Start Up - How do we break the inflexible cycle of traditional working arrangements?

[Dnorris9]

Hi there,

We are in the development stages of a start up designed to inspire brides and grooms to make their perfect weddings.

Having seen many wonderfully talented Mums and Dads leave the corporate world to be stay at home parents, I've always thought how hard it is to integrate back into the restrictive environment of traditional work.

We want to cause a revolution in how we work, putting the focus on the employee first, not the company - We believe that if the employee is invested in what the company stands for, and feels safe in their role, they will be far more productive than in a standard 9-5.

We are playing with the following ideas:

1. take a project based approach to work employing mums/dads on an hours based contract of their choosing - e.g. Sign up for 10 hours of marketing per week @ "x" rate per hour
2. Create an on site crèche and employ a carer so parents can bring their child to work
3. Create a "mums army" network of bloggers and vloggers, giving them all the tools needed to build content and tutorial videos - pay per article or payment per number of views at different threshold levels

What do you think would benefit your situation? Do you feel there is a need to target this wonderfully skilled but underutilised workforce?

Any thoughts would be very much appreciated!

Anything that works around school hours/ holidays would be a godsend.

A workplace childcare setting us likely to be classified as a nursery, not a crèche, and will need several employees to ensure to legally required adult/child ratios. Have you actually costed this?

Also, it's often easier to arrange care for pre-schoolers (and it's usually a much smaller bite out of a career than the school years). What were you thinking of offering for before/after school care plus during school holidays?