Blog

Given that our first child's birth was one of the catalysts for launching The Great & The Good, Emma and I have long been advocates for working parents having fulfilling careers.

We are constantly hearing from mums who are seeing their careers stall after having children but also from dads who are denied the flexibility to play a more active part in their children’s lives. It often seems that neither parent is getting what they want.

I was therefore very interested to read about the work of Jess Heagren.

Rather than silently seethe, Jessica decided to do something about the problem and founded Careers After Babies last year. Her aim is to change how companies behave and thus make them a better employer of choice for working parents.

To that end, Careers After Babies offers a range of templates, tools and advice to employers. Businesses can also achieve Accreditation (Certification for smaller businesses) to proudly show off their commitment to building a parent-friendly culture.

YourStudio recently went through this process and their Group Head of People Sarah Spate (pictured) was kind enough to share their story.

​

Sarah explains that YourStudio (an 80-person retail design and strategy agency) was already pretty advanced in their thinking before speaking with Careers After Babies. Flexible working was the norm and public parenting was very common among senior staff.

Working with Careers After Babies has therefore been a helpful aide to formalise the agency’s best practices but also to encourage discussion around parents’ careers.

The discussions highlighted steps that YourStudio could take to ensure that parents (as well as other carers) continued to be fully supported – for example ensuring that calls with overseas clients weren’t at bath/bedtime. They were also able to ensure that caring responsibilities didn’t become an impediment to career progression.

The result has been not only a cohort of very engaged parents but also an appreciation from the wider team that YourStudio has a genuinely human approach.

For more information about the work Careers After Babies are doing visit careersafterbabies.org.