When a driven, ambitious lawyer announces that she is having a baby, her employer has some key decisions to make to ensure a smooth departure and return. In this case, one employer’s loss was another’s gain…  

Although happy to share her story, this lawyer wanted to remain anonymous so we’ll call her Julia. When Julia announced she was pregnant at her law firm, all was well. She was treated fairly, adjustments were made, and it was easy for her to attend all the necessary antenatal appointments during her working hours without any resentment or sideways glances.

The problems came during the handling of her workload. After years with the firm building up a client base on full time hours, Julia was surprised to learn that her employer intended for her line manager to take on all the extra work alone while she was away. This caused a great deal of stress for everyone involved and made the time leading up to her maternity leave very tense.

Shortly after...

What happens when new mothers are not supported fully  upon returning from maternity leave?

It’s not just the mother who suffers - the business squashes the career ambitions of a dedicated employee within the company and risks losing a skilled worker. This case study demonstrates a very common trend amongst employers and new working mothers.

Jennifer’s first month back at work following maternity leave was of course challenging as she was learning how to balance work and family commitments. In some ways, her employer helped and in others, she was very much let down. In her view, the poor treatment she received from her employer were bumps in the road and just what she had come to expect as a new mother. So she shrugged her shoulders and accepted it.

The negative actions of her employer caused her to be demoted, earn less money, and stop breastfeeding earlier than she wanted to. Just think about the implications of all of that for a moment...

Yet, Jennifer remains,...

How can you achieve your career goals and ambitions, whilst working reduced hours? This question is not only relevant to working parents but to anyone who wishes to pursue their professional aspirations and personal goals.

In part one of this three part series, we touched upon some of the things that may be holding you back from pursuing your career once you go part time and attempted to address these by highlighting key factors that commonly appear in success stories of the many clients we have worked with in the past.

However one of the biggest reasons that many individuals shy away from requesting part time or reduced hours is the lack of role models and real life examples that prove that it is possible to advance in your career.

In this article, we will focus on two specific individuals and tell their stories so that you can view their journeys from going part time to achieving great things.

Laura, Hilti

Laura started her career at Hilti ‘on the ground’ in a...

Paid parental leave is essential for children, important for families, and good for business. Parental support from the organisations they work for is something that prospective parents want, because they know intuitively that spending more time with each other and with their newborn is going to be the best thing for their family. For all concerned, flexible paid extended and shared parental leave is a no-brainer. Here’s why...

Benefits For The Company

From a business perspective, it’s logical that improving the happiness and mental health of your staff increases productivity and helps you to retain your best talent. In many organisations, family leave worth the investmnt as they see an increase in engagement, productivity and talent retention. hen Google extended its paid maternity leave from 12 to 18 weeks, it saw a 50% increase in employee retention among women who had babies.

In contrast, insensitivity and lack of “civil organisational behaviour” -...

June is a month which holds much focus for fathers. Several countries celebrate Father’s Day and it is also the month for International Men’s Health Week (June 11-17), celebrated annually to promote and honour the importance of the health and wellness of boys and men.

It seems an ideal month therefore, to take a step back to look at the evolving role of fathers and highlight again what is required to close the gap, to meet their needs in the workplace. So, what has driven the evolution of the role of a father?

There are many views. Some say that millennial men & generations following are different because they grew up with different expectations and role models, often where both parents worked. Others put it down to the reforms to support for working mothers which have accelerated from the 1970s onwards, as a result of many campaigns lobbying for change in the workplace. Others say fathers who now have daughters in the workplace witness their world and it’s...

If you are one of those lucky people who never needed shopping lists or deadline alerts before you had a baby, lucky you! The chances are that post-baby, however, things are very different.

I think the majority of adults struggle with juggling personal and work related tasks after becoming a parent - the mental and logistical load is much heavier than ever before and with the likelihood of sleep deprivation you’re memory doesn’t seem quite as sharp as it used to. You think to yourself "I'll easily remember that" and then your tiny little person flashes you a beautiful smile and you forget everything else.  

With that in mind, you can relax somewhat in the knowledge that there is an abundance of handy, practical tools to help you out. Some of these tools you can use for both personal and work tasks, allowing you to more easily manage those two parts of your life together at once. I am strong proponent for work-life integration because in order to thrive in both...

Whatever your reason for being a single parent, raising children alone comes with its challenges as well as its rewards. Add to that the responsibility of being a working parent, and things can get even more difficult.

Between work, meals, emails, bath time and bed, it’s easy to lose yourself as you move from one thing to the next. But it really is possible to meet your many responsibilities and achieve a life of enjoyment and fulfilment for you and your children as a single working parent.

Firstly, you’ll need to let go of any guilt you may be harbouring. As parents, we all worry about the start in life we are giving our children. There’s plenty of proof that single working parents can raise raise happy, well-balanced and confident children. When it comes to parents, it’s about quality over quantity!

Keep these tips in minds to  help you stay focused on your happiness, health, and the special life you and your child share...

ASK FOR HELP

Don't be afraid...

Last year, I was delivering one of our most popular workshops for one of our Swiss corporate clients, and I took the time to review the workshop evaluation feedback on my train journey home.  One attendee shared that she would have liked to have spent time looking at: How to advance your career whilst working part time. It’s a topic we often cover in our workshops but it didn't come up for this particular group of women - at least until they filled out the feedback forms at the end.

For some reason, her question has stayed with me since and I felt inspired to write a blog post about it.

As I started to apply our own experience as well as the wide amount of research that exists on  on this topic, I quickly realised that you can’t answer it from an employee only perspective - ie. How do I advance?

I also felt the need to answer it from an employer and governance perspective. To not only help the individual understand the broader aspects at play but also help...

In our work at Thriving Parents, we see how common it is for a working parent to lose some of their confidence having returned to work after parental leave.

So the first thing to know is that if you feel like you have lost some of that confidence and assurance, it is normal!

The dictionary defines self-confidence as “a feeling of trust in one's abilities, qualities, and judgement.”

Words associated with self-confidence are self-assurance, belief in oneself, positiveness, assertiveness, assurance, self-reliance, self-possession, composure, nerve, poise, presence, aplomb.

In short, it is also a feeling of being comfortable in your own skin.

How confident do you feel today?

On a scale of 0-10, with 10 being extremely confident and 0 being no confidence at all, how would you rate yourself? Consider how often you speak out in meetings, take the initiative and lead on a new idea, challenge others’ ideas, offer new perspectives, trust yourself to make mistakes and...

Juggling work and family life is often exhausting and for many working parents, it is hard to find the extra time or energy to do much else. However, it is widely recognised that a regular sporting activity boosts your resilience and reduces stress.

As a busy mum of 2, striving to reach my professional aspirations and keep my family happy, I used to think that sport would be a selfish indulgence and one that would eat into the time that I had away for work and family.  

However after biting the bullet and signing up to my local gym, I soon realised that an hour’s fitness training twice a week boosted my performance at work and made me more effective at home. It also helped to reduce the tensions and worries that I was dealing with on a daily basis. My tiredness diminished as I started to sleep better and, of course, my self -confidence started to rise.

Researchers at « Harvard Business Review» surveyed a population of working adults to gather input regarding...