Any parent who has taken extended time off work to raise their kids knows that trying to return to the workforce is a daunting task. Applications are met with questions about gaps on their resume—and if parents aren’t overlooked or rejected and do eventually get hired, the logistical nightmare of who picks up the kids from school or provides affordable child care during the nine-to-five workday adds a heap of stress onto balancing a new job with the responsibilities of family life.
Amy Grilli is a mother who knows the above scenario all too well. She took five years off of work to raise her children. When she tried to find a job after this lengthy hiatus from her previous role as a teacher, she lacked confidence and found the endeavor to be a struggle. Grilli posted about the difficulties of trying to return to the workforce on LinkedIn. After her post went viral, she knew she wasn’t alone in this plight.
Grilli shares that she was in “absolute shock” when she saw the response to her post, especially since she was a novice user of the job networking platform. By the end of the day, her post had reached 1 million impressions. Fourteen days later, it had reached 14 million impressions. Since then, it has racked up over 218,000 reactions and nearly 10,000 comments. Grilli says, “[This] is something I still cannot believe. And [I] feel grateful to be given the opportunity for my story to be the catalyst for the parent voice to be heard.”
The birth of the Five Hour Club
After detailing her feelings of hopelessness while trying to find a flexible job or one she could do during school hours, Grilli announced, in that same viral LinkedIn post, the launch of the Five Hour Club—the antidote to the typical nine-to-five workday. With the Five Hour Club, Grilli and her co-founder Emma Harvey, Ph.D. are “proposing… a way to help parents create boundaries, work more productively and maintain their career between school runs, with the aim to increase diversity and reduce the gender pay gap in the workplace.” The tagline of their mission is: “Because working nine-to-five doesn’t work for parents.”
The duo has curated a Five Hour Club careers board that features jobs available from “trailblazing, family-friendly employers” that “enable parents to work [for] five hours between school hours for up to five days a week.” According to Grilli, they carefully vet these employers to ensure that posted jobs meet Five Hour Workday criteria.
Parents can visit the Five Hour Club job board to create a job seeker profile by uploading their resume, a photo and relevant details about their job preferences. Employers who are seeking candidates for these types of roles can then view these profiles and reach out.
Making employment opportunities work for parents
Grilli and Harvey conducted a Five Hour Workday survey of 2,500 parents from 64 countries to determine what moms and dads desire most with regard to their employment. According to the survey, “87% of respondents want a five-hour workday to help them work around their children.” Harvey adds, “It’s all about transparency. The reason we are asking employers to create five-hour workdays and not just ‘flexible work for parents’ is that we know being vague in a job post creates barriers when applying to jobs. Adding flexible working to a job post can attract more candidates… and means that parents will know exactly what they are applying for.”
The five-hour workday allows parents to avoid the typical scenario of working full-time while hoping their employer affords them the flexibility they need. Grilli explains that when parents are trying to balance running a family with maintaining a full-time job, it’s a “juggle [that] not only leads to burnout but also the feeling of guilt that they are not doing either job well, often resulting in them leaving the workforce altogether.”
Blazing a new trail
As responses to Grilli’s post poured in, she says the ones that “surprised [her] the most were those from company leaders. Out of almost 10,000 comments, almost half of them were from senior leaders, C-suite members and executives. All of [them] were in support of parents. And [they] acknowledge[d] the challenges that a traditional nine-to-five working day creates for them. Many of [them] referenced their partners, who had experienced a similar struggle, and others who had created their own business, as they had experienced this juggle themselves.”
The employers and company leaders who are posting jobs on the Five Hour Club job board are pioneering a new way for parents to work. They recognize that parents are a vital part of the workforce and are happy to join the mission to accommodate their careers via a more flexible approach to the workday—while also granting job access to a much wider pool of qualified candidates who might not have previously applied.
Find support and camaraderie in the Five Hour Club community
Grilli and Harvey are also creating a supportive Five Hour Club community “to provide support for parents returning to work after [having] children.” They say they will “offer career coaches, tools and workshops as a way to boost [parents’] confidence when applying for jobs, as we know from our Five Hour Workday survey that ‘only 28% of parents feel confident when applying to jobs,’ which is a statistic we would like to change.”
Grilli and Harvey have also started the Five Hour Club Podcast “to share the stories of real parents about their real struggles and how they navigate life and work between school runs, as a way to raise the voice of parents and help them be heard.”
It’s encouraging that parents are banding together to support each other in their goals to obtain work and balance family and work life. The Five Hour Club now sets a precedent for employers to be mindful of the demands placed on parents who are working a job and raising children. Hopefully, in the near future, this new approach to the workday will become the norm for working moms and dads.
Photo by Prostock-Studio/Courtesy of Shutterstock
