Recalibrate and rotate: Why mat leave can help marketers hone their skills

In January, Pearson vice-president of global brand Rachel Exton wrote an opinion piece for Marketing Week about why 2025 is the year businesses should embrace the superpower of working mums.

Her column was a rallying cry celebrating the emotional intelligence and problem-solving capabilities of parents. As a senior leader, Exton argued she wouldn’t think twice about hiring a working mum, because – as a mother of two herself – she appreciates the level of commitment and resilience they bring to the table.

Of course, while Exton fundamentally believes in championing marketing mothers, not every leader or business takes the same view. Data published in February by Pregnant Then Screwed found up to 74,000 women lose their job each year for becoming pregnant or taking maternity leave – an increase of 37% on 2016.

This data correlates with 2022 research from parenting organisation Careers After Babies, which found 85% of mothers leave the full-time workforce within three years of having their first child.

The rate at which mothers are being pushed out of the workforce is naturally a source of concern for Exton. While she has seen many individual leaders champion working mums in their teams, Exton argues to get companies on board there has to be a link to ROI, growth and employee engagement. Making the case starts with having mothers – and parents in general – around the table.

Employers would be stupid to leave highly talented women out because you might lose them and they might never return if you don’t try to keep them.

Madlen Nicolaus, Hexagon

“It’s so important women go back to work, because how are we going to change the workforce if we’re not in it?” she asks.

What if, Exton suggests, businesses could think about the return from maternity leave in a different way?

Upon returning to her then company Dyson after her daughter was born, Exton asked to drop down to three days a week temporarily. The business agreed to the hours, but decided she couldn’t stay in her role as global marketing director for Dyson’s professional range and insisted Exton take a step down to a different position outside marketing. The new role, global head of retail training, involved managing the 3,000 specialists working in Dyson’s stores or shop in shops.

While being asked to make this change was naturally challenging to accept, Exton now believes the lessons learnt in the retail environment have offered invaluable context to her subsequent roles and turbocharged her career in a way she wouldn’t have appreciated had it not been for maternity leave.

“I had to take a step down, which was really upsetting but I did it. Actually, now I reflect on it, I took a step down, I went sideways and it acted as a massive trampoline for me going back up when I was ready,” she reflects. “It spurred this idea of a returning to work programme for mums.”

2025 is the year we embrace the superpower of working mums

Her concept is for returning mums who want to temporarily work part time to go on a grad-scheme-style rotation, offering them a breadth of experience across an organisation. If well thought through, Exton believes such a scheme could be “extremely beneficial” to businesses and working parents alike.

“You keep your director level or senior marketing manager title, but you do a series of rotations to broaden your knowledge. It’s not about going up the tree, but it’s about helping you understand that broader wheel of marketing and commercial, so that when you’re ready – if you’re ready – you can trampoline back up,” she explains.

Exton insists it only takes a few early adopters to embrace such an initiative – or more widely prioritise working parents – to gather momentum. However, she argues change has to come both top down and bottom up to have lasting impact.

“Could you get one or two companies to build their employer brand around working parents to get that ball moving?” Exton asks.

“If you can then use that to get some data to show engagement has gone through the roof and the quality of candidates has improved. Then suddenly you get that ball rolling.”

Chance to recalibrate

Mother of three and CMO at tech firm Hexagon, Madlen Nicolaus believes maternity leave can be a valuable time for sharpening leadership skills, enabling working mothers to become more strategic, agile and empathetic.

The former Kodak, Salesforce and SAP marketer remembers early in her career seeing senior colleagues juggling their work as marketers with their family life and realising she could do the same. Indeed, role modelling is a big part of her approach to leadership.

Nicolaus gives the example of a relatively new team member promoted to lead the content migration of Hexagon’s website rebuild. Two months later, the employee explained she was pregnant and was concerned this would impact her new role. Nicolaus immediately reassured her, having been through something similar herself.

“I had that with my second child, where I was still in the first 18 months in a new job. I remember I kept it for five months until telling anyone because I was like ‘I don’t want them to treat me differently now that I’m pregnant because they know I’m going to be out.’ Actually, I never was. It was just something in my head that I thought they would treat me differently,” she recalls.

In fact, in her experience, Nicolaus has either been offered a different job that was bigger than her prior role, or received a promotion, shortly after returning from each maternity leave.

“The way I would explain it is when you’re not there they realise all the things you’re doing and the hole you leave,” she reflects.

It’s so important women go back to work, because how are we going to change the workforce if we’re not in it?

Rachel Exton, Pearson

When on mat leave with her first child, Nicolaus’s entire department at Salesforce was cut as the business made acquisitions to form its marketing cloud division. While this felt like a big transition, upon returning, she was given a new role leading campaigns at a European level.

The Hexagon CMO firmly believes becoming a mother can help marketers prepare for their next promotion or wider challenge. Parents gain an “enormous amount of empathy” and appreciation for being a carer, she states, which is a significant benefit in the workplace. The ability to compartmentalise your brain is another strength.

“That is an amazing skill, because I have to juggle 15 very important projects and different demands of people,” Nicolaus explains.

“You really get some incredible multitasking skills and it doesn’t mean if I am watching my kids at a playground or I’m picking them up from school that I can’t still problem solve in my head.”

Indeed, she views maternity leave as a “good calibrating opportunity”, which offers the distance needed to reassess what’s important and where you want your career to go.

“I did that a lot naturally. Are you looking forward to going back to the world you had? Or if you have a blank slate, because your team doesn’t exist anymore or your role, what would you like to do? Taking a little bit of time in between the tiredness of being a new parent can be helpful,” Nicolaus adds.

From an employer perspective, offering flexibility is crucial, she argues, as is encouraging senior leaders to open up about juggling home life and work to inspire their peers and junior colleagues. Simply put, embracing working mothers and taking a long-term view of the talent agenda is good for business.

“Employers would be stupid to leave highly talented women out because you might lose them and they might never return if you don’t try to keep them,” Nicolaus argues.

“In the grand scheme of your career, the amount of time when your kids are little is really short and you should focus on keeping those talents, keeping them motivated, keeping them engaged, giving them a reason to come back, be highly motivated and engaged in their job.”

Marketing Week will be publishing a third piece in the series exploring the realities for working mothers.