James' Story

Summary

James was working in business development when he became a parent...

He was working 9-5 every day, sometimes having to travel until 2am in the morning. When they offered James more money rather than understanding the flexibility he needed to care for his three young children, he left.

The passing of his hard-working mum made him realise that he wasn’t going to get that time back. But his new employer understood that and took a family-first approach, focusing on output, not time spent visibly sitting at a desk.

The changes he would like to see in UK work-life culture are below:

• Work culture should be one of maturity and trust. With the burgeoning UK mental health crisis, people need to be able to switch off and have a break.
• We need to create a culture that enables everyone to rise. Otherwise, we will continue to see women’s careers stagnate in their late 20s and early 30s.
• If you’re in a position of power. Call out inequality when you see it. Because “it’s not the minority that needs to make the loud noises; it’s us on the other side”.

Scroll down to read James' full story  - in his own words.

James' Story

I took two weeks paternity leave when I became a parent.

My role involved a lot of travel to Europe, America and the UK. The expectation was that if I wasn’t travelling, I was in the office 9am-5pm. There was no flexibility. If I flew home from Chicago and landed at 2am, at best, I could arrive in the office at 10am the next day. There was no option to work from home. I was giving up significant periods of non-working time, yet there was nothing in reciprocation other than financial.

We had our second daughter 18 months later. My wife is Polish. We had no family support network close. My wife was on her own a lot which was becoming more and more problematic.

I talked to the managing director about my work-life balance, and he told me how, when his daughter was young, he’d bring her presents home from his work trips. Or he would make sure he put a few weekends in the year to spend quality time with her. This was his view of the world.

It wasn’t something I was prepared to do.

I wasn’t going to get this time back. It doesn’t matter what someone pays you.

I left the company because there was a mismatch between what I wanted to achieve in terms of work-life balance and how much travel they needed me to do. There was no room for meeting in the middle. It was frustrating.

When I handed my notice in, their response was to look at reducing my travel a little, but I knew that it would creep back up. They also offered me more money to stay. Money is the bluntest tool; it’s not always about money.

My mum had just passed away. My parents worked hard all their lives, and they were just getting to retirement. My mum never managed to enjoy the benefits of that. It made me question the point of accruing lots of money if I might never get to spend it. I wasn’t going to get these hours back with my children.

My wife and I work in partnership together.

If my family wasn’t happy, I needed to find a different job. I knew that, despite the offer of financial compensation, unless something fundamentally changed, then this wasn’t the job for us. I left to join a  public sector organisation.

There was still lots of travel but it was UK-based. I managed my diary. They were an incredible employer in terms of work-life balance; their mantra was ‘family comes first’. There was a maturity with how they managed staff. There was no expectation to work seven hours straight. It was about output, not time spent at a desk in an office. We were treated as adults, no one was checking where we were. It wasn’t about visibility.

I managed my diary to ensure nights away from home were kept to a minimum.

I found every manager I worked with was sympathetic and understood the challenges. Even before Covid, we used Zoom and Teams where appropriate to prevent long trips.

It meant I could be around to do the school run.

My wife’s workplace was the opposite and focused on hours spent at the desk and visibility. Having experienced it and seen how different it could be, I found it difficult to see her go through this.

It was particularly challenging during the pandemic lockdowns.

My wife’s line manager told her off when one of our three kids popped up in the middle of a Teams call. It was just an internal catch-up call. Virtually every meeting I was in during the lockdown, someone’s child popped up. It helped me build relationships with people I hadn’t met because I had access to their life, which you don’t have when everyone is in a suit and tie.

Over the past few years, I’ve developed a particular view about running businesses and how to treat your staff and the hierarchy. My wife’s company was almost diametrically opposed to what I think good business looks like, despite promoting a culture of flexible working.

The dynamic within our family shifted because of the employer.

For the past two years, particularly during the lockdowns, I almost always took the kids to school and picked them up when they weren’t homeschooling. I did all the cooking and anything else to do with the kids because my wife had to be at her desk from 8am to 5pm (as well as the evening).

My output was still what it needed to be. I managed to do all my work but with a very different approach from the business perspective.

With my new employer, I could pick up the phone with the CEO or the senior team. They would always give me the same answer: family first. If I had told them I was struggling with something because I was away from my family, they would have done everything to change it. They understood the value of the person, not the job.

I knew they would listen, try to make things better for me and not expect me to put up with it.

We’ve been incredibly fortunate with the job I’ve had for the past six years, managing my workload and diary. I had the advantages of being a freelancer but with a known, secure income and the benefits of being an employee. It really helped with three young children.

I now work at a new organisation, and it has the same culture.

There is a burgeoning mental health crisis in the United Kingdom.

People need to be able to switch off and have a break. I get that mental break throughout the day, in bits and pieces, because I don’t have the stress of someone asking, ‘Where are you?’ ‘What does your output look like?' There’s maturity and trust. If I’m not delivering, we’ll have that conversation about why - not about what I did for the last hour. Or what I did yesterday. Instead, we talk about how to move things forward.

Some evenings I work until 11pm because that’s what I feel needs to happen, not because someone has told me to do it. But I also know that if I work until 11pm, I can have a quieter morning the next day. If I spend a day on calls, I put in breaks because back-to-back Zoom calls are tiring. It’s the most sensible way to get productivity from someone.

My wife and I work as a unit. It isn’t, ‘I earn this, she earns that’, we’ve got a family income. She’s now left her previous company as a result of their lack of flexibility, and has joined a new company working a three-day week because that works for her and us. It’s about looking at our family and work lives as a team.

There’s a cultural shift.

It makes some people uncomfortable. For some people, business looks like: men in a shirt and tie, women in a dress, in the office from 9-5. I feel a shift away from that. But not everyone does.

People like me need to create a culture that enables everyone to rise.

Otherwise, we will continue to see women’s careers stagnate in their late 20s and early 30s. It becomes a patriarchal business society. Then, we question why there are no women in positions of power. It’s because they’ve lost ten years of their career. That’s where the gender pay gap and inequality comes from.

I do quite a lot on diversity, equality and inclusion. I’m a straight, white, middle-aged man – I’m the target market for making change happen. All I can do is call things out from this position of power. I refuse to sit on all-male panels; I call it out when I see it.

It doesn’t need women to be in positions of power for a paradigm shift toward flexibility.

It’s not the minority that needs to make the loud noises; it’s us on the other side. That’s what it takes to make a change.