Carla Miller 00:00
Welcome to the Influence and Impact Podcast for Female Leaders. My name's Carla Miller, and I'm a leadership coach who helps female leaders to tackle self-doubt, become brilliant at influencing, and make more impact at work. I've created this podcast to help you to become a more inspiring and impactful leader.

And I want to become the leadership BFF you didn't know you were missing until now. Hi, and welcome to this episode of the Influence and Impact podcast, where I'm talking about the stark reality of what motherhood does to women's careers with my special guest, Jess Heagren. Now, this episode isn't just for Parents.

So, it is going to definitely ring some bells if you are a mother who has returned to the workplace after having a child or children, but I would really, really encourage you to have a listen if you're thinking of becoming a parent, if you line manage parents, work alongside parents, or if you're an employer who wants to be a better employer for working.

So my guest Jess Heagren is an ex financial services director. A mother of four, award winning Chief Exec of a company called That Works For Me, and author of the landmark report, Careers After Babies. And it's that report that we are going to be diving into on today's episode. Jess is on a personal mission to keep more parents in the workplace, and she works with businesses to make them better employers for parents through the Careers After Babies Accreditation Program and she supports hiring through That Works For Me, which is home to thousands of parents seeking flexible.

Jess shares her personal experiences of being a really senior woman coming back to the workplace and shares some of the stories and the themes and trends that have come out of the report. We debunk some myths about what parents actually want after having their children, and we also explore some of the really interesting statistics that came up through her report, statistics that show the long term impact of having children on a woman's career, statistics that show the drop in women at mid management level and the increase in women at doing admin roles after having children. Some of it's shocking. The report is a saddening and stark read, but Jess also has some fantastic solutions and strategies for individuals and employers, and we're going to be covering some of those in this episode. So, really hope you enjoy the episode we would love to hear your feedback afterwards.

We'd love for you to be sharing your experiences as well. And a great place to do that is to come on over to LinkedIn. If you're not connected to myself or following Jess, then do so and we'll have some posts there that you can share your experiences. So, happy listening.

So delighted to welcome Jess to the podcast. Thanks for coming on. Jess.

Jess Heagren 03:47
Thanks so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here.

Carla Miller 03:49
I loved reading the report so I'm looking forward to diving into some of the pieces within that. But let's start with a bit of background. So, tell us a little bit about yourself and your business and how you came to write this report.

Jess Heagren 04:03
Yeah, I’d love to. So, I was previously strategy and distribution director in a large insurance company and one particular day while I was there, I took our commercial strategy up to the board. We went through it all. One of the board members said to me, so what's it like to be a 30 something year old female in our business? You know, you've been on all of our talent programs, etc. I said to him, do you want my honest answer? I said, it's, it's rubbish. It, it absolutely sucks. There's no one here that looks like me. And the next sort of few years of my life, as I plan for that to pay out, I can't see a way that, that will happen within this organisation.

The product of that honesty, it was me launching there a diversity committee and I led the gender working family lead for that for a few years. Sadly, we didn't make quite enough change in that by the time I had my, uh, daughter, although I went back on a flexible working arrangement, I was the only member of the Board who was working flexibly.

And I think most people will tell you if there's only one or two people in a much wider audience, then it doesn't tend to work so by the time I had my second, I knew that I was, I wasn't going to be able to make that career work, sadly, which was really, really tough. One of the, one of the toughest decisions of my life, I would say, kind of throwing, not throwing it away, that sounds awful, but leaving that whole career behind.

I tried the stay at home one thing. I did it for about eight, nine months and I drove myself insane, kind of thinking about butternut squash and broccoli and, you know, how to make the best food for the baby, but it wasn't quite enough. It drove me crazy. So I decided to act on something that I'd seen and lots of people would have seen that so many women end up leaving their careers after they have their children and what I wanted to do was stop us sort of throwing their skills away, I guess so I set up a platform called That Works For Me to bring together really skilled parents with companies that need those skills but are not on a full time basis. I've been doing that for, I think it's about four or five years now, actually.

Whilst it's great, I think over the last couple of years, I've realised how important it is to try and change things from the other side, if you'd like. So, to work with more businesses so I've been doing a bit of consultancy when most businesses kind of say to me, we have women and we keep them up to the point where they have children, but then we're losing them kind of, what are we doing wrong?

So I'll work with them to look back at what parents need and how they can be better at that. The report kind of came from a combination of all of those things, I guess it, I would love to say that it was planned and that, you know, I, I've had all of the detail mapped out. The reality, I think, as with most things is that I couldn't find the data set that I needed.

So, I'd constantly been looking for the data that actually proved what happened to women's careers and on the way up to, there's a cross parliamentary group called an APBG around women at work, and I was on my way up to one of those in person, and I thought, in a bid to sound intelligent, I'll make sure I've got all my stats straight in my head and everything.

So I, I searched for the 20,000th time to try and find the data and couldn't find it. So I thought, I'll just, I'll do what any woman does, I'll just make it myself. I'll gather the data and it'll be fine. And so I put a type form out there and it had a really good response straight away, interestingly so we had lots of people that very quickly responded to that.

So I left it open for a period of time, and I think eventually we got up to, the magic number was 848, I think is where we eventually closed it, um, but I found that I had a lot of data. And as I started reading through the answers and things, I, you know, when you've just realized the value of something, first of all, the stories in there were just making me cry my eyes out.

I can't, I can't even tell you the number of times that I sat crying but I, yeah, realised how important a data set that it was and that I hadn't ever seen it captured before. So I spent the next three months, excessively at all times, but I spent the next three months pulling all of that together in what I hope is a comprehensive output, and that is the careers after babies report.

Carla Miller 08:22
So for those who haven't read it, and we will link to it in the show notes. But for those who haven't read it, tell us a little bit about the report.

Jess Heagren 08:29
So I think what's really interesting about the report is that it tells us what's actually going on with our careers after we have children. So I think anecdotally, you and I will both say, Oh, well, I know what happened to my career and I know what happened maybe to my best friend's career.

But what I didn't realise is that this is happening on such a major scale. So we found things like 85 percent of women leave the full time workforce within three years of having a baby. It's not surprising if you've had a baby, because you know that you can't work full time. But I think seeing it, I think we tend to feel like we're alone in that.

I think when you see that actually 85 percent of women aren't making a full-time career work alongside having children, you suddenly go, oh, it's not me. And I've had so many messages from women saying, I thought I was the only one. I thought it was just me and my friend that this happened to. The findings were all surprising, but not surprising is probably the way to put it.

You know, there's some really concerning things out there. So one of ones that really gets me is the fact that 98 percent of women answered want to go back to work. So I feel like we are not necessarily fed a myth, but you know, the, the narrative seems to be that women don't want to go back to work after having children.

And that's just not true. You know, 98 percent of us want to go back. There's another stat I recently heard, something around 70 percent of families now have dual working parents, if they have two parents in the family. And I think that's because two salaries are needed in today's day and age, it's really, it's really tough to survive on just one salary.

So yeah, that 98 percent piece was a real, a real crunch number. The number of women leaving the full-time workforce. So interestingly, if you look at what is it that women need, which was another question that we asked. It was, the number is around 56 percent of women want to work more than four days, sorry, so four or more days.

And you know, this whole thing around, oh, well, if, if women do want to work, they just want a little part time job with very little responsibility. You know, that's not true either. So I think that was the big thing for me, a number of these sort of myths that are used to talk about women after they have children.

It's not true. We're still ambitious. We still want to work. We still want to earn money and we still want to contribute.

Carla Miller 10:53
Absolutely, and I think like you say, lots of women will look at that and, and feel less alone and recognise what's going on in there. I think it's a really good education piece for people that don't yet have children as well, because I think I was completely oblivious to so much even though I really wanted children. And in my head, I know it's hard work having children, I was oblivious to parents, maybe as to the impact. And now I'm like, oh, eyes wide open.

Jess Heagren 11:22
And do you know what? It's been really interesting. The number of women who I guess are starting to think about it. So I've had lots of contact from that group, which I didn't think I would, but lots of them messaging saying, Oh my God, this has confirmed all of my worst fears. Where do I go to find an employer where this isn't going to happen? You know what, I'm not going to be sidelined, I'm not going to have my maternity comp, promoted, I have me kind of who's good at this stuff.

Carla Miller 11:49
We're going to talk a little bit later on about what organisations can do to work with you on this. And now there were a few key stats in there, because there's so much in there, we could talk all day. But there were a few key stats that we thought would be good hooks to talk through. And he I just want to set the context that you might be listening to this as a parent, and it's already resonating, or you might be listening to this as someone who is a leader is making decisions in your organisation or is making decisions on behalf of the team. And this is really important information for you to have. So I would love you to read the report whether you're a parent or not, and you try not to freak out too much. If you are planning to parent in the near future. Hopefully things are starting to improve a bit from the conversations that people like you just are prompting. So the first step that was interesting for me to see is you noticed there was a difference in the length of maternity leave based on how senior for rewards tell us a little bit about that.

Jess Heagren 12:54
Yeah, so I think the, the thing that you need to know I guess about maternity leave if you don't already is that if you take less than six months of maternity leave, you are entitled to return to the same job. If you take more than six months, you aren't prepared to return to a job that is similar.

So that generally means similar terms, similar seniority, um, similar impact on the business. Now, I think what was really interesting about this is that the more senior women were, the more likely they were to take less than six months maternity leave. So, 52 percent of department heads and 20 percent of directors took less than six months.

I would say the reason they were doing that is to protect their jobs, because quite often what we see happen is women will go off on their maternity leave, they'll come back and say, okay, I don't want to work full time, I'm going to work four days, three days, whatever it may be, and they are put into a similar role.

Now, again, another interesting thing that came out of that is that when women are put into a similar role, 74 percent of them end up leaving within two years. So, it clearly, that, that change of role at a really turbulent time of a woman's life means they are, they disengage effectively and they, they quite often end up leaving the organisation.

I think the other interesting thing about maternity leave, those who are freelancing or working their own business tend to take less than three months. Now, I don't think for anyone that runs their own business, it's probably not a surprise. I took a really short time off and I actually think it's, we, we can't, we became it as a bit of a patch, but it's actually not that great.

You know, you shouldn't have to not have any maternity leave just because you run your own business or because you're freelancing. But the reality is that that support's not there. You have a very disciplined income and if you don't have someone else, you can take over your business, you know, you lose customers and you lose income.

So, I think that was really interesting. Generally people are taking, um, perhaps not surprising between six and 12 months, 40 percent women would have taken longer if they could pass. And I, again, I think that's quite telling. So are we, are we rushing back to the office when we don't necessarily want to be there?

We don't feel ready to be there. Yeah, I think the whole piece around paternity leave, paternity leave is something else we looked at as well actually, so before we move on. We found that 7 percent bulk was ended up, what, taking shared paternity leave, so the father ended up taking a period of paternity leave as well but only 25 percent of couples ever had the conversation about it, which I found quite disappointing. I like to think, I mean, my husband and I are very much 50/50 on things and that was always the deal that we went into having children on. And I know that's not the same for a lot of couples, but I think I find that I find it particularly uxom, probably, slash disappointing because I think, well, if those conversations aren't even happening at home, then how is that kind of shared, that shared data ever going to move on?

And I think the actual, the national norm is something as low as 2%. So we were lucky to find, you know, 7 percent in there. Um, but for me, that's one of the real drivers around that world. you know, likely change things in the future. So having more men take on more paternity leave.

Carla Miller 16:29
And do you think that's around a lack of awareness of how it actually works? Like shared parental leave? Or do you think it's still we're still stuck in this kind of society and work constructs that say it's the woman that always takes the time off?

Jess Heagren 16:44
I think there's a bit of both, I think lots of organisations have got their head around. I'm still surprised at the amount of organisations I've come across who don't have maternity policies in place. Sanity is obviously not new. So and lots of them yet don't have that very specimen that base in base. And not some commentary. Lots of commentary in around organisations, actively discouraging paternity, bees, which, you know, obviously, but absolutely awful, happens. But there are kind of two things in it plain. So there's the organisation saying, well hang on a minute, we don't have to deal with this. Then there's an organisation saying, well, you men, you can't do that, because that will impact your career. And then there was a whole other thing that came out around dads not seeing other men do it. So if they don't see men within their organisation taking leave, it's not considered the norm, and therefore they're less likely to do and I know, there's some research that's been done around that. And we I'm thinking later on this year, if I can, if I can face another big data capture event, then I actually think we'll we might run the survey, again, with some, some tweaks in there. But do the equivalent for dads because I'm really interested in what that data looks like of mums versus dads.

Carla Miller 18:07
Yeah, it will be absolutely fascinating to see that difference. Now, the one of the other things that came out of their report, which surprised me is something like 32%, over 32% fewer women are in management after having children, but a 44% increase in admin, and entry levels, there's someone who helps develop women in their careers that horrifies me. Were you suprised to see that or?

Jess Heagren 18:32
Yeah, totally, it's best and, and really saddened by, again, it's one of those things that I see happen a lot. You know, here I see women leaving pick careers behind and then they see the arc and they kind of call it their, you know, little sideline or their little business that they run alongside, they're having children. But to actually see it and data as this, I think it's heartbreaking that we'll we weren't hammer and pull through our counties to kind of get as soon as we can and earn as much money and build up these, these great careers. And then because we have between six and 12 months off the the baby, we then just say, You know what, we're just going to leave this behind. What I think annoys me most is that the implication and I've even just always sounded back then the implication is that we're saying, Oh, it's too It's too hard. I'm gonna leave it behind. And it seems to, it seems to appear as though there's some level of weakness there. But actually, again, I think that's what was so powerful about the data 85% The Women's and most women couldn't make full time work, work on all side having a family. So it's not about it's not about that we can't cope. It's not about that we don't have the bandwidth to think about a job and have a family. We just can't do it in the traditional constructive Monday to Friday 9 to 5, you know, we need some flex around certain areas and a bit of additional support and, you know, some different times and different locations and things what We're not asking for the moon on a stick to make this work. And as, as we see, what happens is, women say, Well, this, you know, this job is this job is too much, or my organisation being inflexible. So I'm going to come out of work for a little bit. And then when it's time to go back in, because there that can be so difficult and so challenging, and not enough organisations are public enough about their flexible working and they're offering to parents, they then end up taking a much lower paid job that either does have the flexibility there, or it's something that they can go to, they can do kind of pretty much with their eyes closed. So it doesn't cause sort of any additional stress. And then they can leave behind. And that's what they do for a few years just to get by. And I just, I just, I just find it so frustrating as somebody who's always been incredibly ambitious. I just, and I know that other people are, I don't think that ambition goes away when you have children, I think the construct of work makes it too difficult for you to continue thinking that you can be ambitious, it's really frustrating. It is it's so frustrating. And I think some of this also comes down to equal load in the household as well. So we've done a podcast episode on equality starts at home in the past, which we'll link to in the show notes. But it shouldn't just be women having that issue, it should it should be any public.

Carla Miller 21:27
If anyone's if parents going to have an issue, both parents should be having that issue. It's always be the women during the school drop off and the school pick up and getting called by the doctor's surgery. And all of these different things,

Jess Heagren 21:40
I think it goes it goes right back to the beginning, I haven't really been in my bonnet about the fact that men get asked to leave the maternity ward. So I think from the very second that baby comes out of yours, sorry, I keep saying men or partners, or get asked to leave in the 20 Ward, and the very first second that the baby comes into the world, it's actually your baby. And it's the same with the maternity appointments, it is your baby. Last time I checked, my husband was equally as responsible for me. And I think that I just think we push it from day one they get asked to leave, then they're not invited to a lot of the follow up appointments. And then it's the mum that gets contacted around immunizations. And you know, your name goes fast on on all of the school records are naturally application forms, and everything is just everything is geared towards children being the woman's responsibility. I was. I was at an event a couple of weeks ago, when I was I heard one of the bats talk. A I'm just trying so quickly trying to find his name now. And he's recently published a really interesting book. And he was talking about him and his partner and they've read things. And he said even with them there is that sort of slight natural bias, one of them will kind of pick on a bit more responsibility. It was called Robin, in that sketch. It's just been a book called The Equal parent. And it was really interesting talking about their different perspective on things and how they used to remind responsibilities and you know who, who looks after the baby. And definitely worth definitely worth a read is just hearing him talk really interesting. I've just now noted that actually, I think I think the conversation starts at home. And it sounds it sounds silly. And I've mentioned it already. But it really does when you're talking about having a family, there has to be that conversation that says I want to take some time off. But I think I just find it fascinating when you meet couples that haven't talked about that area at all. And I know some men I know know someone who would probably be horrified thought or taken time to spend with their baby, maybe even their children. But I think as women, we all need to take a bit of a stand on this one and say no, this, you know, this is how it works. In today's day and age, the legal rights are out there. And companies have a duty to offer that check. And to leave, we should we should be making sure that we take advantage of that and we stand up for ourselves.

Carla Miller 24:12
I was giving a talk the other day at a large company about an allyship and what men can do. And it was brilliant. I mean, there was like over 600 people in there and lots of women were openly sharing their experiences and men too. And we were talking about doctors calling. And there was a man in there who said he had to leave a job because his employer couldn't understand that he was an equal parent or needed to go and pick his child up when they were sick. So even if he wants to do it it would be hard to even get your job to enable you to do it.

Jess Heagren
And I think that's I think the role of dads has changed recently so I would say sort of dad's probably under 40 now or expect to play a more active role and want to. It's very rare that you meet a dad that doesn't actually want to be there, you know, through the through thick and thin.

I've actually our babies have nursery today sick and my husband has her and the other room if you hear any whinging in the background. It's, that is every time that happens, it's a conversation with as they write, you know, what have you got on today? It can, you know, can you do this? Can you do this, and we covered the day between us. But yeah, I just, it just shocks me that it that it doesn't happen more, especially in today's world, I think men want to play a different role.

Carla Miller 25:35
Going back to the point you made earlier about women moving to jobs that are less intensive, I had a role for a little while interviewing people for returner ships, so interviewing mainly women, but it was open to men as well return ships after taking time off to have children. And it was heartbreaking. The stories these were like highly experienced directors, accountants, it was a management consulting firm like. Just hearing how hard it had been. If they take a more than a couple of years off to get back into the workplace at all nevermind anything using their skills, there was so much competition I did hundreds of interviews for it was about 20 spots. And it was a real eye opener to me. I didn't have children at that point, but just recognising how hard it is when you take significant amount of time out to get back in and be taken seriously.

Jess Heagren 26:32
Yeah, I think I said to the very first time we we spoke that I had had a I've had conversations with many recruiters over the last couple of years. And there was one particular there was a time at which I was talking about some consultancy work for me to run alongside that works for me. And I spoke to a lady, a woman actually probably a similar age to me with two children and she said to me, wow, you know, you have been out of the workplace for a few years now so it will be a bit trickier. I absolutely lost my, I don’t want to say marbles, because we were on a podcast. But I was so furious. I just said to her do you know what having children and I have four of them that they do not have all children. And having run my own business for the last few years, I would say it's been the toughest time of my life. And I've learned more than those last few years I've ever done before. How dare you tell me that I haven't worked. You know, I haven't, it’s not like I've forgot how to talk to people. It's not like I've forgotten how to do my job. My organisation is on point because absolutely has to be. And look, I can still handle compensation here. We are talking. But I do jokes aside, I think there's a real issue with the recruitment industry at large, not all recruiters because actually, I'm in contact with some incredible ones who are really sympathetic, and they make it their mission to get mums back into work. But there is a huge tranche of the recruitment industry who will take one look at your CV, see that there is a gap and just and toss it to the side. And it's something has to be done about it is next on my hit list after life after I finished with what I'm doing at the minute.

Carla Miller 28:09
I may not have told you I used to run a charity recruitment company. But it's fascinating because I'm so glad that now the people that I used to work with, and a lot of the offshoot businesses that have come from that group as well, massively changing how they did things because we just did things the way they were always done. And now I've looked back and absolute shame and horror. And I'm like, I can't believe that was our default. And that's and we just perpetuated and that was now at least we're having these conversations with was stopping asking for the salary that you were on in your last role and all of these other things. But you're right, the the industry needs a big shift, but I think it has started or at least parts of it have started to really genuinely embrace diversity and inclusion.

Jess Heagren 28:58
And I wonder if it comes from, there are a lot more organisations with their own recruitment teams now. And I think they drive the questions that they, they ask a lot more. But yeah, certainly with recruiters, I think some of them definitely default to, uh, my next question is that you just said something really interesting there.

So about your moment of shame. So I have a real moment of shame from my past. I had a lady that worked for me when I was in my, probably my late twenties, no children, and she had three kids she'd recently separated from her husband and one of her children was in hospital and she came into work and I was like, Oh my God, what are you doing here?

And she, we'd had some really tricky conversations about how her return to work and her role being divvied up. Anyway, I sent her when I sent her back to hospital, but I've still always, that's really stuck with me around the fact that she felt that she had to come into the office when her child was ill.

Now, I just, I've publicly apologised to our next ambassador and she was really, really gracious about it. But I just think, I think it demonstrates a really important point here. One is that it can be very difficult to put yourself in the shoes of a working parent when you haven't had them. Again, some people do it brilliantly, but I do think it's a real, it's a real tough ask to get somebody to, to appreciate how difficult it can be, which leads me on to the second point, which is, I think there is a real call out here for the line managers in businesses to be really closely supported by HR teams on this stuff. And if you don't have that expertise in house, then going externally for it, because I think again, something else that came out in the report really loud and clear for me was Whenever there had been a negative interaction between the woman and her line manager, they were most likely to leave.

So, if every conversation, the outcome was impacted by every single one of them. So, every time there had been a touch point, whether it was a keep in touch day, whether it was a conversation before going on maternity leave, whether it was that are those tricky conversations you have about the return, but the value of those conversations and the significance of them just shouldn't be underestimated, you know, people need support on those.

Carla Miller 31:17
Definitely, and we've had a couple of previous podcast guests that I know you're in contact with, as well. But Lizzie Martin and Jessica Chivas, who are if you're an individual or an organisation thinking I do need more support on that specific returner ship side of things then definitely worth getting in touch.

Jess Heagren
They they're both amazing, I rate them really highly.

Carla Miller
Me too. And then you also did a little bit of research in terms of what's the long-term impact on women's career of having children what came out of that?

Jess Heagren 31:48
So the the beekley standing thing here and was taking and years last careers to cover by which I mean that, you know, we mentioned that women leave the leaves the workforce and often come back unless a skill Well, it would depend years for them to get at the level and salary that they were at before. 10 years is a really no gosh, if you think that we work in years, and really scope before we even think about having children that has to go and be that all of that again, just to get back to where you were before. It's just absolute niche. So we're destroying. That came out into it we, we asked about earnings, we asked about promotions, we asked about levels before a natural disaster. And it was it was just consistent across the board really disappointing, except a sheet except here, when somebody found the organisation, that when they found an organisation sorry, that been able to provide them what they needed. And what we found then was that they got into those organisations and mess with them, they wouldn't let both. Which is, which is again, you know, it's good, right, that those organisations are able to hang on to the talent that they've invested in and keep hold of them. Not so great in that they felt that they were almost compelled to stay there a bit and sort of look more broadly for both different information opportunities, because there aren't enough organisations out there who couldn't happen this time.

Carla Miller 33:24
But we're going to talk in a moment about the organisation side of things. So if if someone's a woman, and is about to have a child or has children, and this thinking this really resonates with me, what can we do to empower them in this situation? What advice if any, would you give to women in this situation?

Jess Heagren 33:43
So the first one is, we said earlier on jokingly, but don't be disheartened by all of this because times are changing.

If I look back to, eight years ago or so when I had my first daughter to where things are now, and they weren't a bad organization either, by the way, I should say that I think times are changing. So I think there is a lot more flexibility. I think. preparing for it. So knowing that things are going to be tough and arming yourself with that information that the return to work is a really hard time.

So I, I’ve been really open about my story that I was, um, a director on a board, um, when I went off from maternity leave, I went back into, uh, the same role, but I couldn't speak in board meetings for months. I just found it incredibly hard. I found, I found my whole world turned upside down, back to front and whichever other way.

But I found it really, really tough and it is a difficult times that I think kind of preparing yourself for it, not necessarily being a walk in the park is probably, is probably one thing. The next thing is setting yourself up when you go on leave for the best possible return. By which I mean, making sure, I think in the report I called it something like positivity files, but before you go off, spend a little bit of time pulling together some reminders of why you're bloody good at your job, so, you know, remind yourself what your skills are, remind yourself you're of some of the amazing feedback you've had and collate that into something that when you come back into your job, you can, you can maybe have a read of that and remind yourself of why you're good.

The third thing for me is communication strategy while you're off. It can be quite tricky to imagine how new baby and keeping in touch with work kind of play out against one another. But what I would say is, again, invest a little bit of time in it before you go off. And if it changes after you have the baby, it changes.

You know, that's not the end of the world. The fact is, if you have set intentions to try and keep in touch and try and feel engaged, then I think that is, that's kind of half the battle. The actual return itself, anything you can do to make life as easy as possible. So I know lots of great organizations will have coaching support in place to kind of help you rebuild your confidence and re skilling yourself back into your job.

So reminding yourself of how to do it. And if you need that bit of extra time, then, um, letting your employer know and just saying, you know, can we go back through. I'll use the system or, you know, how we produce these reports or whatever it may be that's changed. Um, I also think there's something in there around it can be quite useful to have somebody external to talk to somebody that's not.

Um, not day to day, someone that you feel kind of a bit more comfortable going, Oh, this feels awful, and I can't remember how to do my job, and someone's asking a question I don't understand. I think having somebody who sort of sits outside your team and your line management structure, that can be really helpful.

There's an amazing organization called, uh, Mentor Mums, um, and they offer that service, which I think is brilliant. They do it all for free, it's actually incredible. So they will link you up with somebody in, Um, an external organization to your own where you can have those conversations. If you're having an absolute meltdown and feeling dreadful, then you know, somebody completely detachable organization that you can talk to.

Um, and then my other final bit, which is easier said than done, is just making sure your home life is set up to make it as easy as possible. Um, I wish if I was to say, I wish somebody had told me something, it would be about the first weeks, first six weeks that your child starts a new nursery. They are sick constantly, literally sick all the time.

They catch every virus under the sun. And I, I know that I found when I went back to my corporate role. Having a sick baby and the confidence problems and the fact that I was leaving my baby in two counties away in a, in a nursery, all of that for me just came together and just made the whole thing an absolute disaster.

So whatever, whatever you can do to make that transition as easy as possible. So whether it's starting a nursery a bit earlier, whether it's having a, um, some support and buying a parent or partner, whatever that might look like. But yeah, to try and make that transition as easy as possible, because it's a tough time.

Carla Miller 38:17
It is I think, for my son, it was like six months of those illnesses. And then he would pick them up at nursery and then be excluded. Like he had half a mouth three times. I was like sterilise your toy. I thought I had to keep paying for the childcare as well. And that's the thing we've not we haven't got time to touch on it today, either but the sheer cost of childcare at the moment and Pregnant then Screwed to doing some amazing work on this. But the sheer cost of childcare means whole other podcast. Yeah, it's not financially viable.

Jess Heagren 38:49
No, it's not. And the stat is, I think the latest on it is that it's 44% of the average salary goes on childcare costs. And that's the average salary as well. So in anything lower than that you don't stand a chance. Anything higher than that still makes it pretty darn tough.

Carla Miller 39:05
It's horrifying. Now the final piece we wanted to look at is you've got something exciting all the works, haven't you in terms of how you can support companies and want to retain the women that they work with? So tell us a bit about your accreditation.

Jess Heagren 39:21
Yeah, so we, we had all of this data and we had all these amazing findings. And as you know, it's had an incredible impact in teaching on LinkedIn. And then you kind of ask yourself, well, what are you going to? What are you going to do with that? Um, so I'm pulling together everything that I've learned over my career, I think I did the diversity DRG everything that I've learned through that works for me, we are creating a presentation person process of the careers after babies accreditation. What that will do is assess your current state, I guess, actually, point I need to make this is not a tick box excercie, this is about transforming businesses so that they become better employers for parents.

And we will assess your current state and produce a scorecard off the back of that work with you to roadmap to accreditation and within that, we will be providing lots of tools or resources or recommend you speak to great people, they interview them today about how to get yourself to be the best possible fit employer ready for working parents, and then you will be awarded with that accreditation piece much, much at the end of it. So I'm incredibly excited, I've spoken to the first I think we've got that, I think when they're in 20, actually 20 employers now who are on that next week, which is really, really exciting. And some of those employers are the absolute best in their sector as well. So I'm so happy that they haven't they've reached out. And my call out to anyone else actually is if you think you're a great employer for parents, then by all means get in touch. And equally, if you need help, I can absolutely help with that. You don't have to be perfect from day one. But I've got a very good handle on all of the best people, the best things to help you become an amazing employee for parents.

Carla Miller 41:10
It sounds fantastic. And I've seen something not entirely dissimilar on the menopause front, that's been making a real difference as well. So it's brilliant to have it for working parents too. So if people want to find out more, get in touch with you find out how they can get accredited. Where should they go?

Jess Heagren 41:28
Get in touch with me at Jess@thatworksforme.co.uk. or reach out to me on LinkedIn, or our website is that works for me.co.uk. There are two sections on there one for employers and one for parents. And everything I've talked about today is available through there.

Carla Miller 41:47
Thank you so much, becoming on rainy, but during the report for taking what you've noticed, and turning it into actionable research, and then taking it to the next level. I think there are many people listening that will be grateful for that and many people will benefit from it in the future. So thank you so much, Jess, you're an inspiration

Jess Heagren 42:06
You’re totally welcome. Thank you.

Carla Miller 42:17
Thanks for listening to today's episode. If you're not already subscribing, please do so so that you don't miss any future episodes. And if you want to go deeper on the topics that we talked about here on the podcast on confidence, self doubt, impostor feelings, increasing your influence being better at leading, then there are a few avenues that you can take. The simplest is to get yourself a copy of my book, closing the influence gap. If you love this podcast, it is crazy if you don't already own that book, because it's got so much of the content from the podcast in a really accessible way. And so many practical tools and strategies. It's basically a practical guide for women leaders who want to be heard in the workplace, you can grab a copy in any bookstore. Now we also run a couple of open programmes. We run them once or twice a year each. There is be bolder, our four week confidence and assertiveness course, which is suitable for women at any level. And then there's also influence and impact, which is our Women's Leadership Development Programme. That's a three month small group cohort working closely with me. And then my team and I also work in house in organisations, sometimes that's working with women leaders, whether that's running a whole Women's Leadership Programme, or running one of our really popular master classes for women leaders. Sometimes it's working with early to mid career women, where we're often sharing our be bolder confidence and assertiveness programme. We also offer gender neutral versions of that which are becoming increasingly popular because women aren't the only people experiencing confidence challenges. And then finally, we do work with Ally ship and supporting men to help bring about gender equity in the workplace as well. So if you are heading up a team, or a department or within your organisation, you're responsible for the people function or l&d. And we'd like to have a chat about how we can work together. I would absolutely love that. And you can go to my website and book a call. Or if it's simpler, head on over to LinkedIn. Let's connect and let's chat there. I would love to take working with you to the next level and help you to become an organisation that retains and develops and supports the talented women that work for you.