Making It Work! How to Effectively Navigate Maternity Leave Career Transitions: An Employee’s Guide was developed for women taking a maternity leave, which is inclusive of maternity, parental and adoption leave, and equally applicable to women who are experiencing their first or subsequent maternity leave career transition. This user-friendly resource is meant to be a self-directed tool that you use to tailor specific strategies to your career needs. It will empower you to be an active agent in your career development, setting yourself up for success.

As an expectant mother and/or working mother, it may be difficult to find relevant information to assist you with your maternity leave career transition. Some information may be obtained through organization policy and procedure manuals, or community and government organizations. While useful, this information is often guided by legislation versus leading and promising practices in women’s career development. The information in this guide serves as a starting point to develop proactive and positive career management approaches not only in navigating your maternity leave, but with other career decisions in the future.

Written by a team of workplace psychologists and career development experts at Canada Career Counselling and published by the Canadian Education and Research Institute of Counselling (CERIC), the goal of this guidebook, along with the employer version (Making It Work! How to Effectively Manage Maternity Leave Career Transitions: An Employer’s Guide) is to help working mothers and organizations to collaboratively realize their full potential.

What has long been a taboo topic between employer and employee, and an often angst ridden journey for expectant mothers and employers alike, now for the first time has a playbook. Not only that, it hits on every note. You need not look any further for how to handle a maternity leave, and run your human capital, with the best information out there. This is progress.

• Carolyn Lawrence, Leader, Gender Diversity and Inclusion, Deloitte Canada

After reading through the Canadian Women’s Maternity Leave Career Transitions guidebook, I wish I could have read this before I went through my own maternity leaves a few years ago. It’s a well-researched, well-written guide not only for employers to consider but also for women taking maternity leave. This is an excellent resource for any leave, not just maternity leave. The helpful checklists and definitions are going to provide much needed support for any organization hoping to do better in how maternity leaves, or any leave, is managed.

• Michelle Beck, VP People & Culture, ATB Financial