Coffee, birthday lunch and school fun runs: How working from home saved a corporate mum’s career

Sarah*, a mother in her 30s working in operations at a large financial institution, would have likely left her job if she could not have worked from home.

She could not have faced putting her now-seven-year-old elder child into care before and after school every day.

The work-life juggle has eased a bit for Sarah since working from home was normalised.Credit: Illustration: Aresna Villanueva

“I actually think I would have quit work if I hadn’t been working from home, I would have found it too upsetting to put him in before and aftercare every day. He really doesn’t like it,” Sarah says.

“Two years ago, when our son started prep, it didn’t occur to me that this [logistical] cliff was coming.”

In the Working from Home Diaries, we asked anonymous contributors to detail exactly what they do in a working day, from juggling online meetings and emails to school drop-offs, second jobs, the laundry and unloading the dishwasher. Scroll to the bottom to read about Sarah’s working day.

Since the pandemic, more than 20 per cent (2.5 million) of 12 million employed Australians worked from home, and at Sarah’s previously office-based organisation, a third of building space has been shed. People do “about a 50/50 split – it’s standard to work from home half the time”.

But there is still “a relentless tidal wave of work”, to do, “it doesn’t matter how you get it done,” Sarah says. The “total, terrible juggle” of managing a sick grade two or kindergarten-aged child (with her husband) can be done alongside work.

For me to be present as a whole person in the workplace, my kids and my family are part of who I am.

“It’s not about the hours and bums on seats, it’s about output, how much stuff I’ve got to get done, regardless of when I do it.”

Flexibility means Sarah can be a class representative in her son’s school, attend some activities she could never have hoped to before, and be on the playground building committee. She can also have integrated work/family life she thinks contemporary parents demand.

“For me to be present as a whole person in the workplace, my kids and my family are part of who I am – and [spending time with them] is what flexibility is to me. It’s not about being able to answer emails from the beach,” she says.

“I didn’t have any late afternoon meetings yesterday, so I could trot down to his [son’s] school fun run, that’s really nice for me and he was so excited, and he loves it when we come on school excursions. He just thinks that’s the best. For a long time, I just said, ‘I can’t ever do this’. But it’s important to me that he feels like we’re around.”

Many of Sarah’s peers with young children also expect the right to juggle work, home and family.

“There are lots of parents like me, who work from home, and would not have previously been able to do all this stuff; just have that presence at the school,” she says.

Seeing siblings or friends is more possible, but Sarah draws the line at doing domestic chores in work hours. She says conversations around domestic load have been “accelerated” by her husband also doing some work from home.

“I’ve got to be in work mode, I can’t be folding a load of washing – though I know a lot of people do that,” Sarah says.Credit: Shutterstock

“On a day I’m working at home, I might have a coffee with someone. I caught up with my brother for lunch last week for his birthday, but I know I’ve got to make the hour up somewhere else,” she says.

“But I’ve got to be in work mode, I can’t be folding a load of washing – but I know a lot of people do that.”

Her employer believes team work is linked to a sense of loyalty and, “if there’s no sense of community or team, it’s difficult to keep people’s loyalty”, but Sarah says people are more likely to do more – not less – work.

“The workplace is always getting the better end of the stick; mothers feel perennially guilty and always do more hours than we need to. I think there’s overcompensation in some areas, for flexibility.”

Even so, Sarah says “working from home is a blessing”.

How I divide my day:

5.40am: Get up and ready to exercise.

6am: Attend hot Pilates class.

6.45am: Get home, have a shower and make the kids’ lunches.

7.30am: Log on and do some emails to get a start on my inbox, so I can walk my son to school at 8.45am. At the moment I am also taking our four year-old to kinder (in a different suburb), I take him very early, it’s possible but creates enormous pressure. You feel like you’re careening on rollerblades, on ice, from one thing to the next!

9am: I front-load all my meetings, so I can do the kinder pickup about 5pm as the centre shuts early, at 5.30.

On a Tuesday, if I don’t have a critical meeting at 3.30, I won’t put [her elder son] in aftercare, I would go and pick him up, then make that time up. On a Monday, my husband leaves work at 3pm and goes to pick him up. He does another hour of work at home and then does the kinder pickup, and swimming lessons at 5pm, and then he’ll work again after they’ve gone to bed.

We’ve got lots of friends who do that; they’ll pick up kids and take them to gymnastics or whatever and make up the hours.

3.30pm to about 8pm: On the days I pick up my son from school we’ll walk home, and then I’ll keep working until about 6pm or 6.30, and then make dinner. I’ll try to stop at a reasonable time. We try to feed the kids about 6.30 and then put them in the bath, and to bed. Last year I had a bigger job, and would then usually log back on and could do more work until about 11ish. This year isn’t so bad.

* Sarah is a pseudonym

Read more in this series:

The music technology whiz who started a side hustle while working from home

The man from a flexible workplace who is a reluctant work from home participant

The marketing boss and foodie who cooked a feast (while working)

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