#130 Big Careers, Small Children: Jessica Heagren on The Careers After Babies Report & Why Businesses Are Not Holding On To Talented Women After They Have Children

The transcript below has been lightly edited for clarity - just a few ums and ahs removed - but is otherwise presented verbatim in order to accurately represent the conversation in the audio podcast.

 

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:17:12

Jessica Heagren

It's those moments where I've been really brave and I've put myself out there for something that actually I never thought I'd have any chance of getting, any chance of having that conversation. But it's the time where maybe I saw the CEO over the other side of the room in a moment of peace. And I thought, “Just go and say something”.

 

00:00:17:12 - 00:00:37:08

Jessica Heagren

Or it's the time somebody mentioned a job in the room. And I sort of said, “Oh, that sounds interesting. Tell me a bit more about it”. It's those tiny little moments of bravery in those moments of not, you know, actually speaking what's going on in your head that make a massive difference. They've opened up so many doors.

 

00:00:40:05 - 00:01:51:19

Verena Hefti

Welcome to the Big Careers, Small Children podcast. My name is Verena Hefti and I believe that no one should have to choose between becoming a CEO and enjoying their young children. For far too long, brilliant people have found themselves stuck on the career ladder when they have children, and that leads to gender inequality and the same stale, mostly male, middle-class people leading our organisations. We must change this, and I hope that many of you listening to this podcast will progress to the most senior leadership roles possible where you make decisions that make our world a better place. Thank you for listening.

 

Beyond the podcast. I am the CEO and founder of the social enterprise Leaders Plus. You can find out all about our work on the website. And the best way to be kept in touch with things is the newsletter on leadersplus.org/newsletter.

 

This week I'm talking to Jess Heagren about her report Careers After Babies. Why is it so hard to combine big careers with young children? And what she has found in her report that really is the crux of the problem. Enjoy.

 

00:01:52:14 - 00:02:27:24

Jessica Heagren

My name is Jess Heagren. I'm founder of two companies: one called That Works For Me, which is a flexible working platform matching parents to flexible work. The other is a newly formed company called Careers After Babies, which is an accreditation for employers to make them the best employer they can be for working parents. I have, there are six of us in our family, so I have four children all stupidly close together. And so I've had four babies in the last eight years. So, they are eight, six, a little boy who is four on Monday, and I have an almost two-year-old.

 

00:02:27:24 - 00:02:32:15

Verena Hefti

Enjoying the upcoming birthday party. I know that’s always a lot of hard work!

 

00:02:32:15 - 00:02:37:07

Jessica Heagren

I should mention my amazingly supportive husband as well, shouldn’t I?

 

00:02:37:07 - 00:02:38:23

Verena Hefti

Is he in charge of the birthday party?

 

00:02:38:23 - 00:02:47:23

Jessica Heagren

Do you know what? We've actually, we're doing a group birthday party with some friends from school. There are four boys whose birthdays are all within two weeks. And I'm all about that divide and conquer. We've all got enough on our plates.

 

00:02:48:23 - 00:03:02:19

Verena Hefti

Absolutely. And more cake for everyone.

 

So, I'm going to start with a question I ask of everybody. What did you use to assume about combining a big career with young children that you don't believe anymore?

 

00:03:03:03 - 00:03:26:11

Jessica Heagren

Yes, I thought I could do it. I thought I could have a big corporate career with 600 people reporting into me, a couple hundred million pounds worth of income, and that I could make that work alongside having lots of children. And I don't believe that you can do that in a lot of organisations anymore.

 

00:03:27:06 - 00:03:34:14

Verena Hefti

And what made you change your view on this? Was it your own experience or was it what you learned as part of your work?

 

00:03:35:05 - 00:03:54:15

Jessica Heagren

So, I previously had worked in an organisation for a long time beginning - I started in small business and then we were bought and then we were bought again. And so, it kind of felt like each time we were bought, I sort of moved into a different area as well. So, it's kind of like I've had four or five different experiences within different organisations.

 

00:03:55:02 - 00:04:36:18

Jessica Heagren

In the last role I was Strategy and Distribution Director. I'd come up on lots of talent programmes, I was named on succession planning, and I'd have this kind of really storming career. I was the youngest director in the group in my late twenties. I was in the boardroom one day and I was asked what it was like to be a young female in insurance, and I said, “Do you want my honest answer?” And they said, “Yes”.

 

And I said, “Okay. I said, It's rubbish. You know, nobody, nobody looks like me. Nobody sounds like me”. At the time, I'd been married for a couple of years, and I just thought I couldn't see anybody who had young children and a big career and making it work. So even by that point, I think I'd kind of started to doubt whether it was possible.

 

00:04:37:11 - 00:05:05:04

Jessica Heagren

And they as a result of that, they asked me to set up the Diversity and Inclusion Committee, and this was about ten or eleven years ago now. So, it was one of the first in the industry. It was before, you know, diversity was had become as much of a focus as it is now. I worked with a couple of other amazing women. We set that up, we launched it, and that been running for a couple of years at the time I fell pregnant with my daughter, and I think I thought that I would be the same person, on the other side of having children, as I was before. And I think I think you do.

 

00:05:05:04 - 00:05:34:14

Jessica Heagren

But I have this thing that I say to people that you, before you have children, you just exist in this world, and everything is as it is and as it's always been. And then you find out you're pregnant and then it's like you open the door to this parallel world that's been running the whole time, but everything's different and there's just so much that you don't know. There's just a lot to learn. And then when you actually have the baby, I just didn't know which way was up any more like it completely, utterly floored me.

 

00:05:34:14 - 00:06:04:23

Jessica Heagren

It changed everything. And I, I struggled emotionally, struggled from a work point of view. And I don't think what I'd made I'd made a mistake in that I had committed to going back after five months, which I stuck to, but I think I didn't really let work go properly in that time either. So, I remember one of my team coming down to do pay review because it was that time when the baby was three months old - all on my, you know, my invitation and my thinking it would be fine.

 

00:06:05:09 - 00:06:30:08

Jessica Heagren

And when that actually came to going back it, it was just awful. I lost all of my confidence. I hated it. I hated having to leave the baby in a different county. You know, I was working out of the London office, leaving the baby behind in Hampshire. I really, really struggled. I don't think I spoke in a board meeting for the first two or three months because I just couldn't find my voice to say I just felt whatever I said, I just thought I would be shot down.

 

00:06:30:08 - 00:07:06:24

Jessica Heagren

And, you know, a lot of this was probably in my head. But I just thought people would say, you know, “you missed that. You don't know about that anymore”. And I think my not being there had also enabled some other voices to come through so that by that point there were a couple of other women in the boardroom, neither of them had young children, and they were  still there doing their stupidly long hours and being really present, whereas I was like, “Oh, I need to go. I don't care whether this meeting's finished, I need to go, because I’ve got to do the nursery pick up”. Even though I should point out actually my husband and I very much shared we one of us would do drop off what they were going to pick up and that type of thing. So, we both still got a full day.

 

00:07:07:07 - 00:07:39:02

Jessica Heagren

But I think in the corporate world, especially back then, so we were talking almost nine years ago now, it just didn't work. And I was the only member of that board at that time working a four-day week. So, they would all just carry on on Fridays, you know, doing their thing. And I remember stuff would come up that was in my world of strategy or about the key accounts or about some of the businesses that I ran, and they sort of went ahead without me. Decisions were made and conversations were held that I wasn't part of, and it was dreadful.

 

00:07:39:09 - 00:08:13:07

Jessica Heagren

You know that, combined with my own confidence issues that I was up against, I just found really, really hard and what it meant was that I we knew that we wanted more than one children. Now we have four, too many, but we knew that we wanted more than one and I think what we ended up doing was making a decision about having a second baby much more quickly than we would have done because I saw that as my ‘out’. As soon as I fell pregnant again, which happened quite quickly, I just thought, well, this is my way of getting back home to Hampshire and being okay.

 

00:08:14:04 - 00:08:19:03

Verena Hefti

And fast forward nine years: how did this Careers After Babies report happen?

 

00:08:19:14 - 00:08:39:20

Jessica Heagren

So, I’ll catch you up quickly, I guess, on the interim. So, after I had that second baby, I tried the stay-at-home mom thing for I think I did about a year. And then I started obsessing over things and I would put everything into spreadsheets. And my mum and my husband very gently said to me, “Jess, do you think you might need something else; you might need to work?”

 

00:08:39:20 - 00:09:06:11

Jessica Heagren

And I went on to set up a platform called That Works For Me, which helps women find part time, flexible work. We connect them with businesses who are able to offer that, and that's been running for a couple of years. But over the last year or so, I've found that more businesses have been saying, “Can you help us with this gender pay gap? Can you help us hang on to women, you know, they're going off maternity leave and they're not coming back. What are we doing wrong?” So, I’d started a bit more work in that space.

 

00:09:06:11 - 00:09:45:02

Jessica Heagren

Then at the back end of last year, I was invited up to one of the APPG cross-parliamentary groups. There's one that's themed Women and Work, and I did a search for some data to support all of that anecdotal evidence that I had around what the impact was on women's careers. And I couldn't find it. So, I thought, well, I'll put a Typeform out and I'll get a few people's data back at least and I'll have something to draw from. And I was expecting maybe 50-100 responses, but it very rapidly went up to sort of eight or 900. And then I thought, “Oh my God, I'm going to have to sit and analyse this data! Quick, close it, that’s too many!”

 

00:09:45:02 - 00:10:07:05

Jessica Heagren

Actually, what happened is then I started reading the data. I just I was blown away by every person's honesty in that. And I they were quite a lot of opportunities in that questionnaire for people to be, to kind of tell their whole story. And as I was reading these stories, I would just end up crying all the time because, you know, just the things that these women face…

 

00:10:07:11 - 00:10:27:01

Jessica Heagren

I think we whenever we think about the impact on women's careers, we just think about the job part of it. It is the whole of people's lives. It's their children, it's their partners, it's their companies. It's everything to them. It's not just about the work. And that kind of struck me once again. And I just thought, I need to do something proper with this data.

 

00:10:27:01 - 00:11:10:08

Jessica Heagren

I can't, you know, just pop out a paper and just say, you know, this is what happened. I need to tell these stories in the right way. So, I spent I spent the last two months of last year producing that paper. So, we eventually published it, I think, in, it was about the third week of January after lots of proofreading help from lots of friends. Sent that out, and I don't I don't know the official definition of going viral, but it definitely went pretty crazy on LinkedIn, and it's been downloaded thousands and thousands of times. I've had lots of people get in touch. The findings have been used in court. They've been used in tribunals, in business cases. I just felt the impact of it and the fact that, you know, we're actually doing something good with this.

 

00:11:10:19 - 00:11:31:07

Jessica Heagren

But I guess the question then is how do you maintain that? So, we produced this set of data, people are emotionally reacting to it, but how do you get them to then make permanent change off the back of it? So, I started working on a model of standards for businesses. So, these are the minimum standards that you need to meet in order to be good for working parents.

 

00:11:31:07 - 00:12:00:21

Jessica Heagren

And then also finding examples of the ones who are absolutely amazing and outstanding in these areas. And I've developed an assessment process off the back of that so we can work with businesses to assess where they are against those standards. We produce a scorecard that says, “Here's all the things that you're doing really well at. Here's the things that you could do better, and here's the things you absolutely need to do better.” And they can work towards the Careers After Babies accreditation. And I help them with that road map to get there and help them basically become better employers.

 

00:12:00:21 - 00:12:21:08

Jessica Heagren

So, it's been quite a journey, but a massively exciting one. And I am I feel I've kind of reached that point where I feel good about what I'm doing and I feel that it complements my pre-baby skill set in that sort of strategy change, transformation, developing businesses. So yeah, I hope that we can make a real impact with that.

 

00:12:21:17 - 00:12:57:05

Verena Hefti

Great. Thank you so much for doing that research and spending your life - those are two months you're never going to get back - researching this. I was really struck by the number of people who completely left the workforce. So, and even, you know, the pressure to become freelance are so 14%. I think in your research you became fully freelancers. What are people getting from those roles, freelance roles that they aren't getting within employment? Because surely those people are working hard and producing great work as freelancers. Why can't they be employed if they want to be?

 

00:12:57:05 - 00:14:13:18

Jessica Heagren

I think it's a really interesting thing to pull out, isn't it? So, if you ask any freelancer who's a parent, they will say, “I have complete control over my time”. And I have this belief that if we're given the freedom to make our own choices about how we spend our time, then we're ultimately much happier people. And I think this is something that organizations could really embrace. And I see some doing it and some doing it incredibly well, where we move to this place, where actually we think about objectives and contribution rather than time - when, where, and that sort of thing. I think that that sort of shift is starting to happen in some places. And freelancers, the reason people go freelance is because they have that. They have that complete freedom over when they work. So yes, they'll be tied to certain client meetings and things, but they can work around school runs, around baby sickness, around partners, jobs. It becomes that choice, doesn't it, as to when you're actually completing work? And I think there's so much that employers can learn from that and should take from that, that if you give people that bit of freedom, they, you know, that's less about clock-watching, more about actual performance and input and impact, then I think that makes a massive difference to people.

 

00:14:14:19 - 00:14:22:09

Verena Hefti

What do you think stops people from that outcome-based management, that you describe? Why don't employers just embrace it and go with it?

 

00:14:22:21 - 00:15:20:16

Jessica Heagren

I feel like a lot of the working world is still wedded to this archaic notion of Monday to Friday, 9 to 5. I need to see people working. And it's so outdated. The stat that I often point to is the fact we're only productive 60% of the time. And if you take 60% of a working day, you know what that fits really neatly into? School hours. Yes. I just I feel that that bit of creativity is missing. People can't seem to let go of the that notion of having to work within those times. And one of the excuses that I often hear thrown back actually is about customers being available. I mean, given that some 80% of the population are parents, then, you know, it doesn't have to work that way. And actually, the world operates on a 24 seven basis anyway. So, it's not like we are in this kind of nine to 9 to 5 pace that everybody talks about.

 

00:15:20:16 - 00:16:00:21

Verena Hefti

And I really think employers who don't take a step forward with this now are going to lose out so much because, if you think about our working world, 18th century industrialization, everyone worked crazy hours if they were working in a factory, and then when I was a child, you usually work Saturdays and now people talk about the four day working week. It is going to change, one hundred percent. I'm very convinced - I haven't got data to back it up, but I am, I've got a very strong gut feeling. The way we work is going to change for sure. Just by history, it’s always change. It's unlikely that we'll stay stable. And so, the employers who are going to stay as they are and are refusing to change. They're going to be the ones where parents don't.

 

00:16:01:02 - 00:16:22:16

Jessica Heagren

Yeah, I agree with you. I think there have been different sort of points in time that have really impacted how we work. So, in the Industrial Revolution, the war, and I thought COVID would I think it still is, but I thought COVID, and lockdowns would be the next trigger for a revolution. And I think in some places it is.

 

00:16:23:07 - 00:16:46:19

Jessica Heagren

I'm surprised and disappointed at the number of organisations who have moved back to this, “Right, no, you know, come on everyone, back in the office”. That said, I think there's much more of a spectrum now. So, we've got one end where people are completely focused on, as we said, outcome-based management. And then at the other end, you've got the kind of old dinosaurs who are saying, “Right, everyone back in, I need to see you and I want you here all hours”.

 

00:16:46:19 - 00:17:04:06

Jessica Heagren

Obviously, I speak to a lot of women in particular who are looking for work. And I, I see now the options. I spoke to a lady the other day, and I absolutely love this story. So, she had three offers on the table. She was amazing at what she does. She specialises in employer brands, and she had three offers on the table.

 

00:17:04:06 - 00:18:10:07

Jessica Heagren

So, she had one where they wanted her in the office five days a week. It was it was exceptionally well paid, above what she was expecting. Her second choice was one who wanted her in the office four days a week and would let her have a day at home. Maybe would entertain her finishing early a couple of days a week to pick her kids up from school. That was sort of mid pay range. And the third offer was from an organisation who said, “I don't care when you work, this is the job that I need you to do. You decide how you do it”. And it was it was a smaller organisation, and it was under kind of, I guess, the amount that she could achieve and guess which job she for. You know, it's obvious that she would go for that last one. And I hope she had conversations around salary and things. But I just think it says it all. And I hear that conversation happening quite a lot, that, you know, people have much more choice. It's an employer, it's an employee's market at the moment. So, people are able to push for more, they're able to ask for more. And I think the onus is on us a bit to demand more from those employers and from those businesses that we're talking to.

 

00:18:10:21 - 00:18:42:23

Verena Hefti

It's so funny because we talk to a lot of our fellows, you know, behind closed doors about how to have those negotiations and how to have this conversation. And it's so funny because they always, almost, take quite a long time for them to say, “Yeah, actually now I am going to ask, even though it sounds crazy to ask for a pay rise during maternity leave and change my jobs and make it go from 4 to 3 days” and then they ask and then they get you know, it's quite surprising that, yes, sometimes you just do need to ask.

 

00:18:43:05 - 00:19:14:22

Verena Hefti

So, there was so many rich stats in there and lots of good qualitative data as well. I was extremely disappointed to see that the middle managers were more likely to leave than the entry career level professionals, and that is very unfortunate. If you look at the gender pay gap and seniority levels, what do you think is causing middle managers to leave in such big droves for working parents?

 

00:19:14:22 - 00:20:23:14

Jessica Heagren

Really disappointing, isn't it? So, the stat was a 36% drop off at middle management level and the corresponding 44% increase in admin and entry-level roles. And what the commentary supported happening is that women are leaving their middle management jobs either because they can't get flexibility, the flexibility they need, or because they can't afford the cost of childcare to cover it. Those were the two big issues and actually it was making more sense for them to stop work, their partner to continue working, and then them re-entering the workforce at a later date in what they would consider an easier position, perhaps with a bit more flexibility. I'm no rocket scientist, but I think if we look at gender pay gaps and we look at the fact that at the age of 30 the gender pay gap is around 1% but by the age of 40, it's around 15%, and the most common age for women to have children is age 30. What's happening in that decade is that we are losing all of our middle managers. And the biggest contributor to that is having children and the fact that we’re not bringing women back in on flexible, flexible working arrangements.

 

00:20:23:19 - 00:20:49:21

Jessica Heagren

It's also the reason that we have such disparity of male to female ratios at leadership levels as well, because we're not bringing those women back. I think the positives that I hear from some organisations who are better at this is they're getting better at kind of bringing women back into the same place on their PDPs, so I know Aviva are actually brilliant at that. You literally step back in where you were before any training and development is available to you.

 

00:20:49:21 - 00:21:09:19

Jessica Heagren

And that should be a big- when we threw out the accreditation, we looked at the four chronological steps you go through. So, before you have children, your actual leave, your return to work, and then your ongoing career progress. And we have standards within each of those that look at the policy, process, and practice areas.

 

00:21:09:19 - 00:21:30:15

Jessica Heagren

And I think that whole first of all, how do you tackle a successful return - so, what do women need? Which largely revolves around, “I need nurture, I need empathy, I need understanding, I need some support”. And then that combined with ongoing career progress. So, when do we start looking at PDPs again? When do we have those conversations?

 

00:21:30:15 - 00:21:47:14

Jessica Heagren

Actually, for some women, having that conversation, as soon as they come back, they're totally up for. Others, they might say, “You know what? Can you give me a few months just to let things settle down and then we'll have a chat about it”. What's happening at the moment is that we make assumptions that because they have young children and have lots going on in their lives, that they don't want to make progress.

 

00:21:47:14 - 00:22:02:03

Jessica Heagren

And I think that's probably one of the biggest slaps in the face that so many of us have faced. I know I did when I went back. You know, job opportunities came up and I was a bit like, hang on a minute, if this had been two or three years ago, I would have been the first person in line for that.

 

00:22:02:03 - 00:22:32:09

Jessica Heagren

And yet I didn't even know existed at that time. And I think that's a real, it's another confidence knock, isn’t it? That's a really hard thing to try and come to terms with, that just because you've done this incredible thing of producing another human being, all of a sudden you don't have the same - I don't know - that in somebody else's eyes you're not as good as you were before. And it's insane when you think about all of the skills that having children adds to your armoury. And I think it detracts from it.

 

00:22:32:09 - 00:24:21:24

Verena Hefti

Women hospital doctors earn 18.9% less than their male counterparts in the UK. On the rare occasion where, if you are a doctor, you work Monday to Friday in a hospital. That is as if Friday was a day where you work mostly for free. Sadly, the picture doesn't look much better when you look at the pay gap of nurses or allied health professionals, midwives, etc. A lot of that inequality is due to parents, especially mums’, careers getting stuck when they have children. And that is why we have launched a specific Fellowship programme for parents with young children in the NHS who want to progress their careers. Nurses, doctors, midwife pharmacists, non-clinical staff, etc. are all welcome. It's accredited by the Faculty for Medical Leadership and Management, and there are part-sponsored places for members of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine. We have up to ten of those. You’ll join a really supportive network of non-judgmental peers, and you get support to develop your career alongside your family in an environment that supports confidence and courage without burning the candle at all ends.

 

Applications close on the 11th of July, but we accept applicants on a rolling basis. Those who apply sooner will be able to choose their preferred date, first come, first served.

 

All the details are on leadersplus.org/NHSFellowship, so leadersplus.org/NHSFellowship. And any questions for me, just get in touch via email.

 

00:24:22:05 - 00:25:01:13

Verena Hefti

I always say that even if you right now don't feel like progressing, you should say that you're interested in career progression long term. Just because if you, at that moment, say, “Well, six months goes very quickly. So, if you come back...” and then you know you might be interested again in six months, you just say “Right now I really want to make sure I have an excellent re induction and to make sure I can do my very best, etc., etc. I'm really excited about continuing to progress my career after that phase”. So, I think it's really important to always say that. Never say, and this may be controversial, but never say to an employer that right now you want to just stagnate, because they will remember that for sure.

 

00:25:01:13 - 00:26:02:07

Jessica Heagren

I think it's really great advice. My dad always said to me, “Never, ever say no to a new opportunity. If a door opens, it's open and once it closes, it might never reopen again. So even if you're not quite sure about it, go and have the conversation”. And as I look back over my career, I was listening to a couple of earlier episodes of your podcast this morning, and I if I look back over my career, but what those points were, it's those moments when I've been really brave and I've put myself out there for something that actually I never thought I'd have any chance of getting or any chance of having that conversation. But it's the time where maybe I saw the CEO over the other side of the room in a moment of peace, and I thought, “just go and say something”. Or it's the time somebody mentioned a job in a room. And I sort of said, “Well, that sounds interesting and tell me a bit more about it”. So, tiny little moments of bravery in those moments of not, you know, actually speaking what's going on in your head that make a massive difference. It opened up so many doors.

 

00:26:03:03 - 00:26:48:14

Verena Hefti

I couldn't agree more. And I really- you would love, and this is not a plug for the podcast, but you would love the Christian Busch episode as he basically did research to identify exactly that that type of attitude creates serendipity. So anyway, I implemented his advice completely. By the way, I saw a poster for a choir where only advanced singers are welcome. Now, I am not an advanced singer, but of course I did because I just read the book. So, I then signed up and it's been like life changing. It's been so amazing, so fun, very difficult, totally out of my comfort zone. But that's not career related. But I think saying yes to these opportunities, it's transformational. Anyway. we should be talking about your report, which is very, very long and very intense.

 

00:26:49:01 - 00:27:11:10

Jessica Heagren

You can always come back from things, you can always reverse things, or you can always say, “Actually, we've had the chat and it's not for me”. That's the thing that really stood out from what he said that that little chance just might never come up again. So just take and grab it. And I, I have tried to follow through on that and it's just made a massive difference. So back to the report, it was way too long, but there was too much good stuff in there.

 

00:27:11:14 - 00:27:37:14

Verena Hefti

No, no, no, it wasn't. That's not what I meant. It wasn't too long, but I'm just saying we should be talking about this because otherwise, you know, we have a lot to cover. So, the other thing that was really sad. I found that quite sad about the maternity leave and who takes maternity leave and who doesn't. And then how long maternity leaves are, and the pressures people are under. Can you talk a bit to that?

 

00:27:37:14 - 00:27:57:06

Jessica Heagren

Yeah, I can. I think this- maternity leave, gosh it’s interesting, isn’t it? So, the majority of people that we spoke to said that they would have taken longer maternity leave if they could have done, which makes me really sad to think there were so many women out there not able to spend that kind of precious time with babies because they're only babies once.

 

00:27:57:06 - 00:28:43:06

Jessica Heagren

And as we all know as mums, that time just flies by. I cannot believe I'm about to have a nine-year-old and an almost two-year-old, I feel like I literally just had that last baby. I think the other real driver is the way job protection works in this country. So, if you take less than six months, you're entitled to return to exactly the same role. And if you take more than six months, you could return to a similar role. And lots of organisations really use that. We saw through the report that the majority of women in really senior positions took less than six months, and that was largely attributed to the fact that they wanted to protect their roles. And then the ones that were taking more than six months, I think 24% of them returned to a different role and 57% then ended up leaving within two years.

 

00:28:43:20 - 00:29:11:06

Jessica Heagren

Now, one of the things I'm screaming out to organisations is this isn't working as a retention tool. So, you're saying that you're bringing women back and you're putting them into a different role. But actually, that's a really critical point at which you're losing their engagement because they're then going back not only kind of feeling like a different person, but you're putting them into a different team with a different job and, you know, asking them to do something different. And we lose another massive chunk of women at that point.

 

00:29:11:06 - 00:29:31:11

Jessica Heagren

And I think just the whole thing about maternity leave, the other really disappointing thing for me actually was around shared parental leave. So, I've just finished a book called The Equal Parent by Paul Morgan-Bentley, and he's an investigative journalist for The Times. Him and his partner have had a little boy through surrogacy, so they’re in a gay marriage.

 

00:29:32:00 - 00:29:54:06

Jessica Heagren

And he talks about, it's really interesting when you take the gender out of it. So how- what's your approach to parenting to that first year? And he and his husband took six months. So, he took the first six months, his husband took the second six months. And they just, the book was really enlightening for talking about what that does for your relationship, your relationship with the child, your ability to respond.

 

00:29:54:15 - 00:30:15:16

Jessica Heagren

And I absolutely I love it as an example, you know, if there were no women involved at all, what does that look like? I was really fortunate. My husband and I, from day one, I had the big job and I always said, look, when we have children, these are OUR children that we're both we're both fully involved. And he still to this day, actually, he has Tuesdays off and I have Fridays off.

 

00:30:15:16 - 00:30:52:22

Jessica Heagren

And that's our day with the little ones, the pre-schoolers. And then the other days we just sort of share between us. But what we're still seeing, with shared parental leave, is that there is only 25% of couples are even discussing the possibility of it. That's a quarter of us. So, we're all assuming that the maternity and all of that kind of caregiving falls on us for that first year and beyond, and I think that's really disappointing. So, the report found a 7% uptake, the national average is 2%, so it’s slightly more encouraging in that perhaps that's starting to shift.

 

00:30:53:13 - 00:31:16:20

Jessica Heagren

I feel like we need to rethink that first year and those first couple of years and what that looks like and what we want those relationships to be. There’s a real- there's certainly a shift in men's desire to take more of an active role, so particularly in men under 40 that I think they definitely want to play much more of a part in their children's lives in those early years.

 

00:31:16:20 - 00:31:36:15

Jessica Heagren

I think actually as women, we need to kind of think about letting that go a little bit more. You know, if you want to have that year, you want to have longer, absolutely great. But I actually think we probably need to stand up a bit more to some of our partners and say, “you know, what are you bringing to the table here? What are you going to do in terms of leave? Because actually it shouldn't be my career that's disproportionately affected.”

 

00:31:36:15 - 00:32:01:16

Verena Hefti

I completely agree. But as you say, it is a letting go. And I have heard women say I don't want to give this time up, and that was it. You need to find the right thing for everybody. But we have a structural problem because especially in professional roles or leadership roles we end up having enhanced maternity pay, not enhanced parental leave pay. And that's something- I don't know why that's not illegal. I think that should be.

 

00:32:01:24 - 00:32:17:22

Jessica Heagren

Again, it's something that we're looking at through the accreditation. So, I've spoken to some 60, 70 organisations over the last few weeks about what that looks like, what they have in place, and the ones that are really committing to this are saying, you know, “it's equal”. And actually, they're not limiting the time at which they can take them.

 

00:32:17:22 - 00:32:41:11

Jessica Heagren

So, I know some organisations have said, “well, yeah, you can share your leave, but you have to do it within the first six months”. And actually, if you think of it from the parent's perspective, that's just not helpful there. I think care still needs to be taken. I think, actually, if you think about it in conjunction with the current cost of childcare, I know there have been some amazing moves by Joeli and her team to try and move that forward.

 

00:32:41:24 - 00:33:09:01

Jessica Heagren

But if you think that we still have that issue, I think there's a real opportunity for both, you know, both partners in the relationship to play a part in childcare and those early years and what that looks like. And I think there’s only positives that come from it. My husband's relationship with our children is wonderful. But he's just as capable of, you know, spending the day taking the baby out, remembering the right things in the bag, because that's how it's always been.

 

00:33:09:15 - 00:33:39:01

Verena Hefti

I mean, it's a personal thing. I don't want to tell anyone listening that you're doing it wrong. But I think there's a structural problem if we have a shared parental leave system and nobody takes it up. There's a problem with the system, and also with the culture to an extent, because what's wrong with our expectations of what a mother should do and a father? I often when I have the option, I often speak to my mum about it and she said, “well, actually when I was growing up, I was doing a lot less than you guys are. What women are doing now with the children”.

 

00:33:39:01 - 00:34:15:17

Jessica Heagren

I think it's a really good one, and I don't think anyone's doing it wrong. I've had a couple of women get in touch saying, “you know what, you're promoting the opposite of women staying at home with their children. I am certainly not doing that. And I, I totally understand when people want to take more time off. And I think we all have differences. For me, it's about creating the right culture of choice. It comes down to that choice again, you know, if we’re given them freedom to do the things that we want to do, ultimately, we're happier, healthier, we're more engaged, our children are happier and healthier. It's about creating the right environments to enable that.

 

00:34:15:17 - 00:34:32:06

Verena Hefti

I was really interested to see that one in five women in your survey leave the workforce altogether, and if there was one message - I know that your accreditation is robust - but if there was one message that you had to employers. What would it be?

 

00:34:32:22 - 00:35:47:00

Jessica Heagren

The number one thing has to be around flexibility. We've talked about it already, but, you know, organisations insist on having people in the office Monday to Friday. It's just pointless. You're never going to get those women back. I think if the report did one thing, it proved that 85% of us can't make full time working in the office, work alongside having young children. And the way to overcome that is by offering employee some level of flexibility, you know, whether it is working from home, whether it's slightly reduced hours. There are so many different ways that you can flex around people. I think that if you haven't seen it already, which I'd be surprised in today's day and age, if you haven't already, do and don't just look at it. Listen to what people are telling you. I think I've had a couple of awful examples recently of organizations kind of going out, talking to people, have all of the evidence there in front of them, and deciding to ignore it and go with what they want to do, they cannot get this, you know, presenteeism. They just can't overcome the issue of presenteeism, wanting to see people. And I think it's old and it's archaic and you lose people. You are losing people whether it silently or publicly, you will be losing people because of your rigidity.

 

00:35:47:15 - 00:36:03:17

Verena Hefti

As we just said, the report is very comprehensive. Can you draw out one stat, one piece of the report that moves you the most. You're clearly very passionate, very driven. Is there something that that inspires you the most, or got you thinking about from this report?

 

00:36:04:00 - 00:36:28:14

Jessica Heagren

The biggest thing was the one that I've just mentioned, I think, around the fact that 85% of women can't make full time working work alongside having children. And I think what really came out, if you read some of the stories in there, is that we’re all absolutely breaking our balls to try and be great mums. And we're trying to be good in our careers, been and we’re trying to do this and it's leading to poor mental health and it's leading to breakdowns.

 

00:36:28:14 - 00:36:56:03

Jessica Heagren

The number of women said that talked about depression and talked about how they literally can't cope. I just I felt like I was reading the accounts of just an absolutely broken group. There's just so much pressure to be brilliant at all of those things. I just feel like if work can just give a little bit. We're renowned for being massively productive in the time we've got, and I think when you have children that just escalates even more.

 

00:36:56:03 - 00:37:49:04

Jessica Heagren

I mean, what I can achieve in 45 minutes when that’s all I’ve got available to me now is just mental. Same for everyone I know. You have to get things done more quickly because you have to get through everything. But trying to do everything, at the rate that everyone’s expecting and trying to fit a full time work, even if, this was another thing I was thinking actually, that where lots of people never had their jobs resized so they'd taken a five day job and they were condensing it into four days, they were finishing earlier, and unsurprisingly they were burning out because of that. And I think that that kind of really made me think about actually flexibility has to be offered in the right way and it has to be thought about and we have to be looking at the construct of people's roles and the time that we're giving them to do it and what we're asking them to do because we're just creating a population of mums who just can't do everything.

 

00:37:49:04 - 00:38:13:14

Jessica Heagren

And I think we shouldn’t all be sat feeling like we’re rubbish at everything because we're not, we're amazing. We’re brilliant, we’ve got so much to offer and we're doing so well. We’re bringing up our children and we’re making businesses run and we want to. That was the other big thing. And we actually found that 98% of women wanted to go back to work. And I think the later stat said that 74% of families have two working parents.

 

00:38:13:24 - 00:39:06:18

Jessica Heagren

So, there’s the need financially for them to go back to work as well. You know, how can we make all these pieces work and play together in a way that we're not burning out, making ourselves ill, giving ourselves breakdowns? There are solutions to these things, which is the bit I feel really passionately about. You know, you just need people to have that penny drop moment that makes them think differently about how they can change and what they can introduce to make things different. And that's what I'm trying to achieve with the accreditation, because I don't - not all of it costs a fortune, you know? Some of it is cultural changes and making things easier for women to return or, you know, changing slightly the way they go on maternity leave, some of the processes around it. This doesn't have to cost a fortune. But the difference you can make to an individual is monstrous.

 

00:39:06:18 - 00:39:58:19

Verena Hefti

Okay. And that's why with Leaders Plus I'm so passionate about supporting people to progress their careers. Because we're all going to be the future. I do think things are going to change, but we need pioneers who do things differently, who are willing to fight the fight and, you know, have those conversations because it is a fight, isn't it? If you're the first one at your level, first one to have a child, the first one to work flexibly... So, it is a lot of negotiation that you need to do while still potentially being quite sleep deprived or, actually let me rephrase, certainly sleep deprived, and it’s not easy. And it’s okay. It's normal that's not easy. So, thank you for providing some helpful data to help that negotiation. I love that it's been used by people in tribunals. That's brilliant.

 

00:39:58:19 - 00:40:18:00

Jessica Heagren

Yeah, it’s amazing to see some of the messages that I've had of people reaching out saying how they've used it and where they've used it is just incredible. And I think because I didn't anticipate this at the beginning, it's kind of doubly as amazing. But the fact that I think it's fascinating how many people are surprised by it, particularly men.

 

00:40:18:00 - 00:40:40:06

Jessica Heagren

So there have been not nearly as many men downloading it as women, but I think they're the most shocked by it. And interestingly, a couple of polls I've seen on LinkedIn are people saying to men, you know, “what do you think is happening to women? Do you see them falling out?” There is almost a complete blind spot. They see that this is happening, and they don't think it's a problem.

 

00:40:40:18 - 00:41:01:05

Jessica Heagren

But what the report showed was how many women messaged me saying “I didn't realize this happened to other people. I thought it was me. I thought it was my sister and I thought it was my friend. I didn't realize this was happening on such a major scale”, and I've been thanked a number of times for kind of giving voice to that and I’ve been delighted to have been able to.

 

00:41:01:22 - 00:41:32:01

Verena Hefti

Absolutely. There's so much more that we can talk about, but I have been instructed to keep podcast episodes to long enough for a commute all around, but no longer. So, let's picture a listener who is overwhelmed and who is finding it difficult, experiencing things like you have described them. If there would be one or two small practical things, they could do this week to start feeling better. There is no magic answer. But where should they start, in your view?

 

00:41:32:04 - 00:42:09:13

Jessica Heagren

But there are things you can do. So, I think number one is to have the conversation with your employer. I think you can be honest without saying “I'm falling apart because you're giving me too much work”. I think saying, you know, describing the situation, particularly if you're in the situation that I described earlier, where you have reduced your days and you’re still trying to do the same amount of work. I think having a conversation and actually maybe, you know, taking suggestions, so say, “I've done [x] so I could pass these responsibilities on to someone else”, go with some solutions, which would be my first one. So, you know, talk to people, get help.

 

00:42:09:13 - 00:42:18:14

Jessica Heagren

My second one would be if you're in a relationship and you're you are co-parenting, you need to be talking to that person about them picking up their share.

 

00:42:18:23 - 00:42:32:21

Jessica Heagren

You know that you're both parents, you're both involved. And there is onus on both of you to bring your children up, to set a good example and to make sure that one of you isn't crashing and burning while the other one gets to go out and live the life that they want to live quite happily.

 

00:42:33:12 - 00:42:43:14

Verena Hefti

Very, very good advice. I'm sure our listeners will want to download the report and want to find out more about you and your work, so where should they go?

 

00:42:43:14 - 00:43:09:22

Jessica Heagren

You can always connect with me on LinkedIn - it's Jessica Heagren. Or if you want to download the report, ThatWorksForMe.co.uk and if you hover on the dropdown at the top and you'll to see the Careers After Babies report and then look out for the Careers After Babies website, which is launching very soon. And I'm just in the process of finishing the copy for and yeah, so that will be up and running soon. Hopefully you'll see and hear more about that.

 

00:43:10:02 - 00:43:18:03

Verena Hefti

Fantastic. Good luck with everything. Thank you so much. Let's stay in touch and let me know if there's anything to put.