Personalize A Return-to-Work Schedule That Fits Your Family and Convince Your Boss It’s Good for Business
Mom Value has never been higher; the world has woken up to our reliance on moms in the home to garner the education of our future and in the office as key contributors to our economy. With this awareness builds more leverage and understanding to initiating conversations to cultivate personalized work schedules that suit the uniqueness of each working mother and her family.
Personalized work schedules aren’t a new idea. Our workforce has been chipping away at the rigid 9-5 for years now. It’s top of mind for many executives because of the obvious ties flexible schedules hold with retention and recruitment interest. Francise Dinh CEO of OpenVPN sums it up, “...the number of flexible and other nontraditional work arrangements will continue to rise because the benefits to companies are too numerous to ignore” (SHRM, 2018).
How do we make a return-to-work schedule decision and use these big benefits to sway our conversations to convince its mutually beneficial?
Start with Yourself
As a career and life coach for moms, many clients reach out to me for return-to-work support and nailing down a wholesome work schedule is a foundational piece. I always start with a couple of question that tend to throw moms off guard:
What’s your most precious time with your kids?
When are you your favorite version of mom?
As a new mom I really wanted time to teach and play, and my husband felt comfortable in the routines. I found a job at a community college teaching evening classes affording time with my son during the day; my husband led dinner, bath, and bed. I was able to honor my favorite version of mom. An old co-worker negotiated half days to take her kids to swim lessons and get ice cream afterward. That’s her most precious time. Another friend, Cass, craved slow mornings with her baby and negotiated a later start to her workday; her husband stepped up with the evening housework. She coveted the precious mornings with her baby. Once you have a clear idea of the non-negotiable mom time, you can advocate for that in personalizing your schedule.
When cultivating a work schedule, we tend to look outward for example. Moms scour the internet and interrogate working mom friends in attempts to find the perfect fit. Asking these questions pulls the decisions inward and helps moms consider their motherhood doctrine and revolve their decisions around it. This shift yields more individualized satisfaction. We all know when mom is happy, everyone is happy.
Family Variables
Families are complex with various vines holding individual needs which influence how moms make their decisions. Evaluating the needs of your family is important, and it must be met with a caveat- families are constantly evolving.
Schedule change when kids graduate from daycare to elementary, your spouse’s job may require an uptick in travel, your grandparent support may move away, you could have another baby. Mothers are the nucleus, and the ebb and flow of familial needs circumnavigate constantly. The awareness is instrumental in making your work schedule decision; take light in, it’s likely to change.
A strategy I often encourage is creating a graphic organizer including all the variables of your work schedule decision. Writing down the pieces of the puzzle help to keep your thoughts clear and objectively view how they connect to your decision. Writer and coach, Hillary Braime, explains writing as a “way to work through inner conflict or process your feelings around a particular situation. It’s similar to talking a situation through with a friend, except it’s a useful way of strengthening your self-soothing abilities and enhancing your self-knowledge.” Often, when I am working with a client, the practice of unloading all of the thoughts swirling around the mind about return-to-work identifies obstacles or negative influences and opens up opportunities to build solutions or realize they are not an issue at all.
Let’s think of the evolving family dynamic as it pertains to the conversation with your boss or employer. Calling out your own adaptability toward your family’s needs is an opportunity to request that of your leadership team. A dear friend and nurse, Amber, shared her takeaway from over a decade in the healthcare industry trying on full-time, part-time, weekend, and on-call schedules, “It took a lot of trial and error, but I finally found a schedule that is right for me and my family, and I’m really happy.” Going back to that executive quote, for Amber and many employees allowing space to explore and find their ideal schedule fit is worth it because it builds loyalty and satisfaction toward the work and company.
Understand the Schedule Landscape
2020 brought about dump after dump of challenges; with that, companies had to use the term “unprecedented” repeatedly. Now, we can use that to our advantage. The term: “It’s always been done this way” is laughable these days. Our collective society has proven that we can create better practices that break away from the norm. A non-traditional schedule is just another new trend that we can all learn to love.
Aiming to be a work schedule trailblazer has to start somewhere. Getting a glimpse into your company’s scheduling culture can take some detective skills. A good place to start is HR. If you have a solid relationship with an HR specialist, perhaps the person that led your onboarding, that’s a good place to start since most schedule and pay decisions run through the HR department and they often liaise in those conversations. Another place you might inquire is leadership. In many companies, flexibility is earned by seniority so if there have been scheduling modifications then executives and management would be another good place to look. Lastly, you’ll want to think about the way the company is moving forward. Has the company started to integrate flexible work verbiage in some of their job postings or branding the company as a family-friendly employer?
This is a good place to start the conversation with your manager.
Compiling all of this information helps build more context around the work schedule request. The conversation with HR and leadership will help you to build out more possibilities, options, and insights, supporting you to feel prepared for the conversation on a personal and professional level.
What’s most important is honoring your vision of motherhood and working the outward influence to align as much as possible. Finding a good fit is worth the time, vulnerable conversations, and self-advocacy. It’s also important to consider you’re not only blazing these trails for yourself but also women of our future.
Author for guest blog post: Emily Stark is a career coach, job search doc writer, and founder of Marketable Mama, LLC. Learn more about her passion-fueled mission supporting working and return-to-work mom's land fulfilling roles at www.marketable-mama.com.