Can better maternity benefits deliver measurable business value?

Boston, MA -- August 25 2026: Maternity benefits can influence more than employee wellbeing. For employers, the way women are supported through pregnancy, parental leave, and the return to work can also affect retention, attendance, productivity, and other workforce outcomes.

Speaking ahead of Women's HealthX, Dr. Katherine Arnold, Program Manager, ARPA-H, Dr. Andrea Willis, SVP & Chief Medical Officer, Blue Cross Blue Shield Tennessee, and Dr. Ndidiamaka Amutah-Onukagha, Julia A. Okoro Professor of Black Maternal Health, Director and Founder, Center for Maternal Health Advancement, Tufts University School of Medicine, discuss how maternity benefits can support employees while also creating measurable organizational value.

Retention begins with supporting the return to work

For Dr. Katherine Arnold, the connection between maternity benefits and business value is closely tied to retention. Losing an employee and onboarding someone new can carry significant costs for a business, making support for women returning to work an important workforce consideration.

Dr. Arnold also emphasizes flexibility in when and how mothers return to work, alongside access to childcare. In her view, giving mothers greater flexibility around the return-to-work process can help women remain in the workplace.

Maternity benefits as a workforce strategy

Dr. Andrea Willis similarly links maternity and parental benefits with workforce outcomes. She points to maternity leave, parental leave, and broader benefits that support women's health as important contributors to retention, attendance, and productivity.

Dr. Willis also highlights mental health benefits as an important part of supporting women in the workplace, describing them as a factor that can encourage women to remain in their relationship with their employers.

Taken together, her comments position maternity, parental, mental health, and broader women's health benefits as important to supporting a healthy and positive employee population.

Looking beyond whether a benefit simply exists

Dr. Ndidiamaka Amutah-Onukagha emphasizes that maternity benefits should first be viewed as a health and equity responsibility, while also recognizing their organizational value.

She identifies paid leave, high-quality maternity care, mental health support, lactation accommodations, flexible return-to-work policies, childcare resources, doula services, and navigation support as benefits that can better position employees to recover, remain engaged, and return to work successfully.

She emphasizes that employers should also examine whether employees can find a benefit, afford to use it, trust it, and access it without damaging their careers.

Dr. Amutah-Onukagha also points to research on paid parental leave that has consistently found benefits for parental and infant health, including improvements in maternal mental health and reductions in stress.

Measuring the value of maternity benefits

For employers and benefits leaders, the question is not only which benefits are available, but which outcomes can be measured.

Dr. Amutah-Onukagha identifies retention after childbirth, absenteeism, disability duration, employee satisfaction, healthcare utilization, maternal complications, and successful return-to-work rates as measurable outcomes.

Looking at these measures can help employers understand how maternity benefits are being experienced and what outcomes are associated with their workforce and maternal health strategies.

What employers and healthcare leaders should consider

Across the three perspectives, maternity benefits emerge as both a maternal health consideration and a workforce issue. Their responses highlight retention, flexibility, mental health support, childcare, access to benefits, and successful return to work as important areas for organizations to consider.

They also point to the importance of looking beyond whether a benefit is technically available and considering whether employees can actually access and use it, as well as the outcomes associated with that support.

As Dr. Amutah-Onukagha puts it, supporting maternal health is not an extra benefit on the margins of the business. It is part of workforce strategy, talent retention, health equity, and organizational culture.