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Returning to work after a pregnancy carries retention, safety and legal risks, but many employers fail to mitigate them, and in some cases exacerbate them, an HR professional warns.

Stories of employees' return to work being mishandled after a pregnancy are far too common, HR practitioner and RedefineHER founder Amanda Mitton tells HR Daily.

Common examples include an employer agreeing on a graded return only to revoke it, effectively forcing a new mother who wasn't yet ready to resume full-time work to resign.

Others involve a maternity-leave fill-in effectively preventing an employee from returning to her previous role, or managers pressuring an employee to resign at the first sign of struggle...