Jennifer Liston-Smith responds to Suzanne's question about how ambitious parents can 'press the pause button on their career for a couple of years' while their children are small.
Thanks Suzanne – very apt question. Yes, it does require willingness on the part of both employee and
employer to make flexible working work, both case-by-case and as a
culture. It's a huge topic, but here are some pointers to start with, relating to staying more or less in the role you have:
- Managed return to full-time:
Sometimes a phased return from maternity leave helps to smooth the transition back to full-time (where part-time is not an option or not wished). Managing Maternity works in quite a few settings in which it’s becoming accepted to use Keeping in Touch days (10 are possible during maternity leave) to begin a phased return to work (say working two KIT days a week for 5 weeks). Also: the use of accrued holidays (say, to have each Friday as holiday within a full-time role).
- Applying for part-time / flexible work:
One of the key tips here is to set out the business case for your proposed work pattern. Yes, you have a right to apply as a parent of young child and a right to have your application properly considered, but it is on business grounds that an employer may turn it down.
Will it work for the business for you to work in a different way? Are there areas, time, types of client / work that you can actually cover better by working differently? Are there cost savings to freeing up / sharing office space in new ways? What about the benefits overall of your enhanced commitment, productivity and loyalty through achieving this new working pattern? Can you propose trialling this way of working before formalising it? What review criteria do you propose?
Sympathetic champions of this approach within organisations advise that if / when you do succeed in achieving a new work pattern (such as working from home part of the time, working different hours), remember you may be viewed (still!) in some ways as a pioneer within your organisational culture. So it’s important to be highly responsive to things like internal emails as they come through to your home, so as not to give rise to rumours that you are in fact putting on a load of washing, feeding the baby who is sitting in the room with you, etc etc.
- Quality part-time / flexible work as culture:
Where the employer is willing, at a high level, certain organisations have been visionary enough to create (or at least countenance) senior roles which can be done part-time, by allocating project work and client contact in such a way that the role is do-able (e.g. you may not easily be available to teleconference with Washington from UK within the hours before nursery pick-up, but your role can be managed in such a way that after pick-up, bath-time and bedtime you are able to do an hour or so report-writing / email at home.)
Apologies if, at the stage some readers are at, this sounds madness; it is the kind of pattern that quite a few City lawyers, bankers etc develop once settled back into work. Often this kind of arrangement goes on ‘under the radar’, informally, which in some ways is a pity as it misses the chance to create ambassadors and champions for this style of working.
Do add more comment, Suzanne. And others please join in. Have you a success story to share on this? Learning from others is so crucial in this area. As we can all see, one of the dangers here is that you do a full-time role in part-time hours and pay. How have any of you managed to manage this?
