Women Returning To Work: 10 Top Tips To Ease Mums Back into Work Life

This week's guest blog is written by Jacky Lewis of Training Matters. As a working Mum myself with two kids, two and five years old (plus one on the way!), I asked Jacky to write some top tips on one of her areas of expertise, helping women who are returning to work after a career break or maternity leave.  

Enjoy! You can read more about Jacky below, and connect with her on LinkedIn  by viewing her profile here.

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You've had a baby six months ago; you have a toddler or even two; you want to get back into the fray of work but feel your confidence is at low ebb.  The agreement with your husband/partner was that you’d go back after 6 months, after all it takes two of you to pay the mortgage.  Then you ask yourself what you have to offer to the world of work, what would you talk about?  Your brain is fried with gigglebiz and teletubbies…  Well, think again- you can do it!  

All it takes is a bit of forward planning and a stronger level of self-belief. But make sure you have your contingency planning in place; life is full of pitfalls for new mum-returners, things can be uncertain. However, if you are the woman who promised herself that she would not vegetate at home, that she would further her career as she brought up her family, here’s 10 top tips from an experienced career woman and mum (with grown-up children), to ease you back into work:

Top 10 Tips

1. Plan your return, involve your husband/partner/best friend/mum, talk to your employer, are you agreed on timescales? Days? Hours? Clarify, clarify.
   
   
2. If you’re breastfeeding plan your weaning carefully; get advice from your health visitor or other trusted mums.  You don’t want to traumatise yourself or the baby by sudden feeding withdrawal. Keep on an early morning and night time feed for quick baby-soothing in the middle of the night.
   
   
3. Agree an achievable (and friendly) rota with your partner for getting up to a crying baby in the night and stick to it.  Avoid the ‘it’s easier to do it myself’, mentality.
   
   
4. Don’t wear your best work suit around a sticky baby for that last kiss in the morning; get real…. and think about the mum-returner whose 10 month baby was learning to walk and made a hole in her tights as he pulled himself up to stand, just as she was running out of the door for an important early-morning meeting.
   
   
5. If you are vacillating about going back to work, write a pro’s and con’s list.  Make sure you really want to do it- depression and longing for your baby are toxic things. Do you need to leave it a little longer?
   
   
6. Is your employer mummy-friendly? Can you ease in slowly? Or does your organisation like new mums to go back 24/7?  Your salary will positively reflect a 5 day, long-hours working schedule but is this you want? If it is that’s fine, if not then get real with yourself.
   
   
7. Can you do any of your work from home? Have you checked this out with your employer? Give them a list of the financial advantages to them of you working some days from home; make sure they see the ‘£’ signs. If you want it badly then make it happen.
   
   
8. How robust is your fall-back child-care plan? Will you be using a child-minder? How many children do they care for?  What happens if someone gets chickenpox at nursery? Who will look after your toddler if they are off-colour? How quickly can you access support in the morning? Do you rely on a nanny; what happens if she gets the ‘flu’?
   
   
9. How will you look after yourself?  Can you fit in some ‘me’ time? This is important if you’re not to burn out. The mum who boomerangs between child minder, home and the office will have little creative thinking to offer her job.  Make sure you get a little time to have your haircut or even allow yourself a quick ‘child-free’ coffee on the way home.  Look after your own batteries; care for yourself. 
   
   
10. Choose a role-model and analyse her; how does she do it? Notice how she dresses; how she impresses others at work; how she manages her family; demonstrates her level of confidence.  What could you take from her example? Think about the personal changes you could make to your own style of thinking and level of assurance.  Perhaps you could do with some self-challenge; is your thinking ‘self-limiting’?

Finally remember, belief that you can achieve has a strong, positive effect on those around you and opens out your own possibilities for achievement.  Confidence is contagious.

About Jacky Lewis:  Jacky is a busy corporate trainer, coach and mediator working at all levels of the organisation; she has a special interest in mentoring & developing female members of the team.  She has worked to support and develop staff in many situations & is often brought in during the disciplinary & grievance process. She also works to resolve conflict & build bridges in a range of situations and is used by lawyers as an expert mediator in best interests, Court of Protection matters. She first trained as an existential psychotherapist and supervisor and has a special interest in ‘difficult’ workplace situations.  She recently contributed a chapter on Workplace Coaching to the book, ‘Existential Perspectives on Coaching’, published by Palgrave MacMillan in May 2012.

Fixed Price Recruitment: How Does It Work?

Could you save money on your recruitment costs?

Most people think that it is expensive to use a recruitment company, so many small businesses opt to try and do it themselves to save money which is totally understandable. 


The recruitment industry is going through significant changes, with new technology and the accessibility of candidates through social media, there are now new ways of finding the perfect candidate without any interaction with a traditional agency.  


The idea of fixed price recruitment is not a new one, and there are a range of options available to clients looking to use this model.  However, these can still range from upwards of €800 per vacancy and this is still a stretch especially for a sole trader or small limited company.  


Expect Talent's mission is to change the way the world does recruitment, by helping small businesses to get hiring again with job creation at the forefront of everything we do.   This week sees the launch a brand new Fixed Cost Recruitment model to the Irish & UK market with prices starting from just €295.


So how does Fixed Cost Recruitment at €295 Work?


1.  Submit Job Description - The client submits their Job Description (if they need help in creating one we will create it for them)


2.  Post & Advertise The Job - We will submit the job to the most relevant job sites across Ireland & UK on the client's behalf


3.  CV's Received - We will handle all of the administration involved in receiving applications from interested candidates, saving the client lots of administration time


4.  7 Day Turnaround - After 7 days, the client receives one simple file with all CV's of people who have applied for the role


5.  Select, Interview, Hire - The Client then chooses from the applications and interviews the candidates themselves and hires who they want for the job.  Simple!


Fixed Cost Recruitment is easy, accessible and affordable. We are making it even easier for small businesses to engage in job creation and hope to help more job-seekers to secure employment in these challenging times.


For clients who are tight on time or want support on screening and interviewing we have other packages to suit.  There is a full list of packages available on this link.  It is time that the recruitment industry changed for the better, and this simple, easy pricing model can only help towards achieving this. 


We would love to hear your views on this and hope that you feel compelled to spread the word about this new cost-effective approach to an industry that has to change.
  

Employee Engagement: What's It All About?

This week I am delighted to present the first in a series of guest blogs from a leading expert in the field of Talent Management Strategy.  Simon North from Position Ignition specialises in helping companies through the transition of Senior Leadership Team Members at Executive Level.  

I would like to personally thank Simon for the support he has given to Expect Talent to date, it is a real pleasure to deal with him and his highly talented team of HR experts.

Employee Engagement:  What's It All About?

In a job market where the war for talent is making it tough to find good workers and where key skills are likely to be getting scarcer, the need to treat people well increases every day. It’s vital to make sure your workers are engaged and fully invested in what they’re doing. 

Employee engagement is about honesty – particularly in uncertain times. Your colleagues want you to be clear about what you’re saying to them and they want to be engaged on a regular basis. Regularity is contextual, whether it be every so often or weekly. The important thing is that contact is open and is as honest as it can be.

 

Systems that focus on people need simple processes. Employees absolutely hate performance management systems that have no human touch and are computer-based processes that require them to connect with loads of people to get facile comments which lead nowhere and bear no resemblance to anything important in their lives.

 

Instead, listen and tune in to every individual on a regular basis. This does not have to be formalised and structured as part of the standard appraisal process. This is much more about day to day management and supervision.  

Avoid over-measuring --whilst it is important to measure outputs and performance, over-measurement can be a real irritant to high-performing individuals and may reduce their level of engagement with what it is that they do. An employer or manager might think that micromanagement shows the worker that they’re cared about and not ignored, but because micromanagement isn’t about listening and respect, too much of it will prove counter-productive.

It is far better to have regular input sessions on being clear about the future and the team’s performance, followed up by frequent shorter feedback conversations both one on one and in small groups to check that the individual and the team are going in the right direction. If it sounds simple that’s because it is. One of the biggest mistakes that we can make is by over complicating what is really a simple humanistic process based on personal relationships. 

Good leaders have high touch, high personal integrity and connect on a one-on-one level as well as on the group level regularly and sincerely, both in imparting information and finding out how people are feeling. Systems and processes built around such simple, intimate processes can be more powerful for employees than super sophisticated HR systems. 

Finally be fair. 

The above points relate to being fair to your employees. It’s all aligned to how people feel about their engagement and there is nothing as powerful as the information that workers share with one another and that organisations and leaders rarely find out.

Guest Post by Simon North:  Simon North is the Founder of Position Ignition, which specialises in helping organisations and HR with the challenges presented by a maturing workforce. They focus on creating and ensuring smooth employee exit paths for talented and valued employees. Simon a renowned expert in HR and career transition work, with a focus around the older worker and how best to manage the later stages in our careers effectively.  Visit their HR Blog for more thoughts and advice on the latest HR challenges.