How The World Opened Up To Me As A Working Mother

I am honoured to share this story with you today from working mother Gemma Bateson. She has been incredibly honest and brave and I know her story will help so many others navigating the transition to parenthood. 

One of the biggest takeaways for me is the advice to stop pretending. It doesn’t do you or anyone else any favours to pretend that you’re managing and being the perfect parent AND employee. Be honest, get the help and support you need, and you will perform better and be happier at work and at home! 

If you would like to share your feedback with Gemma, please email me at [email protected] and I will pass it on. You can also leave a comment on any of our social media channels. 

Here’s Gemma’s story… 

What was your biggest fear about work when you found out you were expecting and how did you overcome it?

My biggest fear was losing hard won ground in terms of my career progression. I was worried that someone might do...

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3 Ways New Dads Can Make Life Less Stressful

By Ian Dinwiddy, Thriving Parents Coach and Founder of Inspiring Dads.

You might be wondering how you’re going to survive the emotional upheaval of becoming a new dad.

I know exactly how you feel. 

In fact, I felt the same way when my daughter Freya was born in 2010.

It can be a really brutal learning curve, especially first-time round. In fact, I think it’s worse than most people believe it’ll be. In hindsight we Dads are painfully ill equipped to deal with the emotional and practical complexity of fatherhood.

Of course it doesn’t help that almost as soon as we’ve got used to creating a family, we’re plunged back into work as if nothing has happened in our lives.    

My name is Ian Dinwiddy, I‘m a Thriving Parents coach, I specialise in supporting dads, and I know what it is like be a stressed new dad. 

I wasn’t always a coach – when my daughter was born, I was a management...

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Return To Work: Finding Flexibility As An Emergency Nurse

This return to work case study is a great example of how crucial flexibility is for retaining new mothers in the workplace. Here we share the story of Louise, an advanced nurse practitioner in a hospital emergency department and mother to a baby boy.

When Louise became pregnant she knew that after having her baby, she would eventually want to return to work in the career she had worked hard over many years to build as an advanced nurse practitioner in a hospital emergency department.

Her story is neither an outright success nor failure on the part of her employer, but there are many parts to it that we can learn from. Ultimately, it shows how vital flexible working is for retaining new mothers in the workplace. Rather than share the interview in full, we have highlighted some of the key themes and outlined key learnings from the perspective of both the new mother and the employer:

The Paperwork

“When I told my employers I was pregnant, they were very helpful and seemed...

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Case Study: Lawyer Headhunted On Maternity Leave

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...

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First Month Back Disaster: Returning From Maternity Leave

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,...

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Returning From Maternity Leave: “It feels like I haven’t been away”

Anna is a Teaching Assistant at a Learning Centre in the UK who recently returned from maternity leave and agreed to share her experiences with us.

Upon returning to work, Anna’s employer was flexible to her request for fewer hours and later start times to accommodate nursery drop-offs. But more than that, she was reassured that she would not be penalised for occasionally running late due to her parental responsibilities and told not to worry about it.

It’s brilliant to hear that Anna’s work culture is sensitive to the needs of working parents and has allowed and supported her to continue on her career path as before. Within a few months of returning to work she completed a training course, and she says that it feels like she was never away.

The main challenge for Anna has been the cost of childcare and the realities of separation for extended periods, but over time she has become more comfortable in the knowledge that her son is safe and happy at nursery.

Her...

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It’s A No Brainer: The Power Of Flexible Parental Leave

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” -...

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How to advance your career whilst working part time

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...

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How To Build Your Confidence At Work After Parental Leave

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...

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What To Pay Attention To When You Return To Work After Your Maternity Break

This is such a personal journey that there is no script to follow. There is no right or wrong way of balancing parenthood and professional life. Each person has their unique way of balancing the two, based on their own value system, needs, motivations and aspirations. The only criteria here is that you find your way, you understand your own value system, needs, motivations and aspirations; so that you design the best balance for yourself; so that you can thrive at home and at work!

Here are some tips to help you best navigate these new waters, where you become the queen of juggling and sharing yourself with many! Depending on how soon you return to work, also be aware that typically it takes 9 months for your body to return to normal, hormonally and physiologically.

As the Professional woman:

  • More than likely, your role was performed by one or many people in your absence. You wouldn’t be alone if you felt awkward taking back the controls. Start with speaking to those who...
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