Two years ago, I was asking myself how I was ever going to balance my full time position in the PR team at DWF with being a parent? I worried about how I could possibly drop my child at nursery and then spend an hour on a packed train into the city centre. Then do it all again in reverse at the end of the day.
I've been working for 25 years. At times I have worked while still in education, juggling work with college and university earlier on. But for the most part, I've been able to dedicate the majority of my week to work, with few interruptions.
I'm grateful that my role at DWF has always been flexible. Pre-pandemic, I was able to work from home if I needed to with the support of my manager, but most of the time I was in the office.
My return to work following maternity leave in 2020 coincided with new pandemic-induced ways of working, with increasing time working from home and decreasing time spent on commuting. DWF was already an agile business so adopting a new hybrid approach, where we can balance office and home working, was a very smooth transition across our business.
Being at home so much of the time made nursery drop offs and full time working less of a worry. Even so, at the start of 2022, I made the decision that I wanted to spend more quality time with my child during the week by reducing my hours at work.
