A WorkLife Lesson: Alice’s Story: Needing a Plan B:
Alice always knew that as soon as she started a family, she wanted to spend quality time with her children in their early years, before they came of school age. She also knew she didn’t want to stop working. She and her husband, Colin, had bought a bigger home ahead of their son’s arrival. They needed both of their incomes to cover their mortgage and living expenses. And besides, Alice enjoyed her work as a computer programmer, and it was a job she could easily do from home, fitting her work hours around taking care of her baby.
Or so she thought.
And in theory, it should have been, but in reality, it wasn’t about to be. Alice felt that once she got her work done, she could manage the hours that worked best for her around the demands of the role. This was because she knew she could complete her work within the specified timeframes, which didn’t require set hours.
But her manager thought differently. While he was OK with her working from home following her maternity leave, he wanted to set her hours. His reasoning was that she needed to be on hand to respond to calls and emails as they came in - which was normally between 9 am - 5 pm. Alice’s reasoning was once she responded in a timely manner, and at some point within these hours, as she had always done, this shouldn’t be an issue. This was because she believed adhering to specified deadlines would ensure projects were on track at every stage, therefore eliminating the need for urgent responses. While in disagreement over setting the hours needed to deliver on the role, Alice and her manager agreed to discuss this further ahead of her coming back to work in an attempt to resolve the matter.
Alice had never realised it before, but she came to learn that while her company said they supported new mums in their WorkLife, the truth was they had little understanding of what that needed to be. She wasn’t happy about this. It was clear to her that her Plan A in being a working mum wasn’t going to work. At this stage, she was just about to start her maternity leave, which meant she had six months to come up with a Plan B.
In this lesson, you will learn how Alice came to figure out her Plan B that enabled her to spend quality time with her son, while continuing to do work she enjoyed.-
You will learn how as a collective the mums (and later dads too) came together to create continuous learning programmes for everyone who wanted to maintain a learning lifestyle, when they no longer had access to relevant resources.
In this lesson’s WorkLife Learning Assignment, you will learn how to tap into a collective of creative thinkers to support your WorkLife wants and needs
In this lesson’s Continuous WorkLife Learning Assignment, you will develop your own Plan B to give you the confidence you need to adapt your WorkLife if and when you need to.