GV BRaIN Presentation by Rebecca Woolstencroft

Rebecca It is great to have the opportunity to speak to you tonight. We thought that my experience over the past two years would have some relevance to those of you here tonight.

I’m one of four partners at MB+M, and also the only female partner. I imagine my fellow partners would probably say that having a woman at the board table was a big enough change in itself, let alone also having to deal with the challenge of a female partner who is also pregnant, and wanting to work part-time in the future. I’m sure there must have been secret meetings where over a glass of wine they were all saying “what on earth have we got ourselves into”.

So about two years ago when I discovered I was pregnant I decided like most things I approached I needed a plan. A plan of what I’d do on the lead up to my maternity leave, what would happen while I was on maternity leave, and of course how I’d handle part-time work. Well for anyone who balances work and caring for children you’re probably all secretly chuckling away to yourselves. When my sister heard these plans she told me to be prepared that things might not work out that way. Of course, as you do, I ignored my sister completely. So yes, I was naïve and completely unaware of what I was getting myself into.

But back to the plan:

Get all of the important client information out of my head and down onto paper so other people could find it if they needed to.
Employ an off-sider to get to know my clients really well before I go on leave and then look after them while I’m trying to figure out this whole mother hood thing
Set up a computer at home ready for me to get lots done while I’m on leave.
Go on Maternity leave for six months, although what I was really thinking at this stage is that I’d be dying to do some work at the three month mark.

So see, it all sounds fantastic doesn’t it? I had it all covered off. So let’s think about the plan a bit further and how I went.

Client File notes – So, as I get bigger and bigger my brain seems to be impaired by the fat cells taking over my body, consequently I have an attention span of a nat. So in the six weeks I have at home prior to the birth I manage to complete one client file note which upon reading about a year later is completely incomprehensible. But I decide, that’s ok, there is always the rest of my plan.
Off-sider employed, knowledge imparted as best I could. All appears to be going well. That is until off-sider decides that the job isn’t quite right for her and she’s leaving. Oh…. Slight problem with my plan
Computer set up at home, tick that box. Small hitch to plan. Every moment I get to do some work I actually spend sleeping because my baby has colic and food allergies which all equates to me getting bugger all sleep. Thoughts of logging onto the computer requires me to breath into a paper bag.
Maternity leave, now surely this works out…. Well I tell you I gave it my best shot. At three months sure enough I did some work, although the only reason this really happened was because my plan was going so badly I figured I had to make this part work. Again with the same stubborn approach I returned to work at the six month mark two days a week. Now is probably a really good time to apologise to the MBM team, because I’m fairly sure for the first six months I came back I was working in a haze, not really capable of any tough decisions and likely to cry at the drop of a hat. So to my team I really am sorry about that and thanks for your patience.

So as you can tell, well laid plans don’t always work that way and it would have been great to have had someone, somehow give me an insight into what lay ahead. However, I’d like to tell you some of the things that really did work well and what I would encourage other people who are in the same situation as me, or employ working mothers to consider:

Having a fabulous team of people – I can’t thank all of the team enough for picking things up and running with it. Learning to delegate, trust and allow others to learn on the job meant that I could not only go on leave, but know that they would handle it and if they couldn’t they’d let me know.
Having a supportive partnership/boss – without the support of my fellow partners I would not have survived, and I mean this quite seriously. After a few months of trying to balance it all I eventually cracked. I could not get the balance to work. Thankfully, Mike Hall, a fellow partner, recognized my distress and came to my rescue. After a good conversation and a few simple changes we made it work.
Have a partnership agreement, or maternity leave agreement that is fair for both parties. Now, this is a really hard thing to have because unless you’ve been there how do you know what is fair? But at least you can have a conversation and share expectations. From the research I did, most professional shareholder/partnership agreements don’t cover maternity leave. So we created our clause from scratch, and its still a work in progress.
Being open to a flexible workplace arrangement. MB+M to its credit has always been open minded about this. If you can’t start with this attitude then it will never work. Have an open mind, it can work. In return you’ll have a loyal, engaged and efficient workforce.
Be prepared to ask for help.

Just as a quick example of being open minded, MB+M appointed a Director of Financial Planning in a part-time role last year, they have now also gone on to appoint a part-time managing partner, that being me. So for all of those people out there who believe having a child will hold back or stagnate your career, you’re not working for the right organisation.

I think the greatest advantage we have in the country is our ability to think differently, challenge the status quo and come up with solutions that work for our community. I’m sure that we all experience the difficulty of trying to recruit in the country. So it only reinforces the need for us to be creative, open minded and flexible to ensure that we can keep our valued employees in our workforce.

So thank-you for your time, this is a favourite topic of mine so if you’d like to talk further please come and see me tonight, give me a call or go to our website and contribute to our blog.

Thankyou.

gvbrain MB+M is proud to be a major sponsor of the Goulburn Valley Business Rural and Industry Network (GV BRaIN). A not-for-profit organisation GV BRaIN aims to encourage a vibrant, energised and engaged business community by providing opportunities to promote their business, be inspired by high profile speakers and an opportunity to meet like-minded individuals.

Check out the GV BRaIN Website http://www.greatershepparton.com.au/business/gvbrain/