You need great employees, but there’s a talent shortage. So, you are fighting for all the best people with all your competitors. But, there’s a talent pool out there that many companies neglect: Stay at home moms.
I know it might seem a bit silly to be looking at these women as part of your talent pool. They are home with their kids, not looking for jobs. Once they start looking for jobs, they cease to be stay at home moms, but become part of the workforce, right? Well, let me share a story.
When my oldest child was a year old, my husband and I bought a house in one of those cookie cutter developments in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. As we got to know the neighbors, the general questions started happening. “What do you do?” “Oh,” I’d say, “I work part-time in HR.” The answer from many of other women in the neighborhood was almost identical, “Oh, I wish I could work part-time.”
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Amen! I would love to work for 16-24 hours per week at a job in my field. I’m an analyst. I know there has to be a program, budget, or project that only needs a PT analyst with 6 years of experience. I just haven’t found it, yet.
People are scared to hire part time, but by golly there are lots of people who want part time.
And they want to do it in consistent hours / days too. PT doesn’t mean contract, and I don’t think companies understand that. It can mean Monday and Tuesday all day. Rather than Monday 1-3, Tuesday 8-930, Wednesday 330-5, etc.
Yes. This. I could go on all day about this.
The thing is, so many businesses see it as a hit to their bottom line or an act of service to allow someone to work part time. But, I’m sure it would be a boon for most businesses to have part time positions.
PT are cheaper too, because they don’t usually need benefits. So you pay market rate without the extras. How is that a bad thing to their bottom line? I don’t get it.
All my “full time” service jobs (such as cashier for small business or franchises) would say I was a full time employee, but give me a part-time schedule. Like, there would maybe be 2 or 3 weeks out of the year where they’d actually schedule us for 40 hours, and the rest of the time we’d get an average of 30 hours on the weekly schedule. It was obviously to save money. I don’t know why they even called us full time employees, when we had the same schedule as those designated part-time.
Whenever I give my, “How to Interview for Success” presentation, I always stress that stay-at-home parents should not discount themselves. Often, many would describe themselves as not working, they just stay at home and take care of their kids. I would try to convey that they weren’t just staying at home but that they were employing all kinds of business skills such as project management, budgeting, purchasing, time management, multitasking, and even employee relations. While businesses may discount them, so do they. We need to remind them that they may not be in a business environment per se but they do use the skills.
Thank you for this. I try to play up how my skills as a budget analyst have been put to the test as I stayed home with our newborn. We lost 52% of our household income and total expenses rose 13%. I was able to cut our expenses by a total of 40+% and generate enough additional income to fill the remaining gap. Some people may think that’s just regular “mommy work”, but I had to analyze 3 year’s of budgets and do 2 year forward projections to make sure this budget did not fail. Thanks for letting me know some people value these skills even when applied to mortgages, diapers, and dog food!
I would LOVE to work part time but there is too much involved with my job to cut back hours. If my bosses would allow it. I would even be in the office part time & do the paperwork at home – the non-confidential stuff. I would even job share with another person and we could work opposite shifts and then the office chair would always be full and the work would always be done! There are endless possibilities! I think it is just a matter of Managers seeing the benefits of allowing flexible work schedules to staff. Unfortunately, I do not schedule MY hours. But, I DO schedule all other staff hours!
A couple of years ago, I hired 2 women who each had children. One came straight from being a stay at home mom, and the other came from a different job. They became friends while working together here. Both ended up with circumstances that had them asking to reduce to part time hours. I re-worked the schedule and made it work. A few weeks later, when one of them lost her babysitter, and she thought she might have to quit because of it, I made a suggestion… What would they think if I balanced out their schedules so they could work completely opposite shifts so that they could babysit for each other as well? (The kids were also friends). They liked the idea and tried it out. It worked really, really well. They did straight trades for babysitting, so there went the daycare fees. Plus, it benefitted the company because we had 2 very good, very reliable employees and the position was always filled! We didn’t have to worry about them calling in because a babysitter was late, or a kid had a cold (tummy flus were a different story because no one else should be expected to clean up after that!). Sadly, one of the ladies husband’s was transferred to another town months later, and that arrangement ended:( But I would certainly hire that way again if it worked out!