Would any mums who are professionals - accountants, solicitors etc be interested in part time work to fit around school hours?

[justcallmemary]

I see a massive problem in professions trying to get good quality staff at the moment and think there must a lot of mums out there who worked incredibly hard to get professional qualifications/experience but now feel unable to work due to school hours for their younger children. Having several years off work in these roles is not optimal and I just wonder if more women would like to work but feel like it isn't an option. I am not a professional recruiter - I help out with trying to get staff for my accountancy practice and when I mention this everyone seems to think it is just too tricky. I was lucky and had an employer who was happy to keep me doing part time hours so I never stepped away but I know that getting back into work was hard enough after maternity, never mind if this was several years. Anyone have any thoughts? I am based in York but I think this is probably a problem generally.

I also have lots of nice memories of spending time with my kids even though I worked full-time Mon-Fri.

The issue is more that nobody is thinking, I wish there was more part-time work for all those professional dads who needs to work school hours so they can look after their children. It is always the mothers who are expected to do that. Always.

As an accountant (of over 40 years) now with my own practice, I can see it from both sides. Trouble is that a lot of the work, such as audits, can involve full days, i.e. a client wants it all done and dusted within, say, a week, which requires full time working at their site. They don't want the disruption of someone taking two weeks on site only working 10-3. In fact, usually you have to work long days to finish within a week, i.e. starting a bit earlier and finishing a bit later. Some audits aren't particularly local to the office, so you also have travel time before/after the working day to factor in too!

The "part time" jobs have usually been in the tax departments, where "jobs" are shorter/smaller as you can usually do a tax return within an hour or two. My experience has been that tax departments are usually dominated by middle aged women to facilitate part time working, whereas audit departments are mostly younger people and middle aged men!

Currently, in my own practice, I find that most clients want meeting appointments either first thing in the morning or late afternoon, to fit in with their working commitments, often pre 9am or post 4pm, so again, if I only worked 10-3, I'd probably lose a lot of clients who would find meetings within those hours problematic.

As it is, I do work part time, but it's very flexible. Some days I start and finish early, i.e. 8 till 3, sometimes I work a few hours on Saturdays and Sundays, somedays I start late and finish late. Mostly to accommodate client needs, but if no particular client requirements, I am sometimes flexible for my own personal reasons, i.e. start and finish early so I can have the afternoon in the garden etc.

It just wouldn't work if I was inflexible and tried to enforce say a 10-3 working day. Clients would leave in droves as it wouldn't work for them.

This is the problem really. Firms have to basically work backwards from what works for the clients. If they have too many staff wanting to work part time fixed hours, then that puts the burden and pressure on the other staff who are full time or more flexible.

It's a big pain though if your kids' GP or dentist only works school hours, since you're then always taking the kids out of school for visits. It's especially annoying if you need frequent visits. My kids' orthodontist did all the school runs, so not only did he not work outside school hours, there was a bit of time for him to get to and from the practice, so we couldn't even get an appointment at the cusp of school hours.

Nail on the head. The end users of services need their service providers to be flexible to be available throughout the normal working day.

In the current day and age I couldn't tell you when I last saw the same GP.
Most GPs seem to be you take which GP is available and hope for the best.

Exactly. You just go when they can see you.

@justcallmemary as a retired HR professional in my experience it is because a lot of people, not just managers or board members but also employees, lack creativity when considering alternative working patterns and flexible working.

It isn’t just mums, but also older employees and disabled employees who would also find a wider range of flexible working options attractive. I would also say it encourages men as parents to also pull their weight WRT childcare and life admin.

Realistically it has to start with the job requirements, but it has to be what a job needs rather than a want. If you work in frontline health care in a clinic that is open 08:30 to 17:00 Monday to Friday then WFH Thursday to Saturday between 16:00 and 22:00 is not reasonable. However, 18 hours over 3 days is feasible with scheduling.

Why should they work for less than market value?

Surely it depends on each family?
I was more than happy to take a career break to spend time with my boys rather than rushing at crazy AM to drop them with strangers. You don’t get those years back.

I did it because I wanted to do it. Does annoy me when people hand wring about professional women “sacrificing” their careers. Some of us want to do it it’s no sacrifice. Set up on my own when dd2 went to school now earn more than I did in my City job. And more than DH come to think of it. So the whole “if you step out of your career you are doomed” shtick grates on me too.

@TheaBrandt1 - yes, I agree that it's a brilliant thing to do if it works for you. My objection is more about the fact that so many posters assume it is only the woman's responsibility to take care of young children, as evidenced in the OP asking about "Mums" and another poster referring to "SAHM". If it works for you as an individual and as a family, as it clearly did for you, all credit to you. But it should be a choice, not an expectation.

Every couple do what suits them. For some it means both working full-time for others it's just not possible for both to continue full-time due to long hours, commuting plus travel which just isn't compatible with family life.

I think that, increasingly, there are part time professional roles being advertised externally - certainly in law and finance - if you know where to look. This sort of thing, for example:

923jobs.zohorecruit.com/jobs/Careers/332798000014099003/Solicitor?source=CareerSite

They absolutely shouldn’t have to, and in most cases I’ve seen once the person is in and the corp realises what an asset they have on their hands that changes; and over the years as the person’s capacity to work changes (kids move to secondary school or whatever) the org flexes round them.

DH and I both work in professional jobs and both dropped our hours to have a day off each with DC when they were at nursery and share school runs now they are at school. We both enjoy having time with our DC and are happy to go slower in our careers to do this.

I know many solicitors and accountants with children, some at partner level. None of them work part-time nor appear to want to. Very career driven and ambitious. I think the women who want to go part-time after kids tend to target other professions like medicine, dentistry, teaching etc.

I did part time school hours accounts whilst ds's were in primary. Worked a treat. I still work part time now through choice.

I worked part time as a solicitor when my DC were young, and what worked best was a job-share, so that the clients always had someone there to contact. School holidays were still more difficult, because both job sharers still had to work, and we covered each others leave where possible, or at least worked longer hours when the other was away, so some flexibility was needed. But it worked in terms of the business needs.

I found although jobs weren’t advertised as part time, some employers were amenable to the idea
As a part qualified professional, I applied to a full time job ad with covering letter explaining I was looking for part-time hours and was snapped up (several job offers to chose between). So it’s always worth asking!

yes - I work around the school run (freelance financial modeling) and I very rarely take meetings between 7-9 am and 4-6 pm, but on my more demanding projects I have had meetings at 6am or 9pm on occasion and I almost always answer my emails right away.

my flexibility is partly to vary what work I take in, sometimes I have a few weeks off where I don't look for new work and just occasionally help existing clients, just to catch up with all the house stuff that piles up when I am working all my spare hours.

I am an Accountant - I worked flexi-hours when DD was younger, it meant v long days, but her DF was self employed and blocked 2 weekdays from work as soon as she was born so I worked long days on those days and got the benefit on the other 3 working days.
i now work part time (burn out, redundancy and divorce) but we still follow the same pattern with covering childcare and holidays even though DD is now 12.
incredibly helpful to have the flexibility to be able to do this - I also facilitated job-shares and part time working for my team around their needs too (not just women and not just childcare related).
my old MD brought in the flexible working as he and the other directors also had DC and wanted to be able to do school pick ups/school stuff too.

A friend if mine runs a recruitment company for these types of vacancies. It's called Ten to Two.

@Harassedevictee solicitor here and PT is common amongst my peers.