Released On 06 January 2016
Across the City: Work/Life Balance
Has work/life balance improved over the past year for parents working in the City? What are the biggest challenges they face when juggling a career and a family? We asked these and other questions in our survey to Cityparents members in December. The feedback is mixed…
Over the past year work/life balance has remained the same for half of the members surveyed. 25% reported improvements, mainly as a consequence of being able to work remotely and/or flexibly or by reducing their working hours. Some City parents commented that they were doing better at prioritising their time and managing their boundaries. The remaining 25% of respondents for whom work/life balance had worsened attributed this decline primarily to longer working hours and having fewer colleagues to share the workload with.
Finding an opportunity for career progression remains the principal challenge that working parents expect to face in their City career over the coming year (30% of responses). Achieving work life balance is now the second biggest issue (22%), closely followed by achieving desired promotion (20%) and managing workload (19%). Other issues frequently raised included: achieving promotion whilst pregnant or on maternity leave; returning to work after maternity leave or a career break; and the desire to move jobs.
What would help members to better balance their career and family life? For the majority, it was more flexibility in their working pattern or being able to work from home more often. For many members, working shorter hours and leaving work earlier or simply ‘on time’ would also make a real difference. Securing a part-time arrangement is often just one step forward: many part-time members are concerned about being disadvantaged career-wise or effectively continuing to work the same hours for lower pay.
We invited members to share their views on recent Cityparents changes and possibilities for the future. We were delighted to receive overwhelmingly positive feedback about the rebranding of our website to Cityparents in November. The launch of our Experience Bank, Cityparents Coaching and Career Conversations were also well received. Members offered some thoughtful and (sometimes ambitious!) suggestions for future Speakers and Seminar topics - we’ll look into these further and share an update in our next newsletter in April. In terms of how Cityparents can further support our members, we’re reflecting on the wide range of suggestions offered by members including: highlighting more role models; expanding our offering; improving access to our networks and content; undertaking research and working more with employers to support their working parent employees via our Bespoke Solutions. It’s a big list! But we’ll keep you posted on our plans for 2016 and beyond via this newsletter, our Twitter feed @citymothers and our Linked In group.