Mums can be businesswomen too!

Mums can be businesswomen too!

17 January 2017
MEDIA RELEASE FOR IMMEDIATE USE

Flexibility key to tapping pool of under-utilised female talent

Auckland, New Zealand – New Zealand employers enjoy a valuable opportunity to tap the skills and experience of women wishing to return to work after becoming mothers, according to the founder of Professional Mums in New Zealand, Gillian Andrews.

Professional Mums, which started in Australia in 2013 and expanded to New Zealand earlier this year, is an organisation which aims to connect professionally qualified mothers with businesses who are empathetic to the needs of working mums.

For women, it aims to enable them to stay engaged and relevant in their chosen professions at the same time as raising a family. For companies, it is designed to provide access to a database of professional talent for recruitment purposes, as well as showing support of women in the workplace.

Gillian, who is an Associate Director in KPMG’s Deal Advisory team in Auckland, started Professional Mums in New Zealand after she realised that there was a large pool of underutilised talent going to waste. “There is a lot of dialogue about the lack of women in leadership or senior positions,” she explains, “along with a lot of mums not currently working in their professions as they don’t necessarily believe they can remain in their careers whilst still meaningfully experiencing motherhood. I see Professional Mums as a potential solution to this problem.”

Currently, Professional Mums is partnered with two large corporates here in New Zealand – KPMG and Minter Ellison Rudd Watts – but to operate effectively on a larger scale, more companies will need to come on board. By doing so, they will gain access to a growing database of qualified and dedicated women (a database which, it is hoped, will expand as word spreads).

“It’s important to remember that working mums are not asking for special treatment in terms of dedication and quality of work,” Gillian says. “Those are a performance requirement as with all other employees and they should be held to the same standard. They do, however, need some flexibility with when and where they work, to fulfil their work and family obligations. My personal experience is that deadlines and quality of output is not in question, but I may need to get my work done at home or during non-conventional work hours because I have family commitments. I value the flexibility that I have been given by KPMG, and I am probably more diligent because I have been given it.”

“There seems to be a fair amount of support for women in more senior positions,” she says, “but the pipeline is neglected. If we go with the notion that generally people will continue to want families, we will never have enough women in senior positions if we don’t keep women engaged in their professions while they are raising families. They need to feel that they do have the option to pursue both career and family; the two should not be mutually exclusive.”

//ENDS

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