Flexi-workers under fir in The Times

[LaDiDaDi]

I wondered what mumsnetters views are on this article.

I found it very one sided and very annoyed by Minnette Marvin who is lucky enough to be able to work freelance and therefore by her owqn admission flexibly. She makes no mention of the benefits of flexible working to employers, such as employee loyalty and increased staff retention, nor does she suggest any alternatives other than working full-time and becoming a man!

I think you're right FairyMum. I shows excellend levels of skill and organisation to manage a family and working outside the home.

I worked flex time for years as a lawyer for a government office. It meant I had to give up my court duties as they said it would never work (without trying). so I did and took a "desk job". The key to flex time is that it means both sides be flexible. I never had any complaints, if I was required for meetings outside my office hours, I didn't work from home but stayed at work. Managers were flexible in trying not to schedule things too often when they knew I worked from home. I returned all calls promptly and came into the office if something came up. I was " easily " replaced on my maternity leaves. I don't buy this theory that no one is replaceable, that's just egoism, Face it we all are and many young capable workers would love the experience to take on someones job for a time. It opens up opportunities for lateral moves within an office as well. Of course there were always those who felt I was getting a special deal but they are the same people who think women get a special deal with maternity leave, woman are too emotional , or shouldn't really be working as they take mens jobs. I don't worry about the dinosaurs and naysayers. Flextime can work. Some people just hate people with kids period. I don't get the resentment and it is aimed at men too, they resent days off for sick kids, or school events or school breaks. I always say to them, who is going to paying to support and staff the hospitals and nursing homes and and pay the taxes for other services to care for their them in their old age... My KIDS! THat tends to shut them up.

I thought MMs article was pretty outrageous... whats the alternative for most mothers? Did she offer any constructive suggestions? Nah. Not all can be journos, or like me - write scientific software from home, very specialist niche so they wanted to keep me, most colleagues in California so they don't care much which hours I work so long as it gets done. And the flexibility goes both ways, deadlines can mean I'm working UK school hours plus late into the night.

Yes, there is a perfect job for a mother and I've got it - I know I'm the lucky exception!

I work in a team of three. One of my colleagues is a mother of two young children (6 and 4) whose husband travels on business one week in two, and the other is a 40-year-old single childless man.

The mum works like a galley slave to make sure everything is done in time for her to get home for her commitments there.

At least once a month the man turns up to work so hung-over he can't function at all. When he's at the office he does what is required of him, but it's interspersed with a lot of chatting with other men in the office about the football. He's also just accepted a job at a rival company. The mum, on the other hand, won't move despite more and more work being piled on our team (headcount cuts) because she has worked out the way to make this job fit her life and can't take the risk with a new company.

If I were management I'd think that even on flexi arrangements, the mum would be worth two or three of the man. Of course I'm not management and her superior value goes entirely unnoticed to anyone outside the team, who are all beady-eyed and alert for the day she dares to sneak off at 4pm for a school play.

I think the message coming across loud and clear is that some people are committed to their jobs and some people aren't. To slate any sector of society, whether it's men, women, parents, non-parents is pretty pointless and unfair. As a manager I look to employ the best person for the job. I they make a reasonable request for flexi-working, I would consider it through the proper processes and would agree to it as long as it didn't impact negatively on the workplace, clients (in my case students) and the other employees. It wouldn't make any difference whether they were male or female.

Some are just more comitted to their families.

See - interesting isn't it that a comment like 'some people are committed to their jobs' can't be accepted for what it is?? Someone has to counter it with 'Some are just more committed to their families!!!!
The two things are not mutually exclusive you know. My family come first. My job comes second. I commit to both of them. I don't fail to do my job properly because i happen to have a family. Neither does my partner.
Do we really want a return to the days where any mother working outside the home is treated as if she might not be committed to her family? Surely we've moved on from such a narrow minded state FGS!

NKF: "I think it tends to work best when the work is discrete and requires little in terms of handover or liaison."

Agree entirely. My (very recently resumed) career as a case writer/academic researcher is a very independent job - I can manage on my own, bar an upfront meeting or two with my employer, and of course the teaching hours, which happen intensively over a week or so and which I know about months in advance, so have plenty of flexibility to arrange childcare (and, thank goodness, there are several only children with nannies in my daughter's class at school whose parents are quite happy at the idea that my daughter be taken on for a week here or there by their nanny who will get a huge cash bonus ).

ITG - You've read an awful lot into my words there.

If your comment "some people are comitted to their jobs, some people aren't" should be taken purely at face value then why not mine?

Apologies for not getting back to this thread sooner. I think it's one of the longest that I've ever started .

I was interested to here your pov DarrellRivers as I'm a hospital doc working ft at the moment but hoping to go pt if we have a dc2. Loads of my colleagues work pt and it really doesn't seem to cause problems. Even working ft I can be flexible with my colleagues, eg some of my Muslim coleagues go to the mosque for prayers at lunchtime on Friday, I cover their duties then, assuming that patient workload makes it safe to do so, and they are happy for me to leave early.

Open discussion between colleagues of priorities and working out how to accommodate them fairly works best imho otherwise you can get needless resentment.

Part of the problem is the women accept sexist models at home. There shoudl be as many men as women asking for flexitime and then the woman in the article who doesn't hire women wouldn't have to discriminate. It's because stupid women take on 100% of childcare and leave men scot free that women's rights at work are damaged. They're stabbing the rest of us in the back by not sharing childcare properly with their other half.

She is obviously right that in some professions rather than just someone working the tills at Tesco, you just can't recruit 6 - 9 months cover of the right calibre and keep your clients happy but again if women didn't want to paly housewife at home for so long there wouldn't be that issue in those jobs. Plenty of owmen return a lot sooner and manage stuff from home because they love their career and want to maintain their contacts with their major customers/ clients.

Xenia, I do agree with your point to a certain extent. Men also need to request flexi and take responsibility.
However, flexible, PT work, rushing home to collect sick child etc often sadly means you position yourself firmly on the mummy track. I think ninedragon's post illustrates exactly what I mean. Many women make huge compromises in their career and have to wave goodbye to promotions and pay rises and many families cannot afford for this to happen to both parents. So until flexible working is more accepted I totally see why it doesn't make sense for both parents to go down this track. Personally, both me and DH work flexi, but I think we are just very lucky with our companies.

Actually my DH's job is more flexible than mine. He works partly at home, partly on the road, partly at the office (an hour's commute away). So this week he has managed to have an electrician round to do a quote, take DS to a 5pm football practice and will hopefully do his 4.30pm swimming lesson on Thursday (I am very angry about these times, had everything sorted out for more reasonable times, then at less than 24hrs notices they changed football time and day to clash with swimming lesson ). But he has also been away overnight (Monday) which has impacted on my working hours.

Yes, all parents compromise as do workers who want to spend a lot of time on their hobbies or with an elderly relative (dreadful description of life with a 98 year old mother in Times 2 today by the way - poor 50 something lady has really had her life ruined by being a carer).

If you own your career and want to be the best you can be at it you'd never choose to lose touch, not keep up to date and lose business relationships you've spent years developing. On other jobs it is easier to be flexible. Just depends on the job.

Go for it Ladadi, do the the part-time bit whilst it suits, and then when everyone is older, you will be able to increase hours again.
Although I hope you are past the training stage as the flexi-training does seem to go on for ages.
I think the days when anyone wanted to be 'married ' to their jobs, male or female seem to be over.
Xenia, I read something interesting that Dame Suzi Leather said, in that she thought that actually most glass ceilings existed at home, which I thought was pretty true.
She said her career had been much helped by not having that glass ceiling at home.

Yes, true. The glass ceilings are at home. They are also hidden away in legislation which gives rights to women men can't exercise too thus perpetuating woman at home, man at work. The proposal to give men 6 months paternity leave has just been put back by at least another year.

Was I lucky when I married or just sensible to talk about childcare issues and working before we got engaged?

The problem is a lot of women might not have that glass ceiling if they didn't have a mind set that only they can adequately put on baby's nappy or deal with a toddler. In a sense they do their own chaining to the kitchen sink when they'd be doing better praising their husband's domestic competence. He should be looking at nurseries and hiring nannies with you as plenty of men do in homes without glass ceilings. There are plenty of non sexist men out there but some women choose badly or make a non sexist man into a sexist one by rubbishing his abilities at home so the female kingdom of competence and ego boost is maintained. It's a rod for their own backs.

Xenia - "Was I lucky when I married or just sensible to talk about childcare issues and working before we got engaged?"

Neither. You just wanted a husband you would be able to dominate . But of course he got ground down and you got fed up .

I certainly am not into dominating men. Why should sharing things fairly at home amount to domination? It's that kind of sexist attitude which damages women surely, the belief that unless it's the woman with her hand down the toilet and ironing the shirts men can't be happy.

No DarrellRivers, not past the training stage yet unfortunately and that's why I'm slogging it out ft at the moment. Couldn't bear for the 4 years I had left when I went back after dd to change to 8(ouch)! grand plan is to have dc2 so that when I go back I only have a year to go, the change from 1 year to 2 doesn't seem too bad and I don't think I could cope with a small age gap anyway .

Isn't Suzi Leather a great name?

Have to say I agree with Xenia's point. Women can often be the worst offenders at limiting themselves and their opportunities. I have several acquaintances who used to routinely rubbish their husband's efforts at childcare/running a home - "Oh god, I can't leave it to DH to get the kids' tea - he'll make the wrong thing", " I may as well sort the laundry myself, DH won't fold the socks in the right way" etc. Why is wanting equality seen as wanting to dominate men??!! It isnt - it's exactly what it says. I got together with my partner because we love and respect eachother as equals. We chose to have children because we both wanted them and we both want to raise them. Is that so weird?

I just don't know why anyone would bother to talk about who was going to do what when they fall in love... you work that out afterwards, and if you love and respect one another you get there.

IMHO it's a very bad idea to choose a partner on the basis of agreements as to who does what. Choose someone you love. Life changes and evolves so fast that any agreement you made when you were in your twenties and young and green will be pretty meaningless 10 years down the line.

But you do have to make sure that you kind of have the same outlook on things, and the same beliefs. Some men may firmly believe that a woman should stay at home and not work - the woman marrying him may get quite a shock if she didn't know this before hand.

belgo - well, that seems pretty extreme to me - not to know that your partner thinks you should stay at home .

Actually, in France that is really not an issue as it is clearly enshrined in the marriage contract that both partners have a right to hold down a job.

As to beliefs etc, I also think that those change over time - in fact, I think that they must and should change over time. You can't go through adult life with the beliefs that were handed down to you by your parents/education - your adult life should surely be about finding your own beliefs about the world based your own adult rational and conscious experience of it?

So what matters is that your partner is open minded about what he is going to discover and wants to discuss and analyse it and adjust his way of living according to what you discover together.

yes it's important to be open minded and to know how to compromise.

But you'd be surprised at what people don't know about each other when they get married. I know a couple who divorced because one wanted children and the other didn't. You'd have thought something like that they'd sort out before getting married.

I remember meeting an elderly lady who told me that the reason she didn't have children is because her husband had never wanted them because he was too selfish. She sounded so bitter.