout jumped from 32% for short leaves to 41% for extended ones. And one in five workers covering a leave longer than eight weeks reported extreme dissatisfaction with their leader’s support.
This matters because most parental leaves in the U.S. fall in the 12–16 week range. Which means most companies are applying short-term, informal solutions to long-term operational gaps.
The Most Overlooked Risk: Leave Can Trigger More Leave
This is where leave coverage stops being an HR question and becomes a true business continuity issue.
Among employees who developed a new health condition while covering for a co-worker, 67% needed to take their own leave to recover. Of those who didn’t take leave, more than half anticipate needing to soon. Fifty-nine percent of those with new conditions were out for three or more weeks.
The Cycle Looks Like This:
An employee goes on leave
Their work is redistributed across the team
Covering employees burn out or develop health issues
Those employees go on leave themselves
The cycle repeats
One person’s leave creates the conditions for the next person’s leave. This is not a people problem. It’s a systems problem. And it’s entirely preventable with better coverage design.
Do Companies Provide Enough Support During Leave Coverage?
The data says no—and there’s a significant disconnect between what employers think they’re offering and what employees actually experience.
Only 5% of leaders say their organization offers no additional support programs for covering workers. But 29% of employees say they received no additional support while covering for a co-worker. That’s a nearly six-fold gap.
Even more telling: employees covering for longer leaves were more likely to report receiving no support than those covering shorter ones (34% for nine-plus-week leaves versus 28% for shorter ones). The people who need the most help are getting the least.
Gen X and baby boomers are significantly less likely to be offered assistance or even be aware of available programs, with 39% and 43% respectively reporting no additional support. These are often the most tenured employees carrying the most institutional knowledge—and they’re the ones most likely to be overlooked.
Are Employees Recognized for Taking on Extra Work?
Recognition is another major gap. About half of Gen X and baby boomer employees said they received no recognition at all for the additional workload during a colleague’s leave.
In manufacturing, the disconnect is especially stark: 36% of employers say they send notes of appreciation, but only 11% of employees report receiving them. Across education, healthcare, and manufacturing, employees were most likely to report receiving zero recognition.
When people feel invisible for the extra load they’re carrying, resentment and disengagement follow. And 22% of employees said they felt more negatively about their employer after the coverage period ended.
Leave Is a Design Test for Your Organization
How a company handles leave coverage reveals what’s actually true about its operations:
Whether your systems can operate without specific individuals
Whether your culture is supported by structure or just good intentions
Whether your team is set up for sustainability or dependency
You can say you support families. You can offer generous leave policies. But leave is where those commitments get tested—not for the person stepping away, but for everyone who stays.
What’s the Alternative to Dividing Leave Work Among the Team?
The study’s recommendations emphasize proactive planning, regular check-ins, and better support programs. Those are all good. But there’s a structural solution that gets at the root of the problem: bringing in a dedicated interim professional to cover the role during the leave.
When a company places an experienced interim professional into a role during parental leave, medical leave, or caregiving leave, the equation changes entirely. The remaining team doesn’t absorb an unsustainable workload. The person on leave can actually step away without guilt or anxiety about what’s happening to their team. And the business maintains continuity without burning through the goodwill of its most relied-upon employees.
This is especially critical for leadership positions, revenue-driving roles, specialized functions, and lean teams—where the cost of spreading the work isn’t just burnout, it’s missed goals, stalled projects, and organizational drag.
Leave is a good thing. Parental leave, medical leave, caregiving leave—these are markers of a company that values its people. But a leave policy is only as strong as the coverage plan behind it. And right now, for most companies, that plan is still just “divide it up and figure it out.”
The Aflac study makes the cost of that approach clear. The question is what companies will do about it.
At Mother Cover, we help companies build leave programs that actually work—from sourcing interim and fractional backfill talent to guiding leaders through transitions with confidence. Because parental leave doesn’t need to be a career or team setback.
🌱 Temporary leave. Not permanent setbacks.
→ Need support for an upcoming leave? Let’s talk.
