New role, new place, new Mum? Here’s some things to think about before making the leap.

New role, new place, new Mum? Here’s some things to think about before making the leap.

Leaving my job to become a mother was a shock to the system. For years, all I’d thought about was my career, my clients, my team. I worked as hard as I possibly could to climb the ladder - for no other reason than I wanted to earn as much money as I could. There, I said it - at the time, I equated success with salary.

So suddenly, not having to worry about deadlines was disorientating. I didn’t know who I was anymore. I certainly didn’t want to be ‘just a Mum’ and I didn’t want anyone to think I couldn’t do it all.

Over the course of the first 6 months of mat leave, I settled into a joyful new routine with my little girl. We had bags of fun and if I’d had the choice, I really would have stayed home for longer than the 11 months I had with her. But with a mortgage to pay - and as the higher earner - I had no choice but to return to work.

Unfortunately, the agency I’d left wasn’t the same one I’d be returning to. The woman who’d been covering my mat leave was now a permanent hire. Lots of my peers had been promoted above me. New people had been hired in more senior roles. And crucially my boss (who was more of a mentor and a friend) had left. I felt really upset that all the hard work I’d put into the agency wouldn’t be seen by someone new. So, I decided to find a new role with a grander title and more money.

My first piece of advice to anyone contemplating taking on a brand-new role - particularly at leadership level - in a new agency after having their first child would most certainly be don’t do it! Be kind to yourself. Recognise that it won’t be the same as before and you’ll need colleagues around who knew you before-baby and clients who value you.

But if you really, truly have no choice, here are the things the textbooks or traditional recruitment companies don’t tell you about what to look for in a new role:

Empathy: will your new team, clients and boss be empathetic to the emotional toll of being a new mother and having to leave your first-born at a nursery, with a childminder or nanny? That in itself is so incredibly hard, and you need to know that you’ll have supportive people around you.

How can you gauge this? Insist you spend time with your new team before you sign on the dotted line. Same with your new boss. They don’t need to have had their own children to be empathetic, but it certainly helps. Think of the saying “you don’t know what you don’t know”. I had a team member say I was a bad mother for leaving an 11-month old at a nursery whilst I returned to work (because junior team members sometimes don’t understand the realities of mortgages, bills and generally adulting) and someone in a more senior role ask me, in a meeting, if I was still breastfeeding (because as a gay man with no children, it likely didn’t occur to him that the question was so incredibly loaded in so many different ways).

Flexibility: goes without saying and of course in this post-Covid age it should be more commonplace. But being able to work from home if you’re still doing 12-14 hour days won’t help you or your baby; really drill into what flexibility looks like and what the expectations are around the role.

Happiness: look at the client work, the fees and the team. Has enough resource been allocated at the right levels to enable everyone to have a good work-life balance. Of course, it’s hard to know before you sign on the dotted line but look for clues - ask the team members themselves how long they tend to spend at work on a daily basis, ask them if they enjoy their jobs. And ask the quiet ones, not the ones who have a tendency to PR themselves.

Supportive HR team: review the HR policies in detail - I know it’s hard, but you will be able to gauge the level of support for new parents through what is, and is not, included within the HR handbook. Ask to see this before you sign any contracts. You don’t need to specify what you’re looking for, just that you’d like to get a feel for how the agency is run. No HR handbook? Alarm bells should be ringing.

Try your best to get a sense of how support the HR team will be for working parents. My role involved leaving home at 6am and returning around 9pm to then do more work when I got home and then spending part of the weekends catching up on unfinished tasks. Despite this, not once did anyone in HR ask how I was getting on.

Working parents in leadership: ask how many people in leadership roles have children and see if you’re able to talk to a couple of mothers before you join. Questions to ask include how old their children are (if they’re over 3 years old they’re probably not relevant to you), what they do with childcare (if they have a full-time, live in nanny, chances are they don’t have the same financial pressures that you may have), how many children do they have (because first-time mums and/ or mums with an only child will have a very different experience and perspective).

Shared values: ultimately - and this applies to any new role at any time - you need to ensure you have the same values as the workplace and your colleagues. Take time to look at the values the agency claims to have and then find evidence to back this up.

Finding a new job can be a daunting task at the best of times, but particularly when you’re a working parent. PR Mums can hopefully take the bulk of the stress away - we’re always here to chat, so please reach out with any questions.