International Women’s Day 2025

This International Women’s Day, we’re delighted to share Zahra Said‘s story as she navigated her return after maternity leave with the enhanced support of external partner, Mentor Mums.   

As I approached the conclusion of my second maternity leave in the spring of 2024, I chose to reach out to Mentor Mums and enrol in their mentoring programme to help ease my transition back to work. While this wasn’t my first experience of maternity leave, I certainly felt the familiar anxiety of balancing life, work, and now two children – and understandably so. Around three quarters of women who return to work struggle to balance childcare and work and up to 94% feel anxious in the lead up to it.  

Upon returning to work, my primary goal was to be able to fully provide for myself and my family, and this felt like the appropriate move in that direction.   

Mentor Mums is a nonprofit organisation that offers free mentoring services to people transitioning back to work after parental leave. They pair parents who are re-entering the workforce with those who have previously navigated this experience, often matching them based on similar professions and shared values. Generally, the mentorship program consists of six sessions, although the duration can be extended according to the preferences of the mentors and mentees.  

I was paired with Juliana who runs a specialist performance and change management consultancy. As well as coaching and mentoring through consulting services, she supports organisations in improving their business performance and accelerating their growth. Shortly after we were paired, we established contact and began our journey in the mentorship program. I was genuinely amazed by the support and kindness that Juliana exhibited. There were no expectations or preconceived notions; we began our connection over a cup of tea and shared warm introductions about ourselves, our backgrounds, and our aspirations. We discussed various topics such as imposter syndrome, low self confidence, identifying self sabotage, setting boundaries, balancing work and family life, as well as financial and familial support. Conversations with her made my return feel like an exciting prospect, and I eagerly anticipated our sessions.  

Ryder provides 10 Keep in Touch (KIT) days, which can be used to support your return to work at any time throughout maternity leave. I arranged my KIT days to start three months prior to the end of my year long maternity leave to allow me to gradually transition back to work. Arranging my KIT days at work alongside the mentoring programme was helpful. However, after just two sessions with Juliana, I fell ill. This had repercussions on many aspects of my life, leading to the unfortunate necessity of delaying my return to work. Juliana helped me through all of this by checking in with me, sending me encouraging messages, inquiring about my family and wellbeing, and simply letting me know that she was there whenever I was ready to return to my sessions.   

Mentor Mums is a foundation of support for parents, not just a mentoring programme. With the help of mentoring and my team leader, I was able to gradually get well enough to resume my career, albeit not fully recovered. I was advised recovery would take time, particularly after giving birth and nursing a child, but fortunately, I was on the right trajectory. 

In honour of their mentors and mentees, Mentor Mums recently hosted their first award ceremony. I was surprised to receive the Most Progress Made award after Juliana graciously nominated me. To be honest, I never would have imagined that I would be in this position in the summer of 2024. I genuinely think that without the help of mentoring, this would not have been possible.   

At Ryder, we are taking the necessary steps to support our parents, and others returning following extended leave – eg following serious illness – with a range of reboarding tools. These include an internal mentoring programme of pairing those who request it an introduction to someone who has been on a similar leave and provide flexible working within the remits of best practice. Organisations like Mentor Mums are independent of what we already do here but are very much a necessary part of this journey back to work that so many of us experience.

I hope by sharing my experience, this supports other people at Ryder and beyond in their own journey back to work.