After almost 10 years of a career in Communications I gave birth to my first son – and realised that however much I enjoyed working, I loved my baby (and loved being a mum) too much to return to 13 hour days, 5 days a week. I also realised that I would struggle to combine a full time job with being a relaxed and dedicated mum. While I wanted and needed to work, I also wanted flexibility.
As the company I worked for was, at that time at least, family “unfriendly”, I left when it became clear that even a four day week wasn’t an option. I took a year’s “maternity break” and then spent a year freelancing until the birth of my second son.
Freelancing was an eye opener – both in terms of the flexibility it provided, but also in terms of recognising just how many genuinely good flexible working opportunities existed. However, what I quickly realised was that finding these opportunities was both convoluted and time-consuming. I signed up with agencies, registered with online jobsites, scoured appointments pages and trade press. It really wasn’t a simple process.
At home, my husband was regularly talking about how difficult it was to find well qualified people to work on short term and part-time projects – from desk research to PR and marketing - without paying high agency fees that put a huge dent in the company’s budgets.
And, at the same time I was having the kind of conversations with my “Mummy friends” that mothers across the land have: the will we / won’t we go back to work conversations, weighing up the financially viability of returning to work and assessing whether living on one income was possible (or desirable); the childcare conversations; conversations bemoaning the waste of talent (our talent!) and the fact so many highly qualified and experienced women are forced out of jobs by inflexible employers and the difficulty of finding flexible jobs that were challenging and interesting.
All this was the catalyst for WorkingMums.co.uk.
A few months after my second son was born I started researching and planning in earnest. In nap times, child free moments and evenings, I carried out surveys amongst mums and employers, analysed risks and competition, identified strengths and weaknesses, and put together a detailed business plan. Through Leigh, I found a great web solutions company - Wide Area Communications – who agreed to build, host and maintain the website. Their work and input has been invaluable. In April 2006 www.WorkingMums.co.uk went live - providing an online service helping mums get access to forward thinking employers and flexible job opportunities, and enjoy the benefits of combining work and family life, providing employers who need skilled professionals on a part-time or temporary basis with a pool of talent to meet their needs, and at the same time answering my own need to work from home.
Of course it hasn’t been quite as simple as that - the last year has been a rollercoaster: Starting a business from scratch, finding my way around laws, tax, and accounting, having to do “everything” myself (well not quite everything of course – as I’ve come to realise its very important to build a support network of “expert” friends. I’ve begged, borrowed and been donated a ton of time and experience and hands-on help from friends to whom I will be eternally grateful). Its taken a while to get to grips with working on my own at home, there have been delays, and then the euphoria of “going live”, the panic if something’s gone wrong (fortunately very rarely), and sometimes I’m so far out of my comfort zone I find myself questioning why I ever started. And that’s the work part – we’ve had everyday life to be getting on with in the meantime - chickenpox (simultaneously) in the weeks running up to launch, childcare issues, the “do we or don’t we” au pair dilemma (we did), starting a new school, cars breaking down, drains getting blocked, the small matter of not actually making any money….
But, WorkingMums has launched and it’s working. In fact it’s working really well. The calibre of mums registering and posting career profiles is phenomenal, and the number of employers coming to the site and tapping into this wonderful pool of talent is growing daily (almost 300 employers at last count). As I write this, we’re about to relaunch and I’m feeling very excited, if a little apprehensive. We’ve had a few months to properly "test the water”; to understand better what mums and employers want and what we can do to improve the website. We’ve had time to consider all the feedback we’ve received and the end result is going to be an even better website, and, importantly for me (and the rest of the team), we’re finally in a position to start making some money!
This isn’t the end of the journey, it’s the beginning and it’s a journey I’m glad I’m on.
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A big thankyou for this site. Its so nice to find a site where people are in the same position as you. I was made redundant august 2006 and now struggling to find a job that fits in with my 9yr old daughter. Being a single parent is hard, my daughter visits her dad most weekends so i try to juggle fitting a job in with also spending time with her, and looking for a job that will give us a decent level of living and overcoming obsticles in life is difficult. At least when im feeling low i can visit workingmums.co.uk so a big thankyou to you
Lisa Gibbins | Report this comment