All Posts by Felicity Dwyer

A more flexible career

By Felicity Dwyer | Career development , Motivation

Want to make changes in your working life, but can’t afford to leave your job? Your life may just have become easier.

From 30 June 2014, the right to request flexible working has been extended. This right used to be enjoyed by parents and carers, but is now available to anyone who has 26 weeks’ continuous employment with their employer. This could help you if you want to work towards a long term career change whilst staying in your current job, or just want a different work-life blend.

What is flexible working?

According the CIPD, it is “a type of working arrangement which gives some degree of flexibility on how long, where when and what times employees work.”

This can take a variety of forms, here are just a few examples:

• part-time work, whether that be for a few hours each day, or one or more days a week
• flexitime, where you can choose when your working day starts and finishes (within agreed parameters, for example there may be core hours when you need to be at work)
• compressed hours, for example completing contracted full-time hours over four days instead of five
• working from home for some of the week
• a career break or sabbatical

Flexible working can open up opportunities that may not be available in a standard 9-5. You could spend a day a week studying towards a qualification or new career, spend more time on a hobby, or even start a part-time business. In the final example, you will need to be sure there isn’t a conflict of interest with your day job.

In my last salaried job, I was able to work flexi-time and this was a real benefit. It allowed me to avoid the worst of the rush hour and get to work feeling more relaxed and productive than I would have been otherwise. I have also worked part-time in the past, allowing me time to study.

How to request flexible working

Requests must be made in writing and must include: the date of your application, the change you are seeking, and when you would like it to come into effect. You need to consider the effect of the change on your employer and your opinion on how any such effect might be dealt with. You also need to state that it is a statutory request, and if and when you have made a previous application for flexible working. You are only allowed to make one request in any 12 month period.

In considering the effect of the change on your employer, you may want to demonstrate how it might help you to maintain or improve your performance at work. For example working from home can be really effective if you have a concentrated piece of work such as report to write. Research has shown that multi tasking is inefficient, and some home working can both increase productivity for your employer, and save you time and money on travelling to work that day.

Employers have a duty to consider a request in a reasonable manner and if they refuse, then this needs to be for a business reason.

Clearly some jobs lend themselves more easily to flexible working than others, and you might want to take this factor into account when you are job seeking.

Find out more

For research on multi tasking, see this summary from the American Psychological Association

For information on how to request flexible working, the ACAS website has advice and guidance.

You might also enjoy my article on portfolio careers

Triggers for career change

By Felicity Dwyer | Career change , Motivation

Many people who make a significant career change can trace this back to a trigger point, something that pushed them to re-evaluate where they were, and what they wanted to do and be. Sometimes this flash point can be quite dramatic, as was the case for Jane Hardy.

Health crisis

Jane had a high-powered job in sales in the financial sector, on the road, spending weekday nights in hotels, always looking for the next deal, the “kill.” Then her life changed dramatically when at the age of 42 she suffered a cardiac arrest. Only 5% of people survive this experience, and Jane was one of the lucky ones. As a result of this experience, she took at good hard look at her life. “I felt like she had been given a second chance and I wanted to make a difference.”

Jane retrained as a debt counsellor, working for different charities and starting her own debt counselling service. This led her to discover networking and eventually the Fabulous Women network where she said “I felt like I’d come home. It was all about collaboration, support, and supporting others to be successful.” Jane’s involvement in networking led to her third career. She joined Fabulous Women as a regional manager, and 18 months down the line, she now owns the company!

Fortunately for most people, the trigger will be a less dramatic but can still be life-changing. Events such as a significant birthday, starting a family, redundancy, or seeing children off to college, can push us to re-evaluate what matters in our working lives, and find a more satisfying future.

Milestone birthday

For Laura Geaves, hitting her 30th birthday was the trigger for a career change. Laura had been working as a PA. When she turned 30, she looked at where she was in her career and realised that there was no way up in the company and role she was in. This led her to asking herself some searching questions: “What am I actually achieving in life? What do I really enjoy?”

For Laura, marketing had always been something she thought was interesting and she decided to make it her career. She took her Chartered Institute of Marketing qualification and is now a Marketing Executive at KPC Creative Communications, a consultancy in Farnham, Surrey. Unlike her previous job, this business offers career progression, and Laura is working towards becoming an account manager. Laura’s advice for career changers is to “Look at what you are interested in, be committed, and believe in yourself.”

Time for a change?

However uncomfortable the trigger point, people commonly look back and see it as a step towards more positive and satisfying work. And you can sometimes avoid reaching a crisis point in the first place by picking up earlier on signs that you need a change, such as ongoing feelings of stress or boredom, or just a niggling feeling that something isn’t quite right.

If something is in your life, or inside yourself, is telling you that it’s time for a change, then it’s wise to take notice and spend some reviewing where you are, and where you want to be.

The joy of a portfolio career

By Felicity Dwyer | Career change , Career development

Sometimes, looking for that dream job can feel all or nothing. What can I do that ticks all the boxes, gives me satisfaction, uses my skills, brings in the money that I need? The answer may not be found in one job at all. Instead the key to job satisfaction may be found by doing more than one job. This way of working is sometimes known as a portfolio career.

Benefits of portfolio working

At its best a portfolio career is about choosing to do more than one job, as a way of providing interest, using a wide range of skills. It can provide more satisfaction than one job, and in the current climate can even provide more security, as you are not dependent on just one employer. In the 1980s, Charles Handy advanced the idea of “portfolio workers”, who performed a variety of jobs for different employers. Over thirty years on, this way of working has become much more prevalent, and a preferred way of working for many. Particularly so as many of the benefits of full time employment, such as pension rights, have been eroded.

Mixing employment with self-employment

You might have a mix of part-time employment and freelance work in your portfolio. Or you might be self employed, with a variety of different income streams. According to Karen Gaskell, one of the reasons for having a portfolio career is variety: “It’s like a beautiful garden, with lots of different flowers growing”. Karen’s portfolio “garden” includes her work as a distributor for Utility Warehouse, a FTSE 100 supplier of energy, telecoms and discounts on groceries. She is passionate about this job which involves building relationships with customers, and also managing a team of distributors. Karen also spends two days a week running a daycare centre for elderly people. This gives her satisfaction in organising events that she can see make an immediate difference to people’s lives.

An advantage of running a business and having a salaried job is that you have a baseline income to smooth out the ups and downs that can come with self-employment, but allow you to also run your own business, which potentially can offer much greater financial rewards. Whereas some people’s portfolio will include employment, other people will be self employed, but with more than one way of earning a living.

Complementary strands of work

Dr Mike Clayton is a prolific author, with 12 business books under his belt. Mike loves writing, but it’s only part of his working life. He balances writing with a career as a seminar presenter and speaker. He also delivers project management training as an associate for other companies. Although Mike has a varied portfolio, all his activities are linked in that they are about supporting people and organisations to work more effectively. As someone with a keen intellectual interest in research, the work he does for his writing feeds into his seminars and training, and the activities complement each other. As Mike says: “If I only did one thing, then I would regret not doing the others. It means that I can do different things, all of which I enjoy. I don’t mean that you can do everything you might like to, as I think it’s important to keep focused. But it does mean that you don’t need to limit yourself to doing the same thing every day.”

Is this right for you?

This working style may not interest you so much if you are motivated by the idea of climbing a corporate ladder. Having said that, people who have had a successful corporate career sometimes move into portfolio work in the final phase of working life, offering consultancy, serving as non-executive directors, and often combining this with some unpaid or voluntary work, perhaps as a charity trustee or by mentoring others.

Is a portfolio career right for you? It may be if you have a wide skill-set combined with specialist knowledge, and are self-motivated and confident enough to get out and sell yourself. It requires a certain degree of independence and self-reliance, and in return can offer variety and interest.

 

How much time do you spend doing work you love?

By Felicity Dwyer | Career change , Motivation

Doing anything worthwhile takes hard work, there is no way around that. But what a difference there is between the soul-sapping grind of work, when you are in the wrong career or job, and the heart-lifting joy of work that plays to your strengths and skills and feels worthwhile. It may not even feel like work, hence the famous words from Chinese sage Confucius: “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”

In my own working life, I enjoy coaching and training so much that it doesn’t feel like work now. It also gives me an opportunity to do what I’m good at. But of course developing the skills and gaining the experience to make it feel easy has taken time and energy. And I like the fact that this is a line of work where there is always more to learn and master, so it never gets dull. But in order to have a business doing what I love, I also need to do things that I don’t enjoy such as keeping accounts, cross-referencing, proofreading.  To some extent these tasks can be outsourced, but the reality is that most of them are done by me, as part of what needs to be done to keep myself in business.

The 80/20 rule offers us a useful rule of thumb. Is more than 20 % of your time, one day out of five if you work full time, spent on work that you really dislike, or which you are not good at? If the answer is yes, then perhaps it is time to consider a change. This may be to a different career, a different organisation, or a different role.  And if you’re not sure what to do next in your working life, you might find career coaching helpful.

by Felicity Dwyer