Links:

Get the advance invitation to my early 2023 programme Time for the things that matter.

'Reclaim Time to Read' 2022 reading challenge:  https://www.helenbeedham.com/2022-reading-challenge

Helen's business book: The Future of Time: how 're-working' time can help you boost productivity, diversity and wellbeing

Jane on Linked In

Working Families website

The Four Tendencies, by Gretchen Rubin

Microsoft's Work Trend Index

KPMG's recent survey findings

Coach Matters' Founding 50 offer

Transcript:

Helen: My guest this week is Jane van Zyl, CEO of the national charity Working Families, a role she took up in late 2018. Jane has 14 years of experience working in the third sector and has held senior leadership positions at a number of UK charities, including Samaritans and Sands. She believes in the value of a fulfilling, balanced working life and its transformative power to create social connections, build self-esteem, and impact the wider community. She's a passionate advocate of equal opportunity for all. Jane spent her childhood in Norfolk in the UK and in Cape Town and Johannesburg in South Africa. She holds a social science bachelor's degree from the University of Cape Town in industrial sociology and industrial psychology. Welcome to the Business of Being Brilliant Jane!

Jane: Thank you Helen. I'm delighted to be here with you.

Helen: How come you got to divide your childhood between the UK and South Africa?

Jane: My father met my mother in London. and then went back to South Africa with her. So we had time in South Africa and then he got transferred. He was the man, you know, one of the men from Del Monte. So he got transferred to the UK. So I had that opportunity to live in both. My mother was English and my father was South African.

Helen: Oh, fantastic. What a wonderful childhood to have both these experiences and so he actually worked for Delmonte?

Jane: He did.

Helen: We all, well, people my age definitely remember the adverts and the jingles.

Jane: Yes, 'the man from Delmonte says yes' I  think!

Helen: Did your father say yes a lot?

Jane: Not that I remember, no!

Helen: Yeah, probably as the child with the parent, you get a different experience. Wow. That sounds fantastic. And we're delighted you can join us on the podcast today. And I like to kick off by asking a question that helps uncover a little bit the person behind the bio. And so the question I wanted to ask you is, What is your ideal day off? And I think you're just back from a week of leave, so that might influence your answer, but I'd love to hear what would make it an ideal day off for you?

Jane: To start the morning in sunshine, but not too hot. Preferably in the mountains with a yoga class. Then spend the morning skiing with friends; the afternoon having a massage, and then in the evening having supper with my husband.

Helen: That sounds wonderful. Lovely.

Jane: And very expensive!

Helen: Yeah, that's the downside. We can't have days like that every day, can we? But it's nice to have that image and you sound very active and outdoorsy and sociable.

Jane: Yes, I'd never thought of myself as an outdoorsy person until I got into my thirties and discovered skiing which I absolutely love. I'm not very good, but I really enjoy it. And again, discovered yoga in my thirties. I have no hand eye coordination, so can't catch or throw a ball. So I've never been very good at sports which in a South African context is never very helpful.

Helen: Okay. Yeah, but it sounds like you found the two activities that really work for you, which is great.

Jane: Yeah, very lucky.

Helen: Oh, fantastic. And on the work front, you've obviously spent the majority, if not all, of your career working in the third sector. Is that something you always knew you wanted to do, or did it take you a while to find that path into that sector? How did you get into your current role and build up your expertise?

Jane: I didn't start in the third sector which I regret. I had a bit of a checkered career. I went to university first time around and didn't apply myself, I think is the polite way of putting it. So I then left university without a degree and realized very quickly that it was going to be a big chip on my shoulder.

So I worked two jobs to earn enough money to go back sent myself back which I loved; took it seriously. And then started working for a printing and publishing company which I thought was going to be the thing that would satisfy me. And I found as I worked for a succession of different organizations that I really enjoyed working; I really enjoyed meeting people; I loved doing different things, but I found that the focus on making money for other people was something that, for me, meant that there was a gap somewhere? And when I arrived in the UK I started volunteering for Samaritans and then saw a job advertised at Samaritans and thought, Oh my God, this is exactly what I want to do.

 So I'm very grateful for having had that opportunity to work in the private sector because I think for me what's important is a focus on effectiveness and efficiency. And I love working for the third sector because of the focus on supporting other people. And I don't think the two are mutually exclusive. I think you can work for organizations with a purpose which aren't necessarily third sector organizations, and get as much out of it. But for me, that wasn't where my journey started.

Helen: Mm. That's so interesting to hear and I think a lot of people listening to that, particularly people younger in their careers, would find that really reassuring that you can follow the traditional route, go to university and it not work for you. And I know people in my family that have had exactly the same experience and left without a degree and then went into the world of work and explored their early career that way, and then got much clearer about, well, why did they want to go back to study? What purpose was that going to lead them towards? So I think it, it can be quite difficult to expect a university degree to work first time round at 18 or 19 and for it to lead in the direction that you want. So I think that's a great example to hear that you can take different routes and have different bends in the road along the way.

Jane: Absolutely.

Helen: And also that your volunteering led not just to a permanent role but actually that light bulb moment for you that this is the field I want to be in and why?

Jane: Yep. Yes, for me being involved with Samaritans was such a gift. The people that I met, the hilarity, and I know that doesn't sound like it would be, but when you are with your fellow volunteers ... I remember calling my husband from conference, I was dancing on a table with a couple of volunteers to a song called A Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep! And he was absolutely delighted that he wasn't with me. And the day was filled with serious conversation about how we could best support people contacting the charity who needed support. But as with, I suppose, many organizations where what you are doing is pretty serious you need to have that release valve.

And Samaritan's volunteers are an extraordinary bunch. Young, old; men, women;; straight gay; you know, pick a category, there's a Samaritan volunteer that fits the category or doesn't. Extraordinary organization. I just loved it.

Helen: It sounds like it, listening to you talk about it, and I know a couple of other people that have worked for many years for the Samaritans and are equally committed and passionate and get equal enjoyment about it. And hearing you talk about how much fun it was as well, reminds me of when I was between school and university, I took on summer jobs and one of the things I did is I worked at a retirement home for the elderly where my own grandmother had been in her final months. And friends used to say to me, that must be a bit depressing. I said, actually, it's a lot of fun and we have some really funny moments. Funny because of the camaraderie of people working there, but also because of the unexpected humour that the elderly residents would inject into unexpected moments. That was something I absolutely treasured about that job and had not expected at all going into it.

Jane: Yeah, Yeah. That resonates with me completely.

Helen: And so it sounds at Samaritans you really enjoyed the culture and the sense of support and the collegiality of the people working there. What else has helped you to succeed in your career and to grow and to enjoy it?

Jane: I think for me it's about the different people that I've met and the constant challenge I need that challenge in my life. (laughs) I can be terribly lazy, it's very helpful for me to have something to get up for in the morning. So , I think it's the people that I've met along the way and, and I think for me, one of the things that was really interesting about work is that you meet people.

I have met in my working life people that I wouldn't have met in my social life. It's particularly coming from South Africa, I grew up in the apartheid years where the division between white and black was obviously completely clear and unpleasant. And it was only when I was working that I met people who were of colour and experienced them as equals for the first time. And then meeting people who were working class, who were much more competent than I was and who had a worldview that was entirely different to mine. Those were the things that I've loved about working as all of the different people that I've met, All of the different experiences that I've had.

Helen: Yes.

Jane: I spent some time travelling in Asia and taught English as a foreign language which is the most exhausting job I have ever done. I don't know how people teach all day every day for school terms. Great fun, loved the children, but exhausting. So yes, I really think it's that access to people who are different to my experiences and different to the way in which I was brought up that I have found the most satisfying, the most fulfilling.

Helen: Yes, I completely understand that. It just enriches our experiences, opens our minds, gets us out of our bubble of life experience, doesn't it? And I love how you coin, actually I meet people I wouldn't have otherwise met. I've never really said that, but of course that's completely true throughout my working life and actually one of the reasons I love working is all those avenues and conversations and interesting people you get to meet.

Jane: I love working too.

Helen: Yes! I was reading a book yesterday and the Foreword was written by Dame Stephanie Shirley, who's now 90, who I've met at a former city event and have a copy of her book. And she wrote the Foreword and she talked in it about how she was a really happy workaholic because she was kind of addicted to work but in a really positive, joyful way, not in a 'I don't have time for anything else in my life way'. And I thought actually, yeah, she's just owning it and being really proud of it. And I think that's great if we're in that position.

And it is quite topical to come onto that because people's enjoyment and experience of work has been ebbing and flowing and evolving enormously obviously over the last few years with Covid and with changes in working practices and you conduct at Working Families an annual benchmark survey of employers, which evaluates them on different policies and practices and their work culture and how supportive they are of working parents. Have I explained that right?

Jane: Yes, you've explained that beautifully.

Helen: Okay. Thank you! And this year's results as I understand, show that the huge shift towards flexible working is here to stay permanently. So could you tell me a bit about your recent findings and what specifically has changed since the pandemic and what is it that employers are doing differently now that perhaps they weren't doing so much of or at all before the pandemic?

Jane: I think for what we've seen is that the biggest change is that flexibility is no longer just a nice to have. It's a must have, particularly for people with caring responsibilities. Obviously a huge priority for parents. And we've done some You Gov research with SF Recruitment, which has shown us that over half of working parents would leave their current job if they found a new one with better flexibility.

Helen: Wow.

Jane: We've known for some time, because we saw this during the pandemic, that our employer members innovate to change ways of working to support their people. It was really very interesting, the first lockdown in the summer of 2020. We asked employers what they were concerned about and what we found fascinating - and I suppose unsurprising because the employers that we work with really are interested in ensuring that their employees are happy in their work - was a real focus on wellbeing. And during the pandemic we saw our employer members innovate to support their people. And those employers have now embedded those new ways of working and reaped the benefits: a reduction in real estate and travel costs and increases in productivity. We're also interested to see that forward thinking employers are building flexible working into their recruitment processes because our research says that 70% of UK parents wouldn't even apply for a job that didn't have flexible options listed up front.

And anecdotally, we know that the pandemic allowed employers to have insight into the lives of their people. All of those Zoom and Teams calls where somebody appeared in the background, a baby wanting something, a child demanding a second biscuit, somebody's cat or dog or partner, or the postman, all of the things that we know happen in our own lives, we suddenly saw in everybody else's lives too. We know particularly that during the pandemic those with caring responsibilities were forced to juggle homeschooling and a job. And there was lots of talk about during the pandemic that we were all in the same storm. And that of course was true to an extent, but what we felt very strongly was that we were not all in the same boat. The experience of people living in either shared accommodation or in really small flats in the centre of towns with no access to green spaces it was much, much more difficult. And anybody with small children who were trying to work at the same time was very difficult.

And so we think many employers and line managers gained that new perspective into what balancing work and caring actually looked like. And although we are the charity for working families, everybody has a family whether it's you and your goldfish or whether you or not, you have self care responsibilities. There always needs to be that acknowledgement that we're human and that we have lives and needs outside of our roles.

Helen: Yes, absolutely. And it's great to hear that your research is confirming that employers haven't just dropped all that acknowledgement and wellbeing support that they put in place during the pandemic, but have actually embedded it and are taking it further. And it sounds like a big thing that's changed is this recognition of individual needs. You can't treat everybody in the workplace the same and assume that the same model of work is going to fit and help everyone perform at their best. It sounds like that's been a big shift in employers' awareness and approach to managing employees.

Jane: For me, the thing that's tied to that is: we as a society talk about equality, diversity, and inclusion, particularly within the workplace. But what I've noticed is that the language is now changing to say that we want equity because giving everybody exactly the same thing is not necessarily fair. It's very much more around what is it that you as an individual need. And Working Families as a charity would say that there needs to be a negotiation between the employer and the employee in the sense that there is a job of work to do. And that's something that we sign up to do when we go to work for an organization and a really good quality organization will treat us as a human being and will have conversations with us about what's working and what's not working.

Helen: Yes. Yes. That's interesting to hear about the equity. I've seen that becoming much more used as a term rather than equality so it's really helpful for me and listeners to hear you explain why that shift is happening as well. And while we're talking about changes to working practices, shifts in employer mindsets, I should mention that this podcast is airing on the 10th of October, so that is the start of National Work Life Week, which is an annual campaign spearheaded by Working Families. Do you want to say a little bit more about that and what it's aims and activities involve?

Jane: Yes, we have a week and I have to admit first that it's a week when my team really do struggle to balance work and home life , because there is, luckily for us so much going on within the work sphere, but it's a week for us to focus on this balance between work and home life and all of the things that you need as an individual. I would say, as Dame Shirley says, that it's very much around ensuring that the balance works for you and we are not prescribing anything. And I feel very strongly as a product of my generation I think, that nobody can have everything; you need to make choices along the way. And one of the things that we want National Work Life Week to achieve is an understanding that we are all human; we all live in the world in which we live; and our work is very important to us. But there does need to be that acknowledgement that for some people working more hours is great, and that's what they choose to do. And for some people, they need those additional hours in order to bring in the money that they need their families.

So they're very different needs across the different people who work for employers, and of course there are very many different employers. Some of them are great and some of them not so good.

Helen: Yes, and if anyone listening wants to see what some of the great employers do, then obviously your website and your annual benchmark survey and some of your case studies shine a light on what those good practices look like to help people get some ideas and to learn from those that are really pushing ahead in this way and offering a very flexible, supportive environment.

You were just touching then on the question of hours and how many hours people want to work and how that varies. I was reading recently some data from the Office of National Statistics. I think one of their big studies and found that there's a national trend of more people working part-time now than ever before; over 8 million in the population. Quite a large number of those people, according to their research, said they didn't want to work more hours, they didn't want full-time work. But obviously there's another chunk of people who are working part-time and need more hours to supplement their earnings. And often people are working part-time on top of another job for that purpose. And your research shows that working families are struggling financially, particularly in the current difficult economic climate and are supplementing their work with additional part-time hours. Can you say a little bit more about that?

Jane: Yes, our Working Families Index was conducted at the end of 2021. So I imagine this has become even more pronounced with the current cost of living crisis. But what our Working Families Index found was that 60% of UK parents and carers said that making ends meet had become more difficult in the last three years.

So if 60% of working parents and carers were finding it more difficult in the last three years in November, it really is quite concerning to think about how they're experiencing it now. And we asked parents and carers about their working beyond their contracted hours, whether that's on a paid basis or on an unpaid basis due to workload or company culture. And a third of those working extra hours did so to earn extra income. A significant number, which shows that the financial squeeze, many families are under. One of the things that we would recommend is that all employers should be paying the living wage. Very important to us. Because if you don't, then there won't be enough hours in the day that people can work in order to get the income that they need to live on. So yeah, it really is a very difficult time. We know about the proliferation of food banks and we are hearing increasingly fairly slick phrases about people having to choose between heating and eating. But actually that is the case for some families. That really is, they are, they are having to choose, which really in the United Kingdom is really quite awful to think about and is pretty desperate. And particularly single parents have an enormously difficult task where they don't necessarily have the choice to work part-time. But they have these huge childcare costs in some cases.

And our research showed that part-time workers are much more likely to be women, which has pretty much always been the case, because we live in gendered society, and so women do take on the bulk of caring responsibilities. We know also that women are more likely to be on a low income and are much less likely to have opportunities to progress in their careers. And this is huge problem and shows the lack of well paid, high quality, flexible jobs out there.

And for us, that's really something where employers need to step up and find ways to create part-time jobs at senior level. And that would be perhaps job shares and making sure that any part-time role is what we would call human size. So it's been designed to be done in the hours allocated to it.

 We know from various bits of research we've done previously that if you work part-time, you are only one fifth as likely to be promoted as your full-time colleague which is extraordinary and it means that employers are missing out on the huge ability within the working population because there are equal numbers of men and women who are in the working population.

Helen: Yeah, absolutely. It'd be a massive boost to the economy generally to get far more of these women on too few hours or not in the workplace at all, back into work. And I know it's a longer term ambition of the Government, but it feels like slow progress. And, when you were talking about paying the national living wage, obviously now is a particular time to be looking at doing that if you haven't already done it. I'm certainly hearing other employers look at things like cost of living adjustments for employees at the moment. And it's interesting when you were talking about creating more flexible job opportunities at senior levels. I've also seen a few, not many more knowledge based firms in the city, for example, create programmes to encourage more job sharing at senior levels, and I'm just wondering if that's something that people are looking at again with more enthusiasm than perhaps before the pandemic. Are you seeing the launch of many initiatives like that by employers?

Jane: On the Working Families Index this year, we did see that there were people working in job shares, but it was a tiny, tiny percentage of people. And for us, that really is one of the ways that you can get people to work in senior levels. Of course there are challenges and I think we do ourselves a disservice if we don't acknowledge that there are things about working life that are difficult. And if absolutely everybody else in the organization is working full time and you are working three days a week, that can lead to all kinds of challenges for you as an individual and being sidelined, being ignored, all of those things. But if within the organization you'll have a culture of putting in place the ways of working, the agreements about how people will communicate, that's when you really will get the best out of your people.

And certainly for us, we think job shares are just superb. You get so much more out of two people in the same role even though there might be the odd logistical problem about, having a crossover day and transferring information from one to the other but nobody else is quite as interested in your job as somebody doing exactly the same job.  So as an employer, I think the benefits of having job shares are enormous. It certainly worked very well for us as a small charity.

Helen: Yes. And it provides that added flexibility, doesn't it, when someone needs perhaps some unexpected time off. And this whole concept of substitutability, is something I'm getting quite interested in, in the world of work. How to make more flexible working patterns work well, encouraging more substitutability between individuals on the team, so it doesn't always have to be a particular person doing a particular meeting or a piece of work.

Jane: Yes, absolutely. And the joy of that, of course is that we are all different so we bring slightly different perspectives, different strengths, different abilities and that can be a really exciting place to be.

Helen: Yeah, definitely bringing all that diversity of thought in and loads of extra value from different world views and different ways of approaching problems and ideas. Well, fantastic. It's been great to hear about the work you do and how you support employers and some of the findings around current working practices and trends as well.

 Before we close, can I ask you to recommend a resource , can be anything that has been useful to you at some point in your career that you think others might enjoy and benefit from?

Jane: Yes, I've recently read a book, which I've absolutely loved about whether or not you are an obliger, a rebel.... oh, dear Lord, I did write these down and they've now completely gone out of my head. I'm certainly a rebel, so people can't make me do things but I can't make myself do things and I would absolutely recommend it.  I'm looking around for it now, Helen and I will have to send you the name of it, but great fun to read and incredibly useful. As a South African, I'm very direct and one of the things that I've really had to focus on is really building on my emotional intelligence and learning from others around me in terms of how to get the best out of everybody that I work with.

Helen: Well that sounds like a great book to read. We will pop a link in the show notes. So if you're listening and it's piqued your interest head to the episode landing page and there'll be a link there. And finally, how can listeners connect with you after the podcast if they want to find out more about the work of Working Families or get in touch with you professionally? What's the best way to do that?

Jane: So follow @workingfamuk on Twitter and Instagram. We have lots of information on our website at workingfamilies.org.uk particularly for anybody who is struggling with issues around flexibility at work. We have in excess of 250 articles and over 1 million unique hits on our website every year so we know that there's some very useful information there. I'm on Twitter at @vanzyljane and then you can get me on LinkedIn.

Helen: Perfect, thank you. I'll put some of those links in the show notes as well. Jane, thank you so much for joining the podcast. It's been a real pleasure having you on and hearing about the work you lead at Working Families and getting your very expert take on how our world of work is evolving. Thank you so much for being a brilliant guest!

Jane: Thanks very much for having me, Helen. I've really enjoyed the conversation.