An Easier Transition

Phase-back policies, allowing moms (and sometimes dads) to ease back to work with a part-time schedule after parental leave, have been around for decades at a few progressive organizations. But a new initiative at PwC has a twist other organizations might emulate: Parents work 60 percent of the time for a month but get full-time pay, even after paid leave is used up.

“We want people to come back and be happy. We saw that informally, women were easing back for maybe a week or two. We thought a month would be great, so we talked with our leadership team about how to make it work,” says Jennifer Allyn, PwC’s diversity strategy leader.

The main concern was that the accounting/professional-services firm wouldn’t have enough coverage during the busiest season: tax time (January through April). So, the firm allocated money for workload coverage for teams