Welcome to a brand new interview! Today I’m talking to Jamie Belinne, the Assistant Dean for Career Services at the Bauer College of Business at the University of Houston. Jamie hired a stay-at-home mom (SAHM) to be part of her team and has found incredible results for both employer and employee for 11 years. Jamie shares insights on how flex-time and remote work helped both parties successfully achieve their professional and personal goals, and how current employers are changing their employee retention tactics to integrate more and more Gen Y and Z workers into the workforce.
The interview has been edited for length and clarity but keeps all the nuggets of info for you to feast on. So, here goes!
Anna: Welcome, Jamie, and thanks for your time here. I always love to hear about employers who have hired candidates with a career pause and found them to be outstanding employees. Can we talk about how you employed Valerie, a previous stay at home mom looking to return to work, as part of your team?
Jamie: Yes, Anna, let me start with the story of how Valerie came to me.
I knew Valerie when she was a graduate business student. She went into corporate America after she graduated, got married, and then her husband got transferred out of the country. So she moved overseas and, because she didn't have a work visa, she decided to focus on raising her kids. When Valerie’s family returned to the States, she revived her interest in using her considerable skills to work again.
Valerie contacted me and, as luck would have it, I had a pretty major project that I needed help with at the time. It was a business development project where I needed someone to make calls and liaise with business professionals. It was a structured project that required a lot of critical thinking and excellent communication but didn’t need a physical presence in the office. I needed someone professional to assist me but I couldn’t justify an additional headcount. When Valerie called me saying she was looking for something that wasn’t permanent, I thought, well, this is perfect because I need project help that can be done from home.
Anna: It sounds like the arrangement worked really well for both of you.
Jamie: Yes, Valerie now works for 10 months of the year for me on contract, based on meeting certain deliverables. She can do 99% of that work from home, mostly on her own schedule. She comes into the office maybe four times a year, and she attends the annual Christmas party. A contract project situation is perfect for her and it is perfect for me.
Anna: I know a lot of SAHMs that I speak to who are returning to work are looking for flexibility and this really is a two-way street between employer and employee. Since this flexible arrangement works so well for you guys, what do you think makes it successful?
Jamie: I think it's really important that the employee be very driven and self-directed. It wouldn’t work if I had to call her all the time to say: Where are you on this? Are we moving along? I know she's working because she's keeping me posted and she's exceeding her goals regularly.
There's a lot of trust here too. It wouldn’t work with me breathing down her neck or keeping her in the office to supervise her. This arrangement wouldn’t have worked with someone who needed a lot of direction and supervision. Someone who procrastinates and does things at the last minute makes a supervisor nervous. With Valerie, there was a lot of communication while we got used to each other in the beginning. But once I realized she had it covered, because she kept me informed on her progress toward project deadlines, I trusted her. So much so that I don't really check up on her anymore. She pretty much owns and runs the program now. I introduce her to new clients and I step away.
Anna: This remote work arrangement works so well for you but it also sounds like Valerie is very much a part of your office community. How do you foster that relationship, that making sure that she feels like she knows what's going on at the office?
Jamie: Well, there are some really clear boundaries around the project that she's working on so she doesn't have to be deeply involved with everything else going on in the office. Since her work is very defined she doesn’t get assigned a whole lot of other duties. There are key players in the office whom she stays in touch with who feed her contacts that she needs for her development work. But she mostly works with me. She's on our email distribution list so she’s aware of what's going on but she doesn't come to the regular staff meetings. She has a project, she runs her project, and she doesn’t need to be part of everything.
Anna: Great. Changing tacks, what do you think are some of the transferable skills that she has from being a parent, or from her previous work experience, that work well for you in this position?
Jamie: Valerie’s previous work experience was in high level corporate communication. She was on track for a highly rewarding career before she decided to pause for family considerations. Frankly, I couldn't have afforded her before she stepped out of the workforce! But just because she chose to devote that time as a full-time parent doesn’t mean that she lost her skills. She now uses those skills with our corporate clients while continuing to build her network and her reputation.
As for other transferable skills, a parent can bring valuable expertise in terms of time management, prioritization and stress management. One thing that I like about the parents who work for me is that they can get twice as much done as most employees. They're used to multitasking, so they're very focused on finishing up their tasks and getting home. They are often so efficient.
In the past, I have had really good employees who, after they had children, said they really didn't want to come back full time. I realized that it was worthwhile to me to bring them back half time and hire another person half time to do some of the administrative portions of their jobs. Because in half the time, parents were accomplishing almost as much. They already had the relationships, the knowledge, and the focus that a different employee wouldn’t.
Anna: Yes, that's what I find talking to a lot of employers — they feel like the parents that are working for them are very efficient. You bring up an interesting point about job sharing: some employers say that this arrangement works for them and, it suits parents because they're looking for that flexibility. That ability to contribute in a work environment while still being able to fulfill their parenting responsibilities. That's a great observation and a win-win for everybody. Often times, companies have questions that they want to ask returner candidates but they can’t ask those questions directly. What would some of those questions be for you?
Jamie: Gosh, I always want to ask questions that I'm scared to ask! A couple of those questions could be: Have you figured out what your commute would be like? Do you feel confident that with Houston traffic you’ll be able to get to where you need to be? For instance, I've had returning moms who live in Katy wanting to work with me at the University of Houston. I've encouraged them to do a test drive in traffic before they commit to the opportunity. These are things that we have to think about, unfortunately, and I'm a mom too, so I understand.
A lot of times companies want to know certain things but they can't ask them. It's nice if the candidate has already thought from the employer's perspective, can reassure them and say I’ve thought through this, I’m ready and I'm committed. The fear many employers have when they see someone returning to the workforce is: Do they really want to come back? Because, it's a big change that needs extra convincing for the employer. I need to believe that you want this job and you're going to be committed to it. If I don't believe that during the interview process I'm not going to be able to take that risk and make that investment.
Anna: Thanks for sharing that. Lastly, I know you work a lot with Generations Y and Z. Do you see any difference in work flexibility expectations they have versus Gen X?
Jamie: It’s interesting but Gens Y and Z are having fewer kids much later in life. While Gen X was big on work-life balance, Gens Y and Z are much more about work-life integration. They're looking at, how much can I bring my work home with me? How much of my home can I bring to work? They see it all being mixed together. Having onsite daycares is going to be expected. Being able to work from home a day or two a week is going to be expected. The more companies facilitate work-life integration, the more appealing they're going to be to younger workers.
Anna: Well, Jamie, thank you so much for all this very useful information from an employer’s perspective and for your time. It was wonderful to speak with you!
