Across the partnership, around 200 research staff take extended parental leave each year. This is a critical career moment where confidence, progression, and retention can either be strengthened or lost.

As part of the supporting researchers returning from parental leave project, we brought together colleagues from across the three White Rose University Consortium institutions (Leeds, Sheffield, York), spanning HR, researcher development, academic leadership, and research management roles.

The session marked a key transition point in the project: moving from evidence gathering into co-designing practical, cross-institutional action.

In this update, project co-lead Alys Kay (research culture coach and consultant) shares key findings from the cross-institutional workshop that confirmed that researchers in near-identical circumstances can have completely different return experiences, and that return-to-research is a distributed system.

What this project has shown so far is:

• The issue is not lack of support
• The issue is inconsistent activation of support in practice

Significant positive work is already in place: HR teams, departments, and institutional leads have developed robust policies, guidance, and support mechanisms, alongside informal networks and initiatives. 

This project highlights these strengths and surfaces opportunities for greater consistency, coordination, and shared learning across institutions, so effective practices can be more reliably activated in practice.

This is exactly where a collaboration like White Rose adds value.

No single institution can easily:

• map how decisions play out across roles (PI, HR, funders, departments)
• compare variation across contexts
• or build shared, low-cost solutions grounded in real practice

This project is doing all three, bringing together cross-role, cross-institutional evidence to create something usable at scale.

What the project is revealing

The workshop built on a strong qualitative evidence base (interviews, stakeholder conversations, and case clinics), and tested an emerging model with participants. Three key findings resonated strongly.

Similar situations → very different outcomes

Participants confirmed that researchers in near-identical circumstances can have completely different return experiences.

Not random. Patterned.

Shaped by:

• timing
• coordination
• and how decisions are made across roles

Return-to-research is a distributed system

Support is not owned by one function.

It sits across:

• PIs and project teams (workload, authorship)
• HR (policy and guidance)
• funders (rules and flexibility)
• departments (local practices, culture)
• institutional schemes (e.g. bridging funds, workload reduction)

These elements often don’t align in real time, leading to:

• partial decisions
• gaps
• delays
• or conflicting expectations

Support exists but isn’t consistently enacted

Participants highlighted strong existing provisions:

• workload reduction schemes
• sabbaticals
• parental leave initiatives
• Athena Swan-linked practices
• informal local support

But the breakdown happens when:

• support isn’t translated into later processes (e.g. promotion, recognition)
• no clear point of coordination exists
• guidance is fragmented or hard to access
• responsibility is unclear

As one participant put it:

“There are really good things in place, but they don’t always carry through.”

What helps in practice (emerging conditions)

The session tested a set of practical “conditions” that enable good outcomes. These were widely validated by participants:

• Clarity – shared understanding of expectations, revisited over time
• Coordination – decisions aligned across roles and functions
• Contribution – minimising unnecessary disruption to research trajectory
• Flexibility – adapting workload to changing capacity
• Decision support – accessible, usable guidance at the point of need

Participants confirmed: When these conditions are present, returns are workable and supported in practice.

Moving from insight to action

Participants were clear that:

Reports alone won’t change practice.

The discussion shifted quickly to:

• how findings can be used
• how they can be embedded
• and how momentum can be maintained

Emerging directions include:

• HR-facing action
  → identifying a small number of implementable, low-cost changes
• Integration into existing structures
  → PI training
  → HR case development
  → Athena Swan action plans
• Cross-institutional sharing
  → turning local practices into shared resources
• Coalition-building
  → creating a network of engaged stakeholders across roles and institutions
• “Living authorship” model
  → recognising contributors and sustaining engagement beyond the workshop
• Follow-up engagement with returners
  → ensuring those who contributed see how their input is used

Looking ahead

This work is continuing through a series of targeted stakeholder workshops, including sessions with research returners and line managers. These will build on the initial findings, ensuring that the insights remain grounded in lived experience and continue to reflect how return-to-research is actually enacted in practice. 

This ongoing engagement allows the partnership to test, refine and strengthen approaches over time, rather than relying on a single snapshot.