7 hints for STEAM professionals and mums-to-be
For Mother’s Day our PWI STEAM Programme Director, Claire Mattelet, gives an honest account on how she learned and is learning to combine career and private life after becoming a mum
My little baby is almost turning 6 months this Sunday May 13 and this is the first time in my life that I will be celebrated as a mum.
It has now been 2 months since I came back to my professional life after my maternity leave. I believe it is time to reflect on what my pregnancy and short motherhood experience have been like from both career and private perspectives.
First of all, let me reassure you… As a 38 years old engineer, I am still looking for the perfect equilibrium equation to be able to manage both activities! My learning curve is steep as I believe it would be for any STEAM woman, often required to work 60 hours per week and focus on a very specialized field.
So what parameters did I take into consideration in order to weight the equation and be somehow in a less unbalanced state?
These are 7 hints I apply that helped me so far.
1) Select the right entourage
This is my rule number one.
My partner is supportive of my career development and believes in gender equality. He is also helping with the daily house activities and this allows me to have some quality time with my son when back from work. Plus, we can always rely on our family and network (grand-parents, sisters, friends, etc.) in case of problem.
As for work, I learned to be more selective about the people I spend time with. I like to be surrounded by positive, relaxed & determined minds and this helps me resourcing and focusing.
One of the key entourage person at work is your line manager. If you do not get a good support from her/him, you will lose a lot of energy at work trying to justify yourself. This is a lot of wasted energy that instead you will need when back home with your new family. If your boss does not agree with you at 80% after long hours of debates, it may be good to start seeking other opportunities in other departments or even in another company.
Good companies provide tools (the “how”) so that working mums can achieve their objectives (the “what”)
The company culture is very important, especially for STEAM women. Very often, managerial roles in tech companies are 80 to 90 % men driven. Women are therefore being given instructions from men and these do not often match with the reality of their lifes (long business trips, unforeseen face to face management meetings starting at 6pm etc.). Luckily, in some companies, this starts to change as more women access senior management levels and awareness is created among men representatives in the management.
To be supportive to the career of women, companies should let working mum organise their time: for instance, let them homework more, let them use the new communication technologies (Skype) without giving them a guilty feeling in case they are not present in F2F at meetings, maybe let them also have an interim back up person or an on-line PA. In brief, good companies provide tools (the “how”) so that working mums can achieve their objectives (the “what”).
2) Prepare carefully your maternity leave
I informed the HR department after my 3rd month of pregnancy in order to prepare my leave.
I carefully selected the person who took over from me and I chose to hire a mother of my age who had a young baby and who was quite successful in her job. The reasoning behind my decision was that successful working mums are usually very effective in multitasking in the work environment because they have more experience in doing so. The person who took over from me complied fully with this and I felt reassured as she took charge quickly of an increasing number of files :-). She shared with me many working mum tips (for which I am forever thankful!) and I could already project myself on what my job would look like once back!
I started the knowledge transfer sessions with my back-up as from my 6th month of pregnancy. This allowed me to stop traveling by plane or doing long car trips from my 7th month as my back-up felt confident enough to go alone to meet customers.
I left a responsibility matrix for my team during my absence and they contacted me only in case of extreme urgency. They had a clear understanding on how the collaboration would work with one another and the importance of their role in different projects.
Finally, I did not take much holidays in the beginning of my pregnancy and left these for the difficult weeks in the end.
3) Focus fully on your family during pregnancy leave
Although I could sometime worry about my return at work, I was so dedicated and busy with our new family that I took full advantage of my 4 months maternity leave.
In the end, I thought that if I would lose my job or could not cope with the high level of exigency it requires when back, I would always find another career challenge elsewhere. The motherhood has made me more fearless.
4) Be a STEAM passionate & competent or …change job
Motherhood requires a lot of attention. Another activity is therefore difficult to combine if there isn’t passion or interest in pursuing it.
STEAM women are very specialised, so only the working mums who reached a high degree of competency will be successful. If you are not competent or passionate enough, it is better to consider changing job. The learning curve will eventually be too steep or your focus not strong enough to meet your objectives.
Competent or not, juggling between your job and motherhood will be very challenging but isn’t it much easier to work when you have a passion for the field you work in?
5) Learn to delegate work and private tasks
As STEAM women, this may be very difficult because we tend to want things to be done in details and with brio. But trust me, this rule is key if you do not want to sink. In the end, apply Pareto law (80/20), no one is perfect!
And please by all means use the internet or other apps for your purchases: dinner deliveries when you do not have the time to cook, groceries, and other baby items…
6) Make use of the time very carefully and focus
I have observed that successful career mums carefully select the activities they will spend time on. At work, focus only on the essential ones satisfying their objectives and dedicate less time to support other goals.
Because most working mums believe in collective support, they will share and support also their true network of colleagues. Almost never, I saw them surfing on the websites for other things than work related items.
Similarly, they chose carefully the professional/private events to which they will attend (how long will I be off from home?, what is the attendance list
of the event?, what’s in for me?)
7) Plan and backup plan ahead!
There were days when my son was sick as he entered the creche and started build up his immune system.
I am sometimes very nervous at work, knowing that the creche could call and ask to pick up my son earlier (…my phone typically rings during a client meeting). Luckily, my back-up is my partner who works from home and can pick up my son at the creche.
In our plans (holiday, creche selection, housing close to work…) we decided to look up for the quality time rather than the cheapest price. For instance, our son goes to an English private creche which is located at few hundred meters from our home and is also on my way back from work. Of course, it is more expensive than other nurseries but we save so much priceless time on a daily basis!
Me and my partner have also set up a combined agenda which avoids us agendas conflicts and having to look up for someone to look after our son at the last moment.
What is your experience as a working mum? Drop us an email and share your stry with us!
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