Can new fathers also benefit from job sharing?
It’s morning time, the wife is already in the kitchen cooking breakfast and the kids are still in bed. After you’ve eaten and skimmed the paper, it’s time to head out to work. You can have the peace of mind that the family unit is ticking over just the way it should be, dad earning the cash and mum raising the kids. Sure you don’t see them much but that’s just the ways things are...
... Wait, hang on that’s the 1910s, not 2010s!
We’ve come a long ol’ way in the past 100 years. Yes, we’ve got a way to go still, but we’re pushing closer to a more gender equal society. So why is it that fathers are still missing out on their children’s formative years? It’s still widely accepted that it’s women who put their career on hold to look after the kids while dad goes out to work.
Work life Regrets
One of the biggest regrets for new fathers is that they miss out on important stages of their child’s development. In fact nearly 70% of questioned fathers said they’ve missed a key moment in their child’s upbringing (compared to 52% of women). It’s that sort of statistic that shows that this isn’t just the case for an unfortunate few families but a down-right unfair situation for parents who want to be there for their kids.
The same government survey points out that men are far more likely than women to regret not spending enough time with their child due to a poor work life balance, while women are more than twice as likely as men to regret having to take out time from their career. It seems that society is still having trouble moving on from the idea of men as the breadwinners and women taking care of the household.
The problem with this is that men want to spend time with their children, and women don’t want to press pause on the rest of their life. But, as the saying goes “business never sleeps”. How are you meant to have a successful career when everything keeps ticking on in your absence? We think we’ve found the solution, and it’s maddeningly simple. Continue working, but share your job with someone else.
Job Sharing
Job sharing is becoming ever more popular, with a whole host of companies backing the idea. From DHL through to KPMG, companies are not only seeing a benefit to their employee’s lives, they’re seeing the benefits to their business. For men and women alike it’s the perfect solution to spend time with their family without relegating every other aspect of their life to playing second fiddle.
It’s not something that every company has put in place yet, but it won’t be long before they do. Once the benefits are more widely documented and, more importantly, it’s made easy for people to find their job share partners, it’ll become more and more common place.
This where ShareYourJob.com comes in! ShareYourJob.com allows people to find their perfect job share partner whether you’re looking for a job, or already have a job you want to share. It’s the first step in introducing the prospect of job sharing into the general public and helping those who need it finding a better balance. With job sharing set to become more widely accepted, hopefully we can all start living more enriched lives without the cloud of regret hanging over us for years to come.
If you’re interested, check out ShareYourJob.com and find your balance.
* Image credit to http://blog.minicabster.co.uk/
