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MMWork/life balance


Research has shown that, after the age of 30, only 64 per cent of women are in the Irish


workforce, compared with 70+ per cent of men. Vanessa Tierney, founder of careers site, Abodoo, tells MM why remote working is the perfect solution for Irish mums to return to the ‘workplace’.


From a distance…


As the mother of two little girls aged five and three, I’m more than aware of how much your values shift once you have children. Where once you wouldn’t have cared about putting in those extra hours at work at the end of the day, you soon begin to resent the long and often stressful journey home to pick your children up from daycare: a journey that is made even more stressful by sitting in traffic jams and often incurring higher childcare costs. Before I had the girls, I used to run a successful recruitment


company and so I was well versed in the difficulties that many women experienced in returning to the workplace following maternity leave. Nothing prepared me, however, for my own return, when I often found myself feeling stressed out and guilty. The guilt that I often felt at leaving my daughters in childcare was merely compounded by frantic hours sitting in traffic jams, not only stressing at the fact that my girls were waiting for me, but also knowing that I was incurring even higher childcare costs. The situation was ‘remedied’ if you like when I fell ill seven years


ago and ended up working ‘remotely’. My daily routine involved my working from nine to three at home, then spending a few hours with the girls and then working again in the evening when they’d gone to bed. I immediately recognised that remote working was the perfect


solution for my lifestyle. And I’m certainly not alone. It’s estimated that, by 2025, 75 per cent of the workforce will be millennials, who will expect to work both remotely and on the move and who, when they have children, won’t accept what is perceived as the ‘archaic’ notion of travelling to work in an office. As a result, I set up – in partnership with my husband – our


company, Abodoo, an online platform which connects companies with remote workers. Every month, I see an increasing number of people – mums in particular – who recognise that remote working is the perfect solution for the work/life balance. Up until now ‘flexible’ working was perceived as the perfect


18 Modernmum


solution for working mums, but I would argue that this modus operandi was not about flexibility. For some reason, there is a perception that those who work flexibly, ie, going in at an hour that suits you and leaving at a similar time, are ‘missing out’ on issues such as career promotion and are not really doing a full day’s work. While this perception is most definitely wrong, flexible working


still involves mums battling through traffic at predefined times to collect children and that, in itself, can lead to unnecessary problems. Remote working is, in my opinion, ‘smart working’. Not only does


it embrace the idea of mums – and anyone else involved - working remotely, but it ensures that mums are measured on their output and not on their hours. Their time is not only maximised, but this way of working means that they can more easily juggle family and career demands; ultimately leading to a much better quality of life.


Mum of three, Caoimhe Jones, opted for remote working six months ago. She cannot believe how much her life has changed in such a short time. ‘Although I enjoyed my job, once the kids came along it was no


longer about ‘me and my career’. It was about me as a mum first and foremost and, as time went on, I began to view my career almost negatively, seeing it as a way of preventing me from spending quality time with the kids. After all of the years that I’d invested in it, however, I was loathe to simply walk away. Remote working has given me – as with many other mums in Ireland – a means of combining both home and work life successfully, which has invariably improved the quality of life for us all. I’m still in a routine on a daily basis, but it’s MY routine and that’s what makes the difference.’


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