I’ve been tagged for this one by Adele over at Circus Queen. I popped over the A Mother’s work to check out the originating posts.
Rules:
Please post the rules
Answer the questions in as much or as little detail as suits you
Leave a comment on mother.wife.me so we can keep track of the meme
Tag 3 people and link to them on your blog
Let them know you tagged them
Tweet loudly about taking part (well ok, that isn’t a rule, but how about if we start a hashtag – #amothersworkmeme)
1. Did you work before becoming a mum?
Oh yes. Variety of jobs – careworker, bar staff, security team leader, programmer. I didn’t become a mum until I was 29, although I very much wanted to. Just finding the right man 😉
2. What is your current situation?
Atm I’m home educating my two eldest children, rearing a toddler, and waiting for the imminent birth of no4. The home education alongside the pregnancy and toddler as a combination makes working out of the house somewhat complicated, so I’m also trying to build a home business around blogs and blogging. The time management and lack of energy at the end of pregnancy is rather hindering me though.
3. Freestyle
I have worked out of the house since having children. I continued work with HSBC when Big was little – I was back in the office half time when she was 14 weeks old. She was in the nursery over the road, and I really do believe it was a lifesaver at the time – I had no idea how to manage a baby who did little but scream at me whenever she was awake, and barely seemed to sleep. Nursery gave us a routine and a structure, and the staff there helped me learn how to deal with this new little being who’d arrived in my life.
When Small followed along 3 years later, I expected to go back to work, but I applied for flexible working and was turned down. I don’t think they had the right to do that tbh, and I probably should have fought it, but instead I took voluntary redundancy meaning I had ample (!!) money to spend the next couple of years at home with both children. Then I was very lucky to find work in an extremely family friendly firm, who supported home working, flexible hours and were located four miles from where a new montessori nursery and school opened. Which kept us going for another couple of years.
Now it just wouldn’t be feasible for both of us to work out of the house. And I wish that there were more firms that recognised the reality of parenting. Working flexibly from home enhances productivity in my experience – ppl are really grateful for the chance to fit work around their families better, they don’t spend so much time, money or energy commuting and they respond well to that kind of incentive. Home working wasn’t abused by any of the staff I knew, if anything they all worked that little bit extra to retain the privilege.
Also, if companies allowed more ppl to work just slightly shorter hours there would be more jobs to go around, which might ease pressure on the job situation as well as making for happier families. (Although I do know that that is a very simplistic view on the situation. But far too many companies are taking advantage of ppl doing unpaid work in order to inflate the dividend to shareholders, and it’s not on. We need responsible employers and healthy happy employees to turn this economy and situation about.)
Right, I put out a call on twitter for volunteers to take part in this meme, and I got Snafflesmummy, Simply Hayley and ChelleMcCann Also I’m tagging my friend Anni over at TbirdAnni 🙂 Looking forward to hearing what you’ve all got to say.
MotherWifeMe says
Thank you very much for taking part in A Mother’s Work Meme. Interesting to hear yet again of someone being turned down when asking for flexible working – the legislation says you have the right to ask and companies have to seriously consider whether they agree to your request. That is all.
I think you are so right about the benefits of flexible working – not least about the lining of shareholder pockets by people working well over the number of hours they are contracted to do – I know this first hand, I used to be one of those people – the PR industry doesn’t run 9-5 it runs 5-9, ugh!
Jax says
I think the company moved very quickly to voluntary redundancy – I didn’t actually fit the criteria for acceptance at all – precisely because they hadn’t given the request the required consideration, and they knew it. They had internal procedures that hadn’t been followed and I could have shown that. At the very least there would have been egg on faces – I hadn’t asked for anything extreme.
The annoying thing about the shareholders is that a lot of them are the ppl doing the work – share bonus schemes make everyone complicit. But we need to get away from it all and recognise a proper balance in life. Work is just not working the way it is atm.