What job can I do with 3 young kids?

[posterroaster]

I'm currently on mat leave and before I left work I had a great set up...

• work from home
• 4 long days a week (full time, compressed hours)
• on £38k

But I've heard through work friends we are going to be expected to go into the office 3 days a week. My issue with this is:

• pick up a drop offs won't work with my compressed hours
• the commute cost is £35 a day (£105 a week/around £500 per month)
• the commute time is an hour each way

It feels like a costly and bad use of my time - I'm going to be completely frazzled and not have any work life balance.

With this in mind I think I need to find something new that fits in with having 3 young children.

But what? I did a humanities degree sometime ago now, and don't have any other qualifications. I don't particularly hate my line of work but don't love it either. Ideally wouldn't want to drop in salary.

Any suggestions? I still have 9 months of mat leave to go, so a bit of time to come up with a plan.

You want a fully flexi role. Look at government agencies like the DEFRA group (DEFRA, Environment Agency, Natural England etc) lots of roles, general admin, HR, as well as more specialised.

I can work anytime between 7am-7pm providing I get my hours done, start as late as 10am, take up to two hours for lunch between 12-2pm, this flexibility does depend on business need so if you have a 1pm meeting your are expected to attend or to have blocked out your lunch in advance. Accrue 15 days flexi leave on top of normal holiday.

Oh and some roles are fully remote, others hybrid and some you just touch base face to face once a month depending in role.

How old are the kids? You might be able to negotiate flexible working like working from home more if you put in a request.

I would definitely explain your difficulties getting into the office and see if you can get an agile working request

If you've been there a while and previously worked to this set up that will hopefully go in your favour!

Why don't you look for another job in your field if you've no issues with it? For example, if you're working in marketing, why not find a hybrid/remote job in marketing? You'll be much more likely to get a decent salary with a few years of experience behind you than starting in a new field. Also why is it all down to you? Is your DH also on compressed hours? When I went back to work, my DH had to do the nursery drop offs/pickups because of my commute.