How Hiring Mothers Can Positively Impact Your Company
The pandemic impacted the job market in numerous ways. While some businesses were forced to downsize, others experienced high levels of vacancies as many professionals left their jobs to attend to their children full time.
Now that mitigation measures that were in place have lifted and eased, many mothers are ready to return to work.
Here’s how hiring mothers for your company can have a positive impact on your business!
Mom Skills Support Excellent Workplace Skills
You might think that being away from a professional setting for a year or longer would hinder a person’s professional skills. We do not find that to be the case for most parents.
Being a parent is a full-time job. Even during uncommon situations (like the year-long lockdown), mothers don’t experience a lot of downtime. Their days and nights are filled with responsibilities and activities that strengthen their skills.
By hiring mothers who are eager to return to work, your company can benefit from a team member with enhanced skills such as:
Time Management and Scheduling
If you were to take a peek at a mother’s planner or calendar, the only free time you would find is the few hours of sleep they manage to carve out each night.
The rest of their schedule is filled with various appointments, responsibilities and tasks. While this type of schedule could be overwhelming for even the busiest professionals, it’s not a challenge for mothers.
Mothers are adept at prioritizing their personal responsibilities and commitments. They’re also acutely aware of how to fulfill these obligations in a timely manner.
Transferring these well-honed time management and scheduling skills from their personal lives to their professional lives makes mothers an invaluable asset for any workplace.
Multitasking
Mothers have made multi-tasking an art form.
Mothers, by necessity, can accomplish their daily goals more efficiently and effectively by performing multiple tasks at the same time.
Understanding that certain tasks need more time and attention than others, mothers assess their day to identify opportunities where they can accomplish two or more tasks at the same time. For instance, filing taxes is a time-consuming task that requires their full concentration. However, they can order everyday essentials online while speaking with a pharmacist about a prescription, and jotting down reminders about tasks they need to complete by the end of the day.
Mothers can easily convert their at-home multitasking skills to the workplace. They’re able to speak with clients on the phone, check the status of a project in a time management tool, and draft an email to a colleague describing the next steps on an assignment in the same timeframe.
Yet, they’ll also understand when a certain responsibility requires their complete focus and adequate time to successfully complete it.
Problem Solving
In addition to fulfilling their planned daily tasks, mothers have to deal with lots of surprises.
It’s quite common for a child to inform their mother that they need help with a project (that they’ve known about for weeks) that is due tomorrow and need special supplies from the store. Activities regularly get postponed and rescheduled, and mothers have to manage conflicting items on their schedules as a matter of course.
Problems like these do not throw mothers off track - they are resourceful and can solve these problems as they arise.
Using their time management and multitasking skills, mothers will :
Adjust their schedule.
Figure out the best ways to effectively and efficiently complete multiple duties at the same time.
Clear some time and locate the necessary resources to assist their child with their project.
Rather than cancel plans when scheduling conflicts arise, mothers rely on their support network (friends and family). They’ll delegate the responsibility of fulfilling the postponed/rescheduled commitment so they can attend the originally scheduled event.
Being prepared for the unexpected produces accomplished problem solvers. Having someone on your team who can expertly assess the situation, formulate a plan, delegate specific tasks, and carry out their own responsibilities is a resource that every company can use.
Conflict Resolution
Sibling rivalry is not a cliche. It’s a reality. Mothers understand this well.
They have first-hand experience dealing with the various conflicts that arise at any given moment. From minor misunderstandings to full-blown meltdowns, mothers are adroit at diffusing clashes, reconciling disagreements and re-establishing unity.
Mothers know that the best way to resolve conflicts is to listen to each party’s concerns, evaluate the situation, determine the best course of action for both parties, and negotiate a deal that leads to an acceptable solution. And they do this calmly and skillfully.
Staffing your team with members who are skilled at resolving conflicts is beneficial for any business, especially those that maintain reputations with customers, business partners, and third-party vendors.
The conflict resolution skills that mothers possess are particularly advantageous when dealing with customer/client/business partner/vendor complaints. Using their strong skills, they’ll listen to the specific complaints, reassure the party that the matter can be resolved, determine the best way to satisfy the person’s needs, and execute a plan to resolve the issue and appease the customer and the company.
Let Elite Fill Your Current Vacancies
As you can see, mothers haven’t lost a step when it comes to keeping their professional skills sharp. Although they may have been away from the workplace to attend to their families during the pandemic, they had plenty of time to refine and strengthen their multitasking, time management, scheduling, problem solving and conflict resolution skills.
Now that lockdowns and mitigation policies have evolved, children’s days are spent in school and at extracurricular activities. These changes have led to an influx of mothers eager to enter the workforce again. And you can benefit by hiring mothers for your company!
To see great candidates from all backgrounds with various skill sets, Elite can match your company with the best candidates.