“The real gap isn’t policy”
Astrid, LEIA Health, on what companies get wrong about parental leave
When Astrid started thinking about having a family, she did something that most people in her situation probably wouldn't. She packed up her life in London and moved back to Sweden.
Not because she didn't love London. She did. But the way the UK handles parental leave made the risk feel too real to ignore. Rights tied to how long you'd been with your employer, very little support for partners, huge variation depending on where you worked, and an unspoken expectation that people who were serious about their careers simply didn't pause them.
"Parental leave felt fragile," she says. "Like something that could cost you everything if you weren't careful."
She moved back assuming Sweden would be different. And in many ways, it is. The legislation is stronger, the culture more accepting. But even there, parents still hesitate. They still fear career penaltiesAnd whether the experience works often has very little to do with policy. It comes down to what happens inside the compan, and which manager you happen to have.
"The real gap isn't policy," Astrid says. "It's how parental leave is activated inside companies."
That observation is what became LEIA. Together with her co-founder Sandra, Astrid started building a postpartum health app – something to support mothers through one of the most critical transitions of their lives, and one that is still surprisingly invisible at work. But as they built it, they kept finding the same thing. The biggest problems weren't medical or emotional. They were structural. Companies didn't have systems for this. They had policies. And there's a difference.
So LEIA evolved. From postpartum support to building the infrastructure that lets companies actually manage parental leave, instead of just assuming it's going fine.
Earlier this year, Astrid came to our office to walk us through LEIA’s latest report. It's the first large-scale study of how parental leave is actually managed in Swedish organisations, and what it costs when it isn't. The headline finding doesn't leave much room for optimism: one in four parents leave their job after parental leave. For women, that number is 38 percent. And most of them never said why.
"The first reaction from HR leaders is usually shock," Astrid says. "Most companies believe they're supportive because they offer good policies or benefits. Then comes the realisation that they don't actually know what their employees experience in practice."
The problem, it turns out, isn't the leave itself. It's what happens when people come back.
Most companies have a parental leave policy. Very few have a return-to-work process. So employees come back after months away to unclear expectations, no phased re-entry, and managers who haven't been trained or given any guidance.The workload returns quickly. Priorities have shifted. And whether that experience goes well or badly is almost entirely down to one person – the individual manager the returning employee happens to have.
"That's where the real risks show up," Astrid says. "Burnout, sick leave, disengagement. And then, in the months after the return, people leaving."
What surprised her most in the data wasn’t only the size of the problem. It was where it showed up. Progressive companies - the ones with strong cultures, good reputations, and real investment in benefits - still had employees who felt unsupported when they came back.
Benefits alone aren't enough if there's no structure behind them. And most companies can’t answer a basic question: what is their post-leave attrition rate? Because they’ve never measured it.
LEIA is building the infrastructure to change that. Making parental leave something companies can see, track, and actively manage – rather than something they put a policy around and assume is working.
"Supporting parents at work isn't a nice-to-have," Astrid says. "It's workforce resilience, retention, and equity. It's the future of work."