Published: March 2023
As workplaces strive to support balance, ensure healthy lives, and foster employees who can pursue their personal and career passions, it is important that the supports, communication, and understanding are in place for maternity and parental leaves. Everyone wants a safe, open, healthy, and inclusive environment. Engineers and geoscientists often find themselves engaged in jobs that consume them—from remote field work to large refineries to office towers to rigs on international waters—and planning and taking maternity and/or parental leaves has many considerations in order to ensure that both the employee, their newest family member, and the workplace have what they need before, during, and after this leave.
This national guide is building off the original Engineers Canada and Geoscientists Canada’s “Managing Transitions: Before, During and After Leave: A Planning Resource Guide for Employees and Employers.” This guide will provide some considerations for engineers and geoscientists and their engineering organizations and leaders, including:
Why an organization needs to implement leading practices for maternity and parental leave
Understand the increasing importance of putting people first and ensuring employee happiness and life balance.
Health supports
An overview of the importance of providing support and finding balance in your spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical states while remaining healthy at what can be a stressful time for an individual and their family.
Before transition
Lists of practices and considerations that employers, leaders, and the employee should each address prior to a parental leave.
During transition
Lists of practices and considerations that employers and leaders, and the employee should each address during a parental leave.
After transition
Lists of practices and considerations that employers and leaders, and the employee should each address when returning from a parental leave.
Legislative resources
Links to the relevant legislation in each province and territory.