Feeling like it's impossible to work as much as my company needs me to

[careerwam]

I've got two children, 1 and 3. I work full time and I'm pretty ambitious but I just can't seem to put extra hours in.

I'm a single parent.

We had a team call with one of our VPs this morning who told us that everyone needs to dig deep if they want to really excel. This means doing extra trainings and work after hours.

I just can't do anything after hours. When I finish work, I get my kids and give them dinner and get them ready for bed. They don't sleep until 8 unfortunately. I then usually fall asleep with them or shortly after, as they are both bad sleepers and keep me up at night.

Then it's up again the next morning and getting them ready for nursery and that's all the time I have at the moment. I don't know how I can give any more, but I know I need to if I want to get to where I want to be.

I know other mums can do it, but I'm just so tired.

Any advice ?

I can't help but feel it was slightly directed at me. I'm the only member of the team that has children ( the managers have children, but no one on my level ).

He said ' of course we all have responsibilities but we need to make that extra time to get better at what we are doing ( training ). So rather than binging on Netflix, we can binge some training videos '.

I make over 100k. Which is more or less normal in my industry at my level. I've always worked a little on holiday if required, a couple of emails at night time if required. But not training stuff in the evening. I'm too tired for that and never did that even before children. I would maybe prep for a presentation in the evening or at the weekend occasionally, but not every day. It sounds like he wants us to do vast amounts of training on a regular basis and I just can't. I can do what I used to do before ( as explained above ) but it wasn't constant. I was also able to have a more chilled day occasionally.

I am on £50k and never go over my 35 hours unless there’s agreement I will get TOIL. Same for everyone in my organisation (third sector)

I wouldn’t work unpaid overtime unless I was on at least £100k

As a mum of teenagers now I look back and don't know how I worked in a stressful job when up all night with babies. I took a step back with DC 2 and 3 but it has done my career no long term damage and as @Mademoiselle14 says there are a LOT of working years to do that when your kids are a bit bigger.

In the scheme of a 30-40 ish year career taking your foot of the gas for a bit while kids are young won't necessarily limit you long term.

It must be hard when you are a single parent @careerwam I take my hat off to anyone parenting small kids and working hard with no support.

My SIL was a bit like this but then she’s a workaholic too. Just had her second baby but was expected to work some evenings and some weekends and she worked up until a week before her due date but then said she’d worked her butt off for them.

SIL now taking a year off and I think she’ll look for a new job as she won’t be able to cope with her baby and a 6 year old and the extra work they expect from her.

Is there anything you can outsource Op? Would a nanny make life easier for you and the children? Housekeeper ?

@careerwam what you are describing - doing training in the evening is not reasonable whatever salary I don't think. My current employer loves the idea that we all slave away day and night and I agree at your level the odd email / prep at night is normal but hours and hours of training?? No way.

How flexible is your employer when it comes to WFH and being flexible to pick up the kids early if you have to or doctors appointments or if they are sick? My employer is very flexible when it comes to those so I do feel like I should work more hours on occasion to make up for that.

This sounds like a culture issue @careerwam

Are there other organisations you could move to for better conditions?

Here's the thing; a load of men who have no childcare responsibilities and who are senior to you, will almost never be able to have empathy for the balance you need.

Trust me. I thought working 60 hour weeks was part of my job, juggled my family around my work, until I had a really awful crisis.

I asked for two days off to deal with it, and they fired me for asking. To them it just demonstrated my lack of commitment, and they felt they need someone with singular focus (for less than 50k but whatever 😁).

If it's not the culture you need, you're in the wrong place.

Completely flexible. I work from home pretty much exclusively and more or less have complete control of my diary.

I think if you're on over £100k there is an unwritten expectation, rightly or wrongly, that you put in extra hours.

This is why I just left a role that I loved. Look for something else I think

If you earn over £100k, could you get some help around the house?

I have a cleaner

If you earn over £100k then you don't "need" to progress further right now as you're already doing such an amazing job of proving financially for your family.

If you feel the expectation is you should be doing more right now to maintain your current level, then yes you need to take a cold hard look at what you can outsource and also what are the least work highest profile things you can do.

It's normal to expect some extra hours on £100k plus roles, so you need to figure how best to do that - or be seen to be doing that - with the least impact on things that matter the most - spending time with your DCs and getting enough sleep to function.

On £100k with flexibility and WFH I'd expect to put extra in.

@careerwam What industry/field is this?

You could always take a £30k job with fixed hours...

@careerwam

Ooof tough one then. At your salary level and given the flexibility the role affords it makes it hard to not feel guilty that you are doing "more" - I'm the same. I don't want to lose (it would be a disaster if i did!) the flexibility my role and position affords so have accepted a certain amount of out of hours working up until now

But I am at breaking point now

How much are they actually expecting of you in addition to your normal hours?

I'm not sure how that's helpful when clearly the OP can't take a £70k pay cut and continue to support her family as a single mum

Cultures can be very different in different companies.

If you changed companies would you be able to do the same role for more or less money? If you picked the right company maybe there would not be as much workload expected.

Worth talking to people who work elsewhere?

I think at your level and your wage ‘digging deep’ and periods of extra work are entirely expected.

I was a single parent. Earning around that when my kids were younger. It wasn’t easy.

However, I also recognised other roles wouldn’t be as flexible in other ways. Flexibility goes both ways.

It meant occasions of late nights, early mornings and so on. But then there would be periods where it was much easier.

the kids are older now and it’s entirely been worth it.

I agree with this.
I also believe that there is nothing wrong with not pushing your grade at working for a period if you have domestic commitments. For me, it was when the children were primary school age and DH worked away. For someone I managed, it was when his family were dealing with some significant health issues one of their children had; for another colleague it was when their family was dealing with a complicated court case.

Fortunately I work for a large, public organisation that recognises that employees can not (and should not) always prioritise work. We are also expected to do training in work time! If you company culture does not support this, then maybe it's time to consider feeling around for a new job.

So wfh is totally normal in what I do and so is autonomy over your own calendar to a large degree. I wfh because there is no office locally I can go to. I'm expected to travel internationally for my role around twice a quarter and visits customers locally frequently.

How I do that is up to me.

So whilst I totally get that occasionally I need to do extra, please don't think that this particular company has given me extra perks like wfh and flexibility- that's completely normal in my industry and role.