“Together we are stronger” – here professional communications practitioner Fiona Chow looks at the opportunity available to employers through job share and invites employers to be more imaginative in their approach, especially when dealing with senior level maternity returners…..
As a child born at the start of the Thatcher-era I was taught that nothing was out of reach if I was prepared to work hard for it. It’s a lesson I took to heart, investing 15 years of early mornings and late nights climbing the corporate ladder with barely a backwards glance.
Then I fell pregnant.
And shortly before returning from maternity leave was made redundant from a senior role, leading pan-European communications for a massive multinational company.
Suddenly I was a character in all the horror stories I had heard about the challenges of returning to work after maternity leave. Parenthood created a natural space to rethink my career and redundancy provided the impetus for change. While my head was craving the exciting senior level comms roles, my heart was torn at the prospect of constantly missing bath-times and not being able to spend time working on my new most important role as a mother.
In all honesty, given the bruising experience of the redundancy process, it was at least a year until I had emotionally recovered enough to think creatively about how to solve the dilemma.
And it then it struck me. The reason women tend to make great comms people is their EQ, the ability to form relationships and work collegiately. Why not bring that EQ, combined with proven skills and competencies and join up with a suitable partner?
I’d already put my network to good use, securing freelance projects and sourcing specialist support for areas where I needed additional expertise. As part of this I had been working closely with a former colleague, Vanessa Canzini.
I’d always been in awe of Vanessa in the workplace and was delighted to be pitching for projects and working together in our new post-maternity lives. With differing but complementary backgrounds we found that combining our skills proved a compelling offering to potential clients. And we got to thinking that a similar blend could be equally attractive to the right employer. Between us we have specialisms in all the marketing disciplines you would expect to find in a high-level job spec – virtually impossible to find in one candidate, but more than doable in two.
Inspired by the example of Hilary Cross and Lynda Thomas at Macmillan we discussed how neither of us felt that we should be limited to more junior roles or specific sectors merely because neither wanted to commit either to the full time hours or the extensive travel senior roles require. But, between us, working 3 days a week a piece for an imaginative, innovative organisation we felt we could offer a potential employer the benefit of three decades combined experience across multiple disciplines, plus permanent holiday cover!
With the changing nature of the workforce and working patterns more employers and employees need to become more imaginative in their approach, especially when dealing with senior level maternity returners. The Women and Work Commission calculated that unleashing the full potential of women in the workplace could be worth £23bn a year to the Treasury.
Contrary to what many employers might think, many women can’t wait to come back to work but recognise that their priorities need to shift. There are many options that might be considered such as compressed hours around childcare, flexi-time or job shares and it is as much up to maternity returners as well as employers to find the solution that works best for them.