What skills shortage?

Despite the fallout from the recession, we still keep hearing that the UK has a severe skills shortage which will leave the country in a poor position when the long-awaited recovery finally arrives.  With large numbers of well-qualified, experienced professional women struggling to return to employment because of the challenges of juggling the work-life balance, surely a willing workforce is at hand if only employers are able to give them the flexibility they need?

PR is an industry which has traditionally had a culture of long hours, but as the profession seeks to attract and retain skilled staff, even it is realising that flexibility is the order of the day.  A feature in last week’s PR Week discussed the issue, and a recent survey of PROs  showed that a flexible working life was cited above salary as the most important factor when deciding where to work.

The increased willingness of employers to consider alternatives to the traditional 9 to 5 grind can only be a good thing – as well as enabling them to draw from a skilled, experienced workforce, it could also ease the payroll burden in these difficult times.  In my own experience, a sympathetic employer, willing to give a little flexibility (early finishes a few days a week in time for school pick-up and extra time during school holidays) has made balancing my work-home life a breeze.

After almost ten years in the PR industry, I took a career break back in the late ‘90s when my daughter was born and then decided to stay at home when my son followed just 17 months later (to be honest, life at the time was simply a matter of survival from one feeding frenzy to the next and returning to work didn’t really figure in my sleep-deprived brain).  Once my delightful offspring were school age, I decided to set up my own business rather than returning to PR, largely because I didn’t want to be stuck with rigid office hours and misguidedly thought it would give me more flexibility.  Anyone entrepreneurs will know that this rose-tinted view could not be further from the truth – the reality is that you end up working 24/7 as, regardless of the hour, the buck stops with you. 

Having, thankfully, sold my business, I decided to return to the world of PR and see whether I could cope with a ‘proper’ job as well as the demands of family life.  I took on a full-time position, but after six months felt like a hamster on a wheel I did not have the energy to stop, let alone fling myself off.  In contrast, my slightly-less-than-full-time hours at Appeal cause minimal inconvenience to clients and colleagues, but enable me to manage my home life effectively, meaning that I can give 100 per cent when I am at work.

So let’s encourage employers to do some thinking outside the 9 to 5 box.  There are thousands of experienced, skilled women out there whose motivation and loyalty you could harness, with just a little bit of give – not to mention lots of men who would appreciate some flexibility in their work lives.