Working from home for mom: what to do with yourself during maternity leave

Video: Working from home for mom: what to do with yourself during maternity leave

2024 Author: James Gerald | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 14:00

Until relatively recently, combining work and parenting leave was not easy. To go to work, children under 3 years old had to be sent to a nursery. Thanks to the development of online technologies, young mothers have the opportunity to maintain financial independence and even build a career, staying at home, next to their baby. The development of the freelance market provides many options for organizing your work already in the first year of your baby's life. A flexible schedule allows you to devote enough time to both the child and official duties.

Nowadays, building relationships with employers, customers and clients has become much easier. In this matter, I am a practitioner. After all, during my maternity leave with two kids, I opened a successful marketing agency and the Institute of Online Professions. All my employees work remotely from home, most of them have little children. Let's see what options you have to start working already on maternity leave.

If you were officially employed before the birth of the baby and went on maternity leave, you need to decide in which direction you want to move: stay in the same place or look for other options? continue to develop in your profession or get a new one?

Decide on an employer

If you would like to continue working for your employer, it is advisable to discuss the possibility of returning to duties. There are several options for discussion:

Leave a part-time job in the office for the same position as before the decree according to the agreed schedule. This option is suitable if the functionality that you performed requires a mandatory presence in the office and allows you to adjust the schedule. For example, communication with customers on a shift basis, work in a warehouse with goods movement, packaging of goods, work in production, or duties related to the collection of orders, and so on. You will be able to come at a convenient agreed time and do part-time work on a schedule, for example, 2-3 hours a day.
If the format of work before the decree allows reconfigure your work to a remote format from home, talk to your supervisor about this. This opportunity is available for all positions that do not require an obligatory presence in the office. For example, an accountant, economist, marketer, programmer, tutor, and so on. Discuss this possibility with the employer, and with the immediate supervisor, determine the remote schedule, the amount of payment, the functions performed, the format of communication, a convenient messenger for transferring data, forms for setting and monitoring tasks, the format for submitting work results and reporting. Such agreements are enough to start working from home for 3-4 hours a day.
Stay with this employer and change the position and the functionality performed. Was your previous position in the office? Consider starting to do the functionality you can, but with a job change and the ability to work remotely. For example, before the decree, you were a customer service manager in the office, offer the manager to call customers by your forces from home to control the quality of order fulfillment.

List your strengths, solid and flexible skills that will help you define new work remote functionality. For example, before the decree, you worked in a warehouse as a warehouse manager, and during pregnancy, you took graphic design courses for yourself. Invite your manager to design banners, POSM materials, presentations and flyers for the company for a fee. This will allow you to start earning money, stay in the company and be useful. An employer who values you as an employee will always meet halfway, and together you can find responsibilities that are relevant for the company, and which you can perform remotely right now.

If you decide that you do not want to leave the maternity leave in the company in which you worked before, write a resume and post it on job search sites. Provide accommodation options convenient for you, specify the desired remote format, the possible number of working hours per day and the expected level of payment. Attach a cover letter to your resume stating why you are worthy of this job offer. It often happens that when you change your company, you can switch to remote work, which will allow you to develop in your profession and stay close to your baby in a convenient format.

Decide on a profession

If you realize that your previous profession has become uninteresting, that's okay. There are many online training programs that allow a young mother to master a new profession. Consider and choose the one that is initially compatible with the remote format, so after training you can already start taking the first orders and making money.