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iVillageUK // Work & Money // Features
 

Where's the support for returning mothers?

By Nisa Chitakasem

Nisa Chitakasem, co-founder of careers company Position Ignition, explains why employer organisations have such a negative attitude towards returning mothers and gives tips on how you can change your boss’ mind.

After maternity leave

Despite all the legislation in recent years pertaining to maternity leave and equal work rights, mothers aren’t treated fairly by organisations upon their re-entry to work. Consider a man and a woman both entering the same firm at the same time with the same qualifications and going through the same processes to reach the same level in the company. The woman then takes a break to have a baby while the man stays on.

Eighteen months later, when you come back, he’s been promoted but you have to slot back in below.  Your employer doesn’t believe that your experiences as a mother add the same value to the organisation as the experiences of someone who’s just stayed in the company doing the same thing for the past 18 months. The employer may even believe that not only have you not developed, you’ve actually taken a step backwards and lost some of your work capability during your time out.

Employer organisations also tend to believe that women with newborn babies at home will be unreliable in terms of time management. Therefore you’re unlikely to be awarded any major responsibilities or any of the most significant duties upon your return to the office. Add to this the fact that once you have a child, employers think you’ll ‘disrupt’ your career again to have more, and it starts to become clear why organisations are not only unsupportive of returning mothers, but sometimes actively force them back down the career ladder. It’s clear, but it’s not acceptable.

Why you deserve and need support

In reality, your experiences as a new mother have more value than your employer realises. Even with the short amount of time you’ll have spent with your baby in the second part of your maternity leave, you’ll already have acquired an extra appreciation of accountability and responsibility.

Not convinced? Think about what you’ve been doing with your child, and the significance of your new role as a mum. Then think about what’s important to your organisation nowadays. If you go into a typical 21st century office, you might see a Health & Safety Certificate taking pride of place on the wall-H&S is now a big deal and there are all sorts of regulatory frameworks connected with it. Doing H&S well requires a culture change and commitment from both the organisation’s leaders and the employees.  Procedures need to be followed otherwise people will get hurt or worse.

Who better to understand the importance of Health & Safety than a mum? When a woman has a baby, she has complete responsibility for the warmth, feeding and health of that baby-its life and death.  Just at that level, the level of accountability mums have when it comes to Health & Safety is misunderstood.

Or consider the area of feedback and performance appraisal. Individuals struggle with knowing how they’re doing and growing. They need reassurance, including in the workplace. Mums are giving reassurance constantly during the first few years of their child’s life. Just as it helps you embed good behaviour in your child as a mum, it can also help you up the performance of your colleagues and subordinates at work.

So you deserve the support and respect of your employer, but why do you need it? As beneficial as motherhood can be to your portfolio of transferable career skills, it’s also hard work. Employers are right, in a way, that being a new mother tests your time management skills to the limit. There’ll be times when your baby is under the weather, or you haven’t slept all night and you will be late into work. This doesn’t have to be the end of the world, however, despite what your boss may believe.

If your organisation was creative with its human resources solutions, it would allow you to be more flexible with your hours. Say you’re an hour late to work one day, why not arrange to work an hour later on a day where your team would need someone to stay late anyway? Whether it’s to field international calls or finish off a project on its deadline day, the effort you’d be contributing in that extra hour could save your employer from having to pay someone else overtime to do the same tasks.

Helping yourself

What can you do to help yourself, and make your employer realise that it is possible to support you to their benefit? Communication is the key here. If you have some ideas regarding your role upon your return to work, share them with your boss. Arrange to have a meeting with them and discuss options that would benefit both you as a new mother and the organisation.

If you’ve come back to work to find your responsibilities have been scaled down dramatically, don’t just accept it. Wherever you see an opportunity, offer to help out with something, or contribute new ideas, in order to demonstrate that you’re not only still of worth to your team, but your value has actually increased with motherhood.

Organisations may not give mothers the support they need upon returning to work, but if you and your employer can work out a way to work together, you’ll be supporting one another to the ultimate benefit of both yourself and your organisation.

Nisa Chitakasem is the co-founder of Position Ignition - a career advice and career consulting company. For more information, visit www.positionignition.com

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