A few weeks ago I caught up with a friend who has recently undergone a pretty considerable life change. An overseas move has meant, among other things, she has left a full-time role and is now freelancing a few days a week.
Leaving the structure and routine of attending an office five days week is quite daunting; I have done it a few times myself and it’s always an adjustment. As we chatted about this my friend, who is a long time Women’s Agenda reader, mentioned that on account of no longer working in the traditional sense of going to an office each day, she sometimes feels a bit like an outsider now when she reads the site.
It made me stop and think. The reality is lots of Women’s Agenda readers, like many Australians, don’t work full-time or in an office every day. Our working lives are increasingly diverse. The options for how and when we work are changing and it’s a transition that should be discussed and celebrated. (The move away from the ideal worker having no responsibilities outside of work is a central theme in Brigid Schulte’s best-seller Overwhelmed: Work, Love and Play When No One has The Time which is reviewed today.)
A lot of the time our conversations around working flexibly or less than full-time are focused on and framed around children. But children are only one reason working differently from full-time makes sense.
On Saturday I was chatting to a father at a birthday party about his working life. He was made redundant from a corporate role a bit over a year ago and used the opportunity to start the business he’d always wanted to. He’s loving it but he’s seeking out part-time and contract work to supplement his income while he builds up the business. It’s a scenario that I’m sure many men and women – regardless of children – can relate to.
Similarly my friend’s situation is common; she’s made a move for her partner’s work and at this stage freelancing is the best way for her to earn an income while she settles in.
There’s probably as many reasons why a full-time office job isn’t the only employment option for individuals, as there are people. But, collectively, we still seem to value full-time work ahead of anything else. It might be one reason why those who don’t work in an office everyday might feel like outsiders in conversations and discussion about workplaces.
One way to change that is to talk about the different ways we work and why that works for us and for our employers or businesses. Being open about working part-time is a relatively recent phenomena; I’m sure there are still some part-time workers who bend over backwards trying to create the impression they are in the office full-time but, hopefully, it’s becoming rarer.
Today I want to start a conversation about the different ways we work. Personally I work 4 days a week. I do three days a week in the office for Women’s Agenda and I work one day from home doing some freelance work. The fifth “working” day in my week isn’t a working day at all. I spend it at home with my two daughters and I have quite successfully ring-fenced it as a non-working day. Of course depending on the events of the week, this schedule is subject to change, but generally speaking that’s how my working week unfolds.
How does your average working week look? And maybe more importantly how would your ideal working week look?