Maternity Mentoring Programs - Research Proposal Example

Maternity Mentoring Contents Contents 2 Introduction 3 Research Objective 3 Research Questions 4 Literature Review 4 Research Methodology 8 Analysis 9 Conclusion 10 References 11 Introduction Parenthood changes the life of a person in many ways and would put an increased amount of responsibility on an individual. There are a number of challenges that the parents especially the mother faces in the course of parenthood in the pre and post maternal or the paternal phase. It is the duty of the organisation to support these employees with flexibility in the facilities that is provided to the employees. Unless the company supports and retains the talent in the most important phases of their lives, it would be difficult to retain them in the long run. From the long term perspective, the employees also develop a sense of belongingness with the organisation if they get such support from their employers. Maternity Mentoring phase ensures that the parents have a feeling that they are needed by the organisation and the company would be benefitted to get them back to the organisation in the post child period. The parents also should be able to adapt to the environment in such phases of their lives. There should be proper arrangements for the mothers as well as work wise flexibility. There are generally a number of phases through which a new or would be parent would be undergoing. This dissertation paper is an attempt to analyse the various aspects of Maternity Mentoring in the wider sense of the term and the various factors of such coaching process that help the organisation to retain the best talent despite the crossing of the various cross roads of the lives of the employees. This study is conducted with the help of primary and secondary data to analyse how this process works in the organisations of the present day. Research Objective Maternity mentoring in the present day is not a much widely practiced phenomenon in the corporate world. An organisation in order to implement such kind of an HR practise has to start with a pilot project considering a sample of a few employees and has to analyse the costs and benefits of starting such a programme in the organisation (Baumeister and Vohs, 2004, p. 574). It is also important to indentify the different issues that the women encounter when they commence on their re-engagement with the organisation in the post maternity period. It is also important to track the path of growth of the parents in the post parenthood phase and how the mentoring process of the parents would help them to reach a phase of development in their career (Ludeman, 2009, pp. 237- 54). Thus the focus of this particular study would be the understanding of the various aspects of maternity coaching and how the process would help in the development of the future career of the parents who work in the organisation. The study would also try to seek an answer to the question of the effectiveness and benefits of such mentoring programmes on the working mothers. Research Questions How would the maternity mentoring programmes be effective for the future career development and the performance of the working mothers? Which aspects of the programme would be particularly helpful? Which aspects have hindered the process? What are the drawbacks of the Pilot programme? Which are areas of improvement for the HR department of an organisation in relation to the programme and the policies of the organisation? What are the key findings of the pilot project undertaken? Literature Review A considerable amount of research has been conducted on the maternity coaching for the working parents in an organisation. The method aims at providing a proper support for the career development of the working mothers through this type of maternity coaching. However, this concept is considerably new in the context of the practical application of the methods and it has been found out that very few organisations of the UK actually practise it in the true sense of the term. Several studies over the years have found out that issues related to the child or child care has been taken as challenges by the human resources department of an organisation (O’Neil and Bilimoria, 2005, pp. 168 – 189). However, it is important to throw some light into the different aspects of the management of the women employees especially in the pre and post maternity period. The aims of most of the organisation should be the building up of working environment that would ensure that there would be a balance between the work as well as family life of the individual working parents (McDonald, Bradley and Brown, 2008, pp. 2198-2215). This would ensure that along with being a productive workforce the workforce would be a happy one. The objective of all organisations should be the retention of the talented set of workforce. According to Stern there are a number of anxieties that strike a mother during the time of the pregnancy. This would continue over the first one to one and a half year in the post child birth period (Stern, 1995, pp. 34-81). The survival of the mother and the baby becomes the reason for anxiety for both the parents in the very early phases. The relatedness of the baby with the mother would also be a reason for worry for the mother. Along with this the major anxiety that strikes the mother is the question of the balance between work and childcare. An organisation should be supportive to the parents in this phase. The support should be both practical as well as emotional (Wycherley and Cox, 2008, pp. 39 -53). Out of the most stressful events of a person’s life is having a child because both the parents undergo a transition during this phase of their lives (Dohrenwend, Krasnoff and Askenasy, 1978, pp. 205–229). There are a number of parental pressures that they come across and have to deal with in the most competent manner. For the father, it would be the pressure of remaining financially sound. The father along with the mother would have to stay up at night for the child along with doing some additional chores in the house. He would have less free time for his personal socialisation with friends. On the other hand the mother would face issues on the same lines with some additional psychological issues. For example there would be some transition in the physical appearance of the mother which might affect the mother in a negative manner. She might be exhibiting mood swings and there might be increased stress relating to parenting and the roles that she would have to play in the family (Cowan and Cowan, 1988, pp. 114–154). Some of the researchers have pointed out those individual employees who would require such training (Griffiths, 2006, pp.16-17). All the women who are in the managerial roles and would have to lead a team or a group of people would require this kind of training. Some of the working mothers are already quite advanced in their careers. The organisation would lose to a large extent if these women do not contribute to the company or do not return to work after their initial phase of motherhood (O’Neil, Hopkins and Bilimoria, 2008, pp. 727-743). The young parents often face challenges of social exclusion which need to be taken care of by the organisations in which they work. There are a number of reasons that have been fund out why the employers would be willing to provide such kinds of coaching to the employees who have either returned from maternity or paternity leaves (Harrison, 2008, p. 28). The foremost reason for that would be the retention of the employees who are considered to be adequately skilled and talented and hence considered to be the assets of the organisation. If the organisation provides the pre natal or neo natal coaching to the employees it might have a positive effect on the level of productivity (Brown, 2010, pp. 470 – 494). Since the point of leave the employees would feel motivated to come back to the work and deliver a much more improved level of performance. The return of such programme would be quite effective (Arun, Arun and Borooah, 2004, pp. 64-84). This kind of programmes would also ensure that the disruption in the work of a team or an entire business is the least which would be brought about by proper communication among the other co workers and effectiveness of the planning process. The employees on the other hand feel more valued in the process and it inculcates a feeling of leadership among the parents who have taken a leave (Hartley, 2004, pp. 323 – 333). The employees in turn would develop a feeling of respect towards the organisation and the managers they have to report to. The goals of the employees both on the professional and the personal front get clarified in the process (Sealy and Singh, 2009, pp. 284-299). For providing these kinds of opportunities for the employees, there are some prudent steps that the organisation essentially needs to undertake. First of all there is a need for preparation and planning for the would-be parents. Extensive counselling is required for the psychological changes and the pressures that the employees would go through in such phases of their lives (Quesenberry, Trauth and Morgan, 2006, pp. 37-53). They also need to keep in touch with work during the entire phase of the leave. The shift in the roles and responsibilities of the parents has to be handled well and in accordance with the responsibilities that the person would have in the organisation (Ruderman and Ohlott, 2005, pp. 3-9). The coaching is also provided to ensure that the employees are able to return to the working environment with the similar or higher level of confidence (Metz, 2005, pp. 228 – 245). The employees should not lose the professional identities and should be able to retain and achieve the goals that were set prior to the birth of the child. Research Methodology A thorough research has been conducted on this topic using the appropriate research methodology. A descriptive research methodology would be appropriate for the process. This kind of a research would attempt to analyse the situations, phenomena or problems which is related to a particular issue. A correlation approach would also be taken that would be instrumental in linking the factors for the development of the employees with that of the maternity mentoring programmes. The research would also be exploratory in nature because a pilot project would be conducted on the issue to explore the various areas of the issue which is relatively new in the context of human resources management and providing relaxations to the working parents in a company (Partington, 2002, pp. 158-181). Both primary as well as secondary research has been conducted so that the different aspects about maternity mentoring can be understood in a thorough manner. The primary research would be conducted by collection of primary data for the analysis. Since this would be typically a study of the behaviour and the effective of the training programme on the working parents the study would be qualitative in nature (Huberman and Miles, 2002, pp. 19-46). There would be less involvement of numerical or quantitative elements in the research. There would be certain steps involved in the primary research. First of all, the collections of the primary data from the employee who are parents or would be parents have to be collected. For proper study using appropriate methods a questionnaire survey has to be conducted. It is imperative to construct a proper questionnaire that would help in the collection of the right data from the primary sources. The questionnaire would consist of different types of questions. Some of the questions would be close ended or multiple option type like knowing the age and gender of the person. The Likert scale would be used for analysis of the opinion of the interviewee on a certain aspect (Keats, 2000, pp. 34-46). There would also be open ended questions which would help the interviewee to come out with any aspect that cannot otherwise be found through the other questions. The construction of the questionnaire has to be done in a very scientific manner (Gilbert, 2001, pp. 85-104). This questionnaire has to be administered to a sample that would be chosen for the survey. The sample size could vary somewhere between 30 and 50. The interview would take place in the face to face manner and the sample should consist of employees working in the organisations which have offices in London. People can also be targeted in the shopping malls or the eateries. The data collected from the survey has to be assembled and analysed in a proper manner to get the desired results (Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, 2007, pp. 73-88). The responses which would turn out to be inconsistent or incomplete in some way have to be discarded in the process of analysis. A part of the study would also consist of a secondary research. The secondary sources of information on this context would be collected from the studies that have been conducted by researchers on maternity mentoring and the re-engagement of the women into their work life in the post child phase (Wolcott, 2001, pp. 46-71). The articles, journals, books and scholarly resources have been thoroughly consulted. Interesting elements have come out of such methods and have showed a path in which the future research can be conducted (Bell, 2005, pp. 25-37). The literature review section of the article provides the essence of the secondary research and has pointed out the key elements of the prior studies. This method is also instrumental in steering the entire primary research done in the subsequent sections in the right manner. Analysis From the analysis of the literature review it is clear that the organisations would benefit by providing the employees with the necessary coaching during the maternity or paternity phases of their lives. There would be a certain amount of costs that the organisations would have to bear for the one to one counselling process of the employees but the benefits of undertaking such coaching sessions would outweigh the costs to a large extent. There are a number of problems that the company might come up with while taking up such activities. Proper steps have to be taken to address such issues so that a healthy work environment and culture of work can be established for the working parents of the organisation. Not only in the short period of pre and post childbirth phase but also throughout the time through which the parent would be looking after the child continuous support on part of the organisation is expected towards both the parents. Conclusion The research conducted in the entire paper has been able to provide some of the interesting facts about the relationships and the transitions that the parents working in an organisation experience. The reengagement of the working mothers in an organisation and the psychological support is essential for the growth of the organisation. Though in the advanced economies most of the companies have their policies in favour of the mothers, the emerging economies are yet to witness their changes in the human resource policies for the mothers. It should be remembered that the organisations should remain as equal opportunity employers and provide the best facilities for the employees irrespective of their gender. References Arun, S., Arun, T. and Borooah, V., 2004. “The effect of career breaks on the working lives of women.” Feminist Economics, Vol. 10(1), pp. 64-84. Baumeister, R.F. and Vohs, K.D., 2004. Handbook of self-regulation: Research, theory, and applications. 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Essential Skills for Management Research. London: Sage Publications. Quesenberry, J., Trauth, E. and Morgan, A., 2006. “Understanding the ‘mommy tracks’: A framework for analyzing work-family balance in the IT workforce.”  Information Resources Management Journal, Vol. 19(2), pp. 37-53. Ruderman, M. and Ohlott, P., 2005. “Leading roles - What coaches of women need to know.” Leadership in action, Vol. 25(3), pp. 3-9. Saunders, M., Lewis, P. and Thornhill, A., 2007. Research Methods for Business Students. New Jersey: Financial Times/Prentice Hall. Sealy, R. and Singh, V., 2009. “The importance of role models and demographic context for senior women’s work identity development’. International Journal of Management Reviews, Vol. 12(3), pp. 284-299. Stern, D., 1995. The Motherhood Constellation: A Unified View of Parent–Infant Psychotherapy. London: Karnac Books. Wolcott, H.F., 2001. Writing Up Qualitative Research. London: Sage Publication. Wycherley, I. and Cox, E., 2008. “Factors in the selection and matching of executive coaches in organisations.” Coaching: An International Journal of Theory, Research and Practice, Vol. 1(1), pp. 39 -53. Read More