How Mobile-first Culture is Helping Stay-At-Home Women Keep Their Top Jobs
Stacy Roberts of Problogger, Krista Wiltbank of GetResponse and Sian Philips of EggMarketingPR share their telecommuting tools and apps that help them stay on top of their jobs.
Remember when Marissa Mayer’s took over as the President and CEO of Yahoo! in 2012, nearly 200 of its 12,000 employees who were working from had to join back the Yahoo! offices.
Generally speaking, the decision, might have been a huge setback for working moms who would have joined Yahoo! in the first place, because of its flexible work nature.
Sensing that tech sector is not all women-friendly, Katharine Zaleski and Milena Berry, the former digital head of Huffington Post and the latter, an ex- CTO of political activist site Avaaz.org, started PowerToFly with a personal mission: find work-from-home jobs for female tech talent, especially mothers who did not want to leave their children behind.
Both are mothers and they knew female tech talent is out there. But they also saw remote working as one of the best ways to bridging the tech gender gap.
Additionally, with mobile app culture catching up, thanks to apps and tools like Slack, Jira, Skype, Trello, Google Docs, among many others, these women felt the market environment was finally becoming more conducive for stay-at-home moms, and women in general, who often tend to the primary caregivers of the family, to join back the workforce.
According to a Harvard study, remote workers can be more productive. Millennials—with or without kids—want more flexibility.
Here are the 3 top women, working for women-friendly IT companies, taking advantage of telecommuting and apps, while taking care of people at home.
#1. Stacy Roberts: Managing Editor, ProBlogger
Stacy is a stay-at-home mom who occupies top position at ProBlogger, and on top of that, she also runs a popular blog called ‘veggiemama’. With two kids at her toes, aged five and four, she describes herself as a hardcore *CTFD* mum.
Stacy says, “I often use Slack, Skype, CoSchedule and Trello to keep on top of tasks and communication with my colleagues. For other work I use Asana and sometimes Facebook Messenger. Without these, it would be much harder to get things done and it wouldn't be quite so enjoyable!”
#2. Krista Wiltbank – Social Media Manager, GetResponse
Krista, besides being a social media social manager is also a mom, a runner, a hobby baker, and a self-confessed Instagram addict. She also squeezes in some time for her favorite BBC programs, in addition to running a popular blog kristawiltbank.com.
To stay in touch with her team that's scattered world over, she relies on Slack, Trello, GoogleDrive, Skype, and (of course) email. “But the one thing that keeps me organized is not digital. I live and die by my to-do list and colored pens (for color coding).” Krista says.
#3. Sian Philips: Managing Editor at Tweakyourbiz and Content Editor at Egg Marketing and Communications
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For the uninitiated Sian, besides being an editor par excellence is also, surprisingly, a qualified accountant by profession.
Sian says, “I don't actually use any apps on my mobile as my laptop lives with me all the time - and when it's not, I'm not working ... yay! I obviously use Wordpress for the blogging platforms and also Basecamp and Google Drive. For social sharing, I use Hootsuite, Tweetdeck and Socialoomph.”
Final Thoughts:
If these women could maintain their top jobs and also take care of their families at the same time, thanks to the mobile-first approach of their companies, why can’t the other women? There are dime a dozen out there who wish to join back the workforce but are unable to do so, thanks to stringent HR policies that make work from office mandatory for employees. It’s time, the corporates world over did a rethinking on their work place cultures and turned their office turf somewhat women-friendly.
