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Regular work+family updates for
HR and diversity professionals.
I won't review the croissants
Starbucks. What do you think? Force for good or evil? Personally, I think great people, average coffee and awful croissants. And at the moment my local branch also seems pretty obsessed with feedback. I even managed to blag a free banana-nut muffin in return for my promise to complete their online survey and mention my nice barista by name!
A need for feedback
Every business these days is obsessed with feedback. Getting it, analysing it, sharing it, responding to it. We're no different. Since we launched the Backup Care service, we've been receiving and distributing it like confetti. And luckily we're pretty good at it.
Stumbling blocks
Having a career and being a parent is complicated and occasionally stressful. Childcare and children just don't seem interested in your job prospects. Kids are ill when they shouldn't be - conjunctivitis cannot be put on snooze for a week. Childminders take holidays without any regard to your major project plan. If you can provide a solution at £0 cost to the parent - well of course you're going to get amazing feedback.
The pressure of work/life
When we provide emergency childcare we ask three questions:
- Do you like your employer for providing the service?
- Did you work when you otherwise couldn't have done?
- Did we relieve some stress?
It's the stress question that's interesting me currently. Lots of people, far cleverer than me, have written about stress (that's a nod to our own JLS). It strikes me that to be a successful and happy working parent you better get the hang of coping with stress in whatever form it takes.
Life doesn't get easier. It gets more complicated. Dealing with the vicissitudes that career, kids and ageing parents will throw at you, well, that's a pre-requisite for any sort of personal equanimity.
As I say, not as I do
Do I have any tips for dealing with stress? Well, a couple have actually worked for me and I'll be sharing them next week.
In the meantime, whatever you do, though, don't buy a small struggling childcare business. Unfettered access to babysitters might seem like a good idea but building up your own business at the same time as popping out some sprogs - hmm that's not a good recipe!
Ben Black
