The Maternity Coach Ltd

Managing boundaries is key to managing our energy levels when we return to work after parental leave. But how to do this effectively? One of the key things to bear in mind when thinking about how to manage your boundaries at work is to understand your preference for managing the different roles in your life. An integrator is someone who is happy for the different areas of their life to mix and blur. People with this preference found the switch to home working during lockdown more easy to adapt to as they welcomed the ability to integrate home tasks into their working day and vice versa. A separator is someone who prefers to keep work and non-work completely separate. Working from home during lockdown was more stressful for people with this preference as it caused the different areas of their life to crash together providing little to no opportunity to separate work from home life. Psychologists see the preferences for integration and separation of work and home life as a continuum, so you may find you sit somewhere between the two. You might also have a more complicated preference, such as integrating in school holidays, but separating during term time. Typically we find it hard to manage our boundaries when we aren’t able to maintain our preferred style of working, either due to our workplace culture or, often, our own behaviour. Once you know how you would like the different areas of your life to sit together, the next step is to look at where your different worlds clash. Here are some questions to help you create and manage boundaries that will work for you and help you manage these clashes: 1. What are the main pinch points for you in your working day when it comes to managing boundaries between home and work life? 2.           What is the most common cause for an issue at this pinch point? 3.           In an ideal world, what would this part of your day look like if everything was working as you’d like it to? 4.           What do you need to put in place to create and maintain a boundary and work towards creating your ideal? 5.           Who can help you with this? 6.           How can technology help you create and manage this new boundary? 7.           If there’s one thing that might hold you back from maintaining your new boundary, what is it? And how can you mitigate against this? #maternitycoach #maternitycoaching #boundaries #managingboundaries

Returning from parental leave soon? Here are our top tips for a smooth return… #ParentalLeave #MaternityLeave #toptips

It’s just five weeks until the The Inclusive Workplace Conference in London, two days of case studies, inspiration and thought leadership to help you build a more inclusive workplace at County Hall, London Waterloo on Wednesday 20th and Thursday 21st November 2024. We’re delighted to share that our MD Frances Cushway will be taking part in a panel discussion on Wednesday 20th on ‘Building inclusion for working families in 2024’ alongside Jennifer Liston-Smith, Charissa King and Jane van Zyl For more information, and to book your ticket for the conference, see https://lnkd.in/ekQajZCg

Are you focusing on making recruitment more inclusive in your organisation? 🎤 Learn how BT Group is making recruitment inclusive at The Inclusive Workplace Conference 💡 In this fireside chat with Mark Brooker, Head of Talent Acquisition and Attraction at BT, we will discuss their approach to inclusive recruitment with a focus on topics such as embedding diversity and inclusion through the end to end hiring process, how third parties are engaged through an IE&D lens, steps taken to upskill recruiters and hiring managers, and how data is used to drive decisions and actions when hiring diverse talent. You can see the agenda and book using code EARLYIWC to get 40% off your place at https://lnkd.in/euMZZAcC

A few years ago, a new member joined the team I worked in. Their behaviour in the office was a little unusual and tested my management skills to the limit. I remember talking to a colleague to gauge their thoughts. My new team member: - Used to lie down on the floor with their eyes closed when I gave them a new task to work on. - Took their socks off in the office or in meetings with other colleagues to check for fluff between their toes. - Emptied the contents of their desk into their bag and carried it around with them whenever they left the office. Sometimes they would just randomly empty their bag elsewhere in the office and walk off, leaving everything there. - Put another colleague's phone in a glass of water during a meeting. - Decided the box some office equipment came in was their new office. They moved everything from their desk there and insisted on staying in the box for meetings and lunch, often demanding I bring lunch to them there. - Interrupted me in my meetings to show me a random spot on the office carpet, repeatedly shouting ‘look’. - Liked to walk between meetings with their coat on their head, which meant they often bumped into doors, walls or other colleagues on the way, to which they just giggled. - Drew on the walls of the office in pen while I was on a call. - Carried a (naked) baby doll everywhere, and insisted that they had to feed the baby before they would eat their lunch, meaning they were often late for meetings. - Used to follow me to the loo and stand outside the door shouting my name until I came out. OK. It wasn’t a new colleague, it was my toddler. But these are the kind of things parents have to navigate on an hourly basis, which strengthens heaps of skills that are really brilliant to bring back to the office. So if a colleague returns from parental leave, and wants to change the way they work so that they can manage child care drop offs and pickups, (the timing of which they have no control over) while this might cause a few logistical changes that need dealing with, focus and celebrate the enhanced skills they will be bringing back to the office after caring for their mini weird and wonderful, irrational and demanding ‘home team members’ that will benefit your team / colleagues and organisation. #parentskills #workingparents #parentalleave #maternityleave #newmums #workingmums #workingmoms

A few years ago, a new member joined the team I worked in. Their behaviour in the office was a little unusual and tested my management skills to the limit. I remember talking to a colleague to gauge their thoughts. My new team member: - Used to lie down on the floor with their eyes closed when I gave them a new task to work on. - Took their socks off in the office or in meetings with other colleagues to check for fluff between their toes. - Emptied the contents of their desk into their bag and carried it around with them whenever they left the office. Sometimes they would just randomly empty their bag elsewhere in the office and walk off, leaving everything there. - Put another colleague's phone in a glass of water during a meeting. - Decided the box some office equipment came in was their new office. They moved everything from their desk there and insisted on staying in the box for meetings and lunch, often demanding I bring lunch to them there. - Interrupted me in my meetings to show me a random spot on the office carpet, repeatedly shouting ‘look’. - Liked to walk between meetings with their coat on their head, which meant they often bumped into doors, walls or other colleagues on the way, to which they just giggled. - Drew on the walls of the office in pen while I was on a call. - Carried a (naked) baby doll everywhere, and insisted that they had to feed the baby before they would eat their lunch, meaning they were often late for meetings. - Used to follow me to the loo and stand outside the door shouting my name until I came out. OK. It wasn’t a new colleague, it was my toddler. But these are the kind of things parents have to navigate on an hourly basis, which strengthens heaps of skills that are really brilliant to bring back to the office. So if a colleague returns from parental leave, and wants to change the way they work so that they can manage child care drop offs and pickups, (the timing of which they have no control over) while this might cause a few logistical changes that need dealing with, focus and celebrate the enhanced skills they will be bringing back to the office after caring for their mini weird and wonderful, irrational and demanding ‘home team members’ that will benefit your team / colleagues and organisation. #parentskills #workingparents #parentalleave #maternityleave #newmums #workingmums #workingmoms

This provides so much flexibility for families to set things up how works best for them 👏🏻

We can keep the conversation going all year round 💪 Keep talking Keep listening Keep reaching out Keep sharing your stories Keep sharing our number on 116 123

Yesterday was World Mental Health Day and this week is Baby Loss Awareness Week. There's a lot of content about both of these days already, so I won't repeat it here but check out #worldmentalhealthday and #blaw #babyloss Sands have lots of information on how to support this week. https://lnkd.in/ewDrn8k3 They also support those who aren't ready to yet. https://lnkd.in/egtD8ssp

So many of us spend so much of our time at work and it can have a big impact on how we're feeling. Which is why it’s so important that we’re able to have open and honest conversations about mental health at work.     This World Mental Health Day, we want to help de-stigmatise talking about mental health in the workplace by encouraging people to spot the signs when someone might be struggling. Often listening and giving people the opportunity to express how they feel can make a big difference and could help them open up and go on to get the support they need.   We all know it’s important to reach out and check in, but we don’t always know how. At Samaritans, we believe that everyone can learn the skills to have conversations that can change and even save lives. Samaritans Training and Engagement Programmes (STEP) gives people the tools and confidence to step up, step in and support others.   If you think your workplace could benefit from Samaritans’ skills and knowledge from over 70 years of listening and providing emotional support, find out more: https://bit.ly/3aA4whN