Special Episode 2

Podnotes: Your 7-step guide to finding work that works for you

Transcript

[Music]

0.02

Clare McNeil: Welcome to this second episode in our part-time work special on health, caring and work. In Episode One, we looked at how to create part-time work. In this episode, we explore how to thrive in part-time work. You’re about to meet Sharon Foxwell, who’s 44, associate director at One Voice Media. You may remember Sharon if you listened to our first series. She has a job share in place that allows her to balance work with the care of her disabled daughter. Russ Read-Barrow is 42, he’s the commercial lead at the PR Network, a virtual PR agency. Russ has been at the PR Network for 15 years. And finally, Mark Webb, 56, who was head of communications at Dixon’s Carphone when he was told he had multiple sclerosis. His employer reacted immediately, set big changes into effect in terms of his working pattern. Let’s hear from him first.

0.55

Mark Webb: I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, in relatively quick terms, sort of three to four months. I took two weeks off to cry, to cuddle my wife, to cuddle our first son. And by the time I came back, the team around me had all done their research into MS, both what I might be facing on the physical side and what I might be facing on a psychological side, and they were just wonderful.

1.36

Sharon Foxwell: My name’s Sharon. I am an associate director in a PR consultancy, and I’m also a parent carer to a child with complex needs. My daughter has something called Lennox-Gastaut syndrome, which is a condition which is characterised by severe epilepsy and a severe learning disability. I’ve been in the same company for 14 years, and I work on a job share, and I’ve been in that job share for 13 of those years. So we split the week between us, and we split all our work equally between us, across all clients. We have flexible work, so I can choose to go into the office or work from home when needed, at times when I need to let my daughter’s carers in, for example, I work at home. It’s a brilliant setup for me, and has allowed me to stay in a senior level position, in a job and career that I love.

2.26

Russ Read-Barrow: My name’s Russ Read-Barrow. I work at the PR network. PR Network is like a virtual PR agency, really. I’ve been there for 15 years. I work at home most, almost all the time. Yeah, married, two kids, live in Bath and yeah. And essentially, we sort of moved here, got through COVID, which was a mess with two young children, and then I found out about my cancer diagnosis in October 2021. Sort of went from very mild symptoms related to colon cancer, to finding out quite rapidly that I had colon cancer, to then finding out that I also had something called smouldering myeloma, which is like another type of cancer. Yeah, both incredibly rare for my age. I’m, yeah, I’m 42 so, so, yeah, bit of shock.

[Music]

3.29

Sharon Foxwell: So the way that I manage a relationship with my employer is that we have set hours and set days between us that we’ve chosen that work for us. We do have a crossover day every fortnight, but a lot of my communication is actually directly with my job share partner and certainly with the company if I need to, you know, if I have an appointment, I can say, actually I need to work from home that day. I need to fit that appointment in, and I will flex my hours around that. And we actually have that policy across all of our employees. So this isn’t particularly tailored to me. We are a very progressive company, and I think particularly for a small business, in a regional small business, we’re very progressive. And so we have, the leadership of our company is very much wanting to make sure that everyone has a chance to be their very best selves at work. And I think what comes with that is a flexibility.

4.19

Russ Read-Barrow: Right now I’m having chemotherapy. In the last three and a half years, I’ve had chemotherapy, a small amount of radiotherapy. I’ve had liver surgery, bowel surgery, lung surgery. So lots happened over that time, and work, has to be honest, been probably about as good as I could hope for, really, within, within the scale of, within the realms of what I’d expect them to be able to do as a small business. So in that time, initially, I was given a large amount of time off. I wasn’t given time off. I took time off as sick. Most of that, a good chunk of that, I think three months, was on full pay. I was working five days. I dropped to four. At one point I dropped to none. I increased to two days a week at one point, then three. And now currently, I work nine days in 10. So basically I get every, every other Friday off, and I work a long.., in theory, and I work a longer day. Because I’m having chemo at the moment, which is, which is a two weekly cycle, so that adds complexity, because I’m in hospital every other Tuesday, I then have a week of being rough, feeling rough, and then a sort of better week. And my work, to be honest, has allowed me really to tailor my day around, to tailor my weeks around that.  

Sharon Foxwell: We allow everyone to advocate for themselves, talk about what they need to make it work, and then, and we work around that, but what we end up with, I believe, is a very motivated workforce, because people are given trust and responsibility, but also want to, I think, when your employer looks after you, you feel motivated to repay that, even though there’s no expectation of that.

[Music]

6.06

Russ Read-Barrow: Good management is listening, being flexible.

Sharon Foxwell: Flexibility is key, and I think an open mind is really key. And just being able to listen to what those challenges are.

Russ Read-Barrow:  Being prepared to change.

Sharon Foxwell: Ideally, it’s just saying, what do you need? And I think it’s about making sure that your employees needs are met, almost those basic needs.

Mark Webb: Multiple sclerosis, MS, is a progressive disease. So I went from walking in the first day with a stick, then with a crutch, then with two crutches, and then with a wheelchair. I was called into a room with my boss, the director of HR. They said, Mark, you are brilliant. We love what you do, but you’re not going to be able to cope much longer. What can you and we do to create a role that will keep you gainfully employed and will benefit the company, and by the way, will pay you for five days and you’ll work for four days a week.

Russ Read-Barrow: But certainly from how my, you know, my MD and my co-founders have managed me. It’s just always been sort of being there, putting calls in, you know, not allowing it to feel like, I guess, I don’t want it to feel like it defines me, but it absolutely, you know, to a degree, that does define what I can and can’t do, especially on chemotherapy.

Sharon Foxwell: And also, perhaps, you know, talking about any needs around mental health support, some places have employee assistance programmes, additional things that might be able to support people during times in their lives that are very difficult. And often being a carer, there are very limited services open to you. For example, you know, it’d be great if all carers could access counselling, and that’s not always the case. So if employers can offer some of those things, it helps their employee, both outside of work and in work.

Mark Webb: Maybe it was because I was fairly good at my job, but I think it was much more because they were so humane and caring. And I burst into tears and had to go home and rethink my life and rethink what I would like to do.

Sharon Foxwell: Just having – trying to have a very open mind about it, I think, is really beneficial.

[Music]

8.34

Russ Read-Barrow: The thing I’m most proud of is just the fact that I’ve kept going, really. I think there was a time when I could have stopped, and there definitely was a period where I was like, Jesus, I’ve been off work so long now, how am I going to get back into it? Why am I, you know, why am I going to get back into it?

Sharon Foxwell: I don’t like to use the word journey. It feels very overused, but it does feel like a bit of a journey. And having a disabled child, and you go through all sorts of different stages of, yeah, really sort of finding yourself in this, well, I think of it as a club that I never asked to be in. And just kind of bewildered and looking around and thinking, okay, right, we’re here. What’s this? I never thought I would be in this club.

Russ Read-Barrow: And the other thing I’m proud of right now is the fact that in the last two months, I’ve become very proactive on LinkedIn in terms of talking about my experience, you know, working with cancer, like this type of stuff we’re talking about now. And also how I’ve been using AI to sort of support my – support everything really, from my diet through to my protocol, through to, you know, decisions I make about supplements that I take. Alongside, obviously, professional advice from oncologists and doctors. And that is something that you know right now I’m really pleased that I’m doing because it’s – people have, you know, said nice things. People have said they’re proud of me, which always nice to hear. So, yeah, that’s something that’s really helped, because it’s given me, sort of, a separate like a project to focus on that is also still very close to my work and what, and what we do.

Mark Webb: Social media was emerging as a real thing at the time. I’m now medically retired. Twitter was actually a very powerful communications tool. My CEO, he was using Twitter. So we decided to create a role, which was head of group social media. It was working with my CEO, Sebastian. We turned him into the most followed CEO on the FTSE 100 to make that a powerful voice, and with my voice so I could argue and chat to journalists who were all online on Twitter at the time. So I could tweet from bed at 7am in the morning, I could work from home as and when, I could contribute to the company.

11.09

Sharon Foxwell: I’ve known from the outset that my work is vital to my mental health, and that was in part informed by the fact that I had postnatal depression after I had, after I had my disabled child, before we knew she was disabled, which wasn’t until she was 18 months. I had postnatal depression, and I feel like the whole time, one of the things I really felt during that time was a loss of the life that I knew. And one of the big things in that life was my job. And I kept thinking, if only I could go back to work, I would have some structure. And so – and when I did go back to work, and I’d recovered by them, or certainly was well on well into recovery, I loved going back, and I loved the structure. And so I’ve always felt that it’s really important for my mental health to be working. And I say that from a place of you know, I’m very fortunate to have a job that I love and a team that I love. So work has always been a very positive place for me. And so when I knew that my child was disabled, one of my biggest concerns, to be frank, for my own mental health, was that I wouldn’t be able to work. And so I knew that I needed to be open and have an open dialogue with my employer about how I was going to make this work. And as it’s happened, it has worked out brilliantly. And, you know, I continue to work now, and have absolutely no intention of changing that, because I’m extremely lucky to have a setup that works for me, but it is absolutely integral to my own mental health. And outside of that, I do all sorts of other things for my mental health, namely exercise, some medication and counselling. I’m fortunate enough to be able to self fund counselling, and I just do that, at the moment, each month, but I can dial it up as I need to. But I think I do really prioritise mental health, because I think it’s just so obvious how challenging caring can be to somebody’s mental health, and I feel like I want to proactively safeguard that as much as possible, I suppose. And you know, I can’t account for every situation. And of course, like everyone, you know, I have ups and downs, but I tried to do, I tried to have a little package of things that help and work is a huge pillar in that.

[Music]

13.43

Mark Webb: Just as the company managed my MS day to day, so I wasn’t required so much to be in meetings. But if there was a day when I had started the journey to work and felt myself wobbly, I would turn round and go home and I would social media from bed or from the sofa.

Russ Read-Barrow: Managing the unpredictable things – it is keeping an open dialogue is really important.

Sharon Foxwell: And certainly for me, I found it really helpful to have regular catch ups with my manager. And actually, because of the sort of office we work in, we’re in a team of 10. I’m very open in the office. If the phone rings and it’s the school, I will often put that down and say, Oh, that was a school saying this, or, you know, it’s a very open thing. So I think then when things do arise, it’s very much that, you know, it’s very much not, not necessarily expected, but it’s very accepted. It’s very accepted that that is, is part of who, who I am and what I need.

Mark Webb: It was just a total understanding that it wasn’t a big change in my work output. No, it was no change in my work output. From 7am I was online, and I was really happy to because I was so proud to work for a company that had been that imaginative.

Russ Read-Barrow: You just have to be open to the fact that, you know, last night, I had a really good weekend, probably surprisingly, felt pretty good. Last night, I had two hours sleep and feel awful. You know, I don’t feel awful, but – and it’s just trying not to let that hit you too hard, and not let you know, and just being aware that actually today is going to be a longer day. I’m probably going to need to sleep more, you know, being sort of, I suppose, sort of, you know, understanding, sympathetic with yourself, and also other people being, you know, other people being the same is really key.

15.42

Sharon Foxwell: If someone feels comfortable to do that and has an understanding employer that that is open to having that regular discussion, just having that in place can really help.

Mark Webb: I’m not a superhero, but I have some challenges in life, and I get round them.

[Music]

16.04

Sharon Foxwell: I do think there’s a growing awareness about caring and what that means for individuals, and I think that’s probably helped, in part, by social media. There are some fantastic charities such as Carers Trust, Carers UK, that advocate on behalf of carers. What has helped is the move towards flexible working. It lends itself really well to people that do have other responsibilities. And I think people, through being given a chance to work flexibly, are then able to prove that it tends to work very well for the business as well, when somebody’s been given what they need – given flexible working hours. Generally, in my experience, that person is minded to do a very good job and to deliver great value for the business. Even though it might not look like them sitting at a desk for eight hours a day, five days a week, they can still be extremely effective employees. So yeah, I do think, I think there’s a growing movement and awareness around carers and what is needed and what needs to change as well, although there is, without doubt, there is still a huge, huge, long way to go, and there will be a big variety in terms of what employers get it, what employers have the agency and ability to make changes quite easily. And I’m conscious, you know, I have a great employer, but also we’re a fairly small business, so we have the – we can be quite nimble. And then there are some other big organisations that actually need sort of, perhaps, structure change or organisational change or culture change. And I know that there are some carers who actually have – who do consultancy work with businesses to help them understand what carers need. So there are people that have gone out and do that with businesses. So if businesses and organisations are willing to listen, the knowledge is there, there are people wanting to talk to businesses about what they need to do.

Mark Webb: I’m afraid we have currently taken a step backwards rather than a step forwards. It was always going to be ups and downs in the progress to a more humane, DEI centric society. But currently we are in a big dip. I think the companies that stand out are the brave ones. We’re in a tough phase, and the companies who are afraid to stand up are missing out on consumers and employees, and brilliant consumers and employees.

Russ Read-Barrow: A few things are happening at my own work, like we signed up to the working with cancer initiative. My work is in the process of, actually, we signed up to lots of different initiatives to support people in – and I think that is probably, it’s partly because I work with people that are thoughtful and we’re, you know, we’re a nice business, but it’s also because of what’s happened with me and an awareness of the fact that these things do happen. So I think there’s more routes in and there’s more ways for businesses to help themselves. I guess a lot of it’s just down to the individual businesses and the owners and the boards and how they run it.

19.08

Clare McNeil: So, you’re in the club that no one asked to be in, as Sharon described it. Either as a carer or because you’re grappling with your own chronic health condition. And you are choosing to carry on working or having to. How can you maintain and even thrive in your job when life happens?

One real takeaway from listening to Russ, Sharon and Mark is that everything is in flux after diagnosis, and that what good managers do is to keep listening and listen closely. We heard from Russ that having time to deal with a diagnosis or a change in your condition is key. And from Sharon, we heard that when a diagnosis occurs, this often comes with a change in identity, whether for you or a loved one, and for those who are in work, that can be part of our identity that stays and that can be a lifeline.

Sharon regards work as part of a set of tools that she has to look after her mental health. It gives her structure and focus. Sharon, of course, has a job share partner, and having two people cover the week is a great way to support carers who need to work reduced hours to stay in work.

From Mark, we heard about the power of being a humane employer, first and foremost, what really matters is empathy. We also heard his passion when talking about the incredible skills and talent that people with health conditions and carers both have. As Sharon said, due to the resilience and grit they need to make it all work, people like Sharon, Mark and Russ make extremely effective employees.

If you’ve enjoyed this episode, please listen out to the next. Our final instalment of this three part special. You will hear directly from experts on what rights carers and people with health conditions currently have in the UK, with some advice on how to articulate the things you need to make part-time work work for you. I’m Clare McNeil, Chief Executive at Timewise. Thank you for listening and thank you to the Standard Life Centre for the Future of Retirement for partnering with us on this series.

[Music]