Did you know that between October 12th and 16th 2020 it is National Work Life Week?
National Work Life Week is an annual campaign to get both employers and employees talking about wellbeing at work and work-life fit.
Focused on employers showing existing and potential employees how their organisation is striving to be family friendly and flexible. Run by Working Families, the UK’s work-life balance charity.
Working Families recently surveyed over 1,000 working parents and carers and found that before COVID-19, 65% of respondents were working flexibly. During COVID-19, this number has shot up to 84%.
Since going self-employed back in 2018, I have not looked back and one of the main reasons was the flexibility running my own business allowed. Sadly, when I was employed and had my daughter, I found that the lack of flexibility meant I was getting home so late and barely getting to see her. So, I took the plunge into running my children’s franchise business back in 2018.
I searched high and low for a role which would allow me to stay at my level of experience (over 10 years’ experience at the time) in marketing as well as work part time or flexibility, but sadly could not find anything suitable. Part time at a higher level just did not exist.
Once I took the plunge to run my business, it was fantastic to be able to balance spending the important years with my daughter as well as use my experience to grow my own business. Knowing I could run a successful business whilst still balancing my family completely justified my leap into self employment.
Then when COVID-19 struck, I was so grateful to have the flexibility to keep going (even if what I offered in my business had to adapt) and manage the children around work. My husband’s work really supported him to work from home and it has been amazing to see how a huge business pulled together to keep going without much difficulty, all working at home.
I love the fact that when the working day finishes, he does not have a long commute home, can help put the children to bed and we get to spend an evening together.
Now my daughter is at school, I love the fact that that we can both do the school run and even take a day off myself If I need to run errands or want to see friends and family.
I think that workplaces do still have a long way to go to support employees with flexible working, but I think that COVID-19 has shown that we CAN manage work from home, without the long commutes which drain our energy and time.
What do you think? Does your workplace support you with flexible working or do you think you could do more in your business?
Learn more about National Work Life Week by visiting their website or follow #worklifeweek for more details.
