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Why Companies Have Started to Coach New Parents

Lindsay Abt with her son, Logan, at home in Maitland, Fla. Her employer, the accounting firm Ernst & Young, provided her with a coach to help her prepare for her parental leave.Credit...Todd Anderson for The New York Times

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When Lindsay Abt was pregnant with her first child, she remembers reading a book for expectant mothers that cautioned against making too many big life changes at once. She went ahead and made three anyway.

“I broke all of the rules,” she said. Not only did she take on a job with greater responsibility — she is a partner at the accounting firm Ernst & Young — she had to move her family to Florida from New York to do it. She moved in July 2014 while her husband stayed behind to sell their house. Her son was born that October.

Throughout the transition, she had a dedicated coach, Delaine, provided by her employer, as part of a new program at the firm to help parents prepare for parental leave — and ease the transition when they return. In one-hour phone sessions each month, Delaine helped Ms. Abt think through what was important to her — being home by bath time every evening? Working from home once a week? — and how to set limits during a long workweek to make that happen.

“You can have a grand plan, but it’s something that needs to be figured out on a day-to-day basis because no two days are the same,” Ms. Abt, 39, said.

At a time when new parents may find themselves overwhelmed — even sobbing late at night as they deal with their new at-home responsibilities while trying to hold down a full-time job — a growing number of companies are making efforts to soften the blow. They are providing employees with coaching sessions, either in person, over the phone or through small group sessions that may be broadcast over the web. The services are often available to new fathers, too.

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Ms. Abt has her bag, left, and Logan’s packed and ready before she leaves for work.Credit...Todd Anderson for The New York Times

But employers are not doing this entirely out of the goodness of their corporate hearts: They are hoping to retain more women by helping them through a stressful time, while eventually improving gender diversity among their senior employees. Other companies that are introducing more generous parental leave policies realize the benefits need to be managed more thoughtfully.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the employers who started offering these benefits are organizations that often demand long hours from employees or are competing for talent: The big accounting firms, Ernst & Young, KPMG and Grant Thornton, as well as MetLife, Deutsche Bank and Etsy all offer some level of coaching to workers, whether in person or online, regardless of gender. Proskauer Rose offers coaching to its female lawyers, KKR to its female investment professionals, while Kohl’s is running a pilot for all of its workers at its corporate headquarters. BDO, another accounting firm, is introducing a coaching program conducted over the web next month.

“There are more and more companies every month looking into this, but we are still probably one to three years away from getting to any critical mass,” said Kyra Cavanaugh, president of Life Meets Work, a consulting firm that provides coaches and training to employers.

Companies have strong financial incentives to make their coaching and transition programs work. Ernst & Young, which expanded its policy this month to 16 weeks of paid leave for all new parents, said it typically costs the firm 1.5 times an employee’s salary to replace them.

“When we train supervisors about how to be supportive, we see bottom-line effects for the company,” said Leslie Hammer, an industrial organizational psychologist and professor at Oregon Health & Science University. That might be from reduced turnover costs, less absenteeism and fewer health expenses as well as workplace safety issues, even among employees working in offices, she said.

But another reason employers are introducing these programs, consultants say, is to illustrate that it’s all right to take advantage of newly announced or existing leave programs.

“What they are finding is they need to change the culture,” said Karen Rubin, managing director of Talking Talent, a consultancy that provides coaching to organizations. “It is not enough to say employees have a year’s maternity leave available, but demonstrate that it is safe to take it. This is where managers and senior leadership make the difference.”

For a parent coaching program to be successful, academics, psychologists and consultants say, it cannot be an isolated benefit involving just an employee and the coach, or simply a perk that companies offer for competitive reasons. Instead, it needs to be part of a broader change that involves and trains supervisors. Twitter — which recently extended its leave policy for all parents to up to 20 weeks of full pay — is offering formal coaching services to its managers.

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“I had this vision of what I would be able to do when I came back, but then I had to figure out how to make that a reality,” Ms. Abt said.Credit...Todd Anderson for The New York Times

“At the end of the day, it’s helping us reshape how we think about our business since we have an active population of parents going out,” said Laura Brady, vice president of compensation and benefits at Twitter. “It’s making us think about workplace planning and development opportunities for those who may want to cover for someone going out. So not only is this a parent and manager issue, but I think ultimately it extends to all employees.”

Every employer takes a slightly different approach to parental leave programs. Etsy recently expanded its leave policy to 26 weeks for all parents and formally introduced a coaching program in April. Employees at its Brooklyn headquarters can meet with a coach in person, typically several weeks before they go on leave and after they return. Managers are also provided with training, and workers in other locations can participate remotely. Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and O’Melveny & Myers, a law firm, all offer support to some employees.

Amy Beacom, founder and chief executive of the Center for Parental Leave Leadership, has developed a parental leave support program that uses technology to reach more employees and involve all affected parties: the employee, managers and any team members. “Using assessment tools as a guide, the work culminates in an action plan that is shared with all stakeholders before they go on leave,” she said.

For now, parent coaching has not been extended to the types of jobs held by low-wage workers, who have less control over when and where they work and for whom these programs may have the biggest impact. And because these programs are still largely in their infancy, it is hard to determine what sort of long-lasting effects they will have. But for now, some programs appear to provide the perception of support while reshaping the thinking of at least some members of an influential group: fathers.

Jerry Whelan, a partner at Ernst & Young, said his wife had twin boys in April. He said he spoke to the twins — in utero — each night, pleading with them to make their debut after his busy tax season. They complied, arriving 11 and 12 minutes after the tax day deadline. His wife had an emergency cesarean section and needed time to recuperate, meaning he was the primary caregiver for two weeks.

Mr. Whelan started preparing with his coach in January. “By the time the twins arrived, we were ready to go,” he said. “The ability for me to disconnect from work and focus exclusively to take care of the babies was a godsend.”

After being a career-oriented workaholic for so long, Mr. Whelan said, he and his coach discussed questions such as what kind of father he wanted to be, as well as how to deal with delegating more to his colleagues, which he said made him a better manager. He said the sessions also helped him realize that he shouldn’t call his time away vacation, but “parental leave,” to send a message to both his team and his clients.

“I thought it was important to do the coaching program, to take formal leave and get involved in the fathers’ network and the women’s network in a new way,” Mr. Whelan said. He now plans to take another month of leave when his wife returns to work. “It really opened me up as well to talk about these things in an emotional way that people have been hesitant to in the past.”

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A version of this article appears in print on  , Section B, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: A New Perk for Parents: Life-Work Coaches. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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