The Real Cost of Uncovered Parental Leave — and What to Do About It
Most companies don't have a parental leave problem. They have a planning problem.
The leave itself isn't the disruption. The disruption is what happens when a key person walks out the door for 12 or more weeks and the organization hasn't figured out who's doing their job, at what capacity, starting when. Work doesn't pause. Clients don't pause. Deadlines don't pause. And the team left behind — already running lean — absorbs everything.
Mother Cover founder Beth Wanner recently sat down with Dr. Alise Cortez on Working on Purpose, a long-running radio program focused on leadership and organizational culture. They talked about why parental leave keeps catching companies off guard, what proper parental leave coverage actually looks like, and what's at stake when organizations get this wrong — or right.
Here's what the conversation covered.
The moment nobody talks about
There's a moment that happens in a lot of organizations when someone announces a pregnancy. The "congratulations" comes out, and right behind it — quietly, sometimes unconsciously — comes the dread.
How are we going to handle this?
Beth knows that moment from two directions. She experienced it as a marketing executive leading teams, watching the mental math happen in real time when someone shared their news. And she lived the other side of it too — going through IVF in secret, answering Slack messages from a procedure table, and eventually being fired at eight months pregnant after a new employer made clear her pregnancy wasn't welcome.
That experience is what led her to found Mother Cover. Not to shame the leaders who feel that dread, but to give them something better: a real parental leave coverage plan, so the congratulations can be the whole sentence.
Takeaway: The anxiety around parental leave announcements doesn't come from bad intentions. It comes from having no solution. The fix isn't a mindset shift — it's a plan.
What uncovered parental leave actually costs
The case for proper parental leave coverage isn't just ethical. It's financial, and the numbers are hard to ignore.
52% of parental leaves result in team burnout when workloads are redistributed without proper support. That finding, from a 2024 Parentaly study, reflects what happens on lean teams when one person's full role gets pushed onto everyone else. Performance erodes. Morale follows. And burnout doesn't stay contained to the leave period — it lingers well after the parent returns.
A third of women leave their roles within 18 months of returning from parental leave. The assumption is usually that they chose family over career. The reality is that many left because they came back to a team carrying resentment, projects that had gone sideways, and a gap in their career trajectory that felt impossible to climb out of. They didn't opt out. They were pushed out by the conditions their leave created.
Replacing one of those employees can cost up to 200% of their salary. Multiply that across an organization of any size, factor in the colleagues who burned out covering the leave, and the math on investing in proper parental leave coverage — whether that's interim backfill, fractional support, or some combination — starts to look very different.
Takeaway: Uncovered parental leave doesn't just affect the parent. It creates a ripple of burnout, resentment, and turnover that costs organizations far more than coverage would have.
Why maternity leave backfill goes wrong
Many companies that try to arrange maternity leave coverage or parental leave backfill run into the same set of problems. They treat it like a standard hire.
They write a job description. They post it. They run a full recruitment cycle. Six weeks later, they bring someone in who needs another three weeks to get up to speed — and now they're halfway through a 12-week leave with no meaningful coverage in place.
The other common mistake is going junior to save budget. It feels like a reasonable call. It rarely is. A less experienced interim backfill takes longer to ramp, needs more management attention, and often can't pick up the work at the level required. The team ends up training someone on top of covering the gap. The budget savings evaporate.
Every professional on the Mother Cover leave partner roster carries a minimum of 10 years of experience, with most averaging closer to 15. The mandate is simple: get the lay of the land fast, integrate with the team, and contribute in days — not weeks. That's what effective interim backfill looks like.
Takeaway: Maternity leave backfill done wrong creates a second problem on top of the first. Seniority, speed to impact, and leave-specific experience aren't optional — they're the whole point.
Parental leave coverage isn't always full-time
One of the most useful reframes in the conversation was this: parental leave coverage doesn't have to mean a full-time replacement.
Not every role needs 40 hours of coverage a week. Some need targeted fractional support on the two or three functions that matter most. Some need a senior professional for 20 hours a week who can hold the strategic work while the team manages the rest. Some genuinely do need full-time interim backfill — particularly in revenue-generating or customer-facing roles where a fumbled quarter is hard to recover from.
Mother Cover works with clients to figure out what a specific role actually needs covered, at what capacity, and what kind of professional can deliver that. The goal isn't to fill a seat. It's to protect performance during a defined window.
Takeaway: The right parental leave coverage strategy depends on the role, the team, and the leave timeline. Fractional coverage can deliver meaningful protection at a fraction of the cost of a full-time interim hire.
What good parental leave coverage does for everyone
Beth shared a story from a client engagement where the parent going on leave had no idea that coverage was going to be provided to cover her role. When she found out, her reaction was immediate: they actually value me.
That's not a small thing. It shows up in retention. It shows up in the loyalty and motivation that parents bring back after a leave when they felt genuinely supported. And it signals something to the rest of the organization too — because candidates, including those who never plan to take parental leave themselves, are increasingly using parental leave policies as a proxy for what a company's culture actually looks like in practice.
68% of parents report anxiety about career setbacks before a leave even begins. When organizations invest in proper maternity leave coverage and parental leave backfill, they're not just solving a logistics problem. They're telling their people: your career is safe here. Come back.
Takeaway:Parental leave coverage isn't just a retention tool for the parent on leave. It builds trust across the entire organization and signals the kind of culture that attracts and keeps strong people.
Listen to the full conversation
Beth and Dr. Cortez covered considerably more ground in the full Working on Purpose episode — including return-to-office mandates and their disproportionate impact on caregivers, the leadership skills parents bring back to the workforce, and what leaders can do to examine their own biases before those biases quietly shape decisions.
It's a candid conversation, and an important one.
Listen to the full episode here.
FAQ
What is parental leave coverage? Parental leave coverage refers to the people, processes, and planning put in place to ensure an organization continues to function while an employee is on parental leave. This can include full-time interim backfill or a fractional professional.
What is interim backfill for maternity leave? An interim backfill is an experienced professional brought in on a temporary basis to cover a role during a defined leave period. Unlike a permanent hire, they are engaged specifically to maintain continuity, integrate with the existing team, and step back out when the parent returns.
Why does maternity leave coverage fail? The most common reasons maternity leave coverage fails are starting the process too late, hiring someone too junior to contribute quickly, or treating the engagement like a standard recruitment rather than a specialized placement. Effective coverage requires seniority, speed to impact, and professionals experienced in interim work specifically.
How does fractional parental leave coverage work? Fractional coverage means engaging a senior professional at a reduced capacity — often 15 to 30 hours per week — to cover the most critical functions of a role during a leave. It's a cost-effective option when full-time interim backfill isn't necessary.
What does Mother Cover do? Mother Cover is a fractional and interim agency that places experienced professionals into roles during parental, caregiving, medical, and mental health leaves. We work with US and Canadian companies to build coverage plans that protect performance, prevent team burnout, and give employees the freedom to fully step away.
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.
