What sacrifices do you have to make to progress your career?
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This question was posed at a recent career conference we held and led to an interesting debate on work life balance, divorce, and the importance of boundaries! So, what sacrifices do you have to make, if any?
Context is everything – what do we mean by sacrifice? How far do we want to progress in our career? How driven and competitive are we? If we had to choose between a family event and work which one would win? Let’s look at each life stage in turn – what is likely to be demanded and how might you cope with it.
Starting out – if we are keen to make an impact and progress fast, we may have to sacrifice our social lives or engaging hobbies over studying for professional exams. Many sectors require professional qualifications to be gained in addition to any degree held, for example accountancy or engineering. The extent of our sacrifice will depend on the time required to gain these qualifications. We may be lucky enough to choose how long these qualifications take to acquire, thereby reducing the time sacrificed from our social lives. Then again, the ‘cost’ of taking more time may be a slower career progression as we may find that the projects we can work on are more limited, as some projects require more qualified staff than others. Decide what time span will work best for you.
Early career – by this stage we may well have met partners and want a settled home life. If both partners are pursuing demanding careers this can lead to new tensions.
Dual career couples may well have to negotiate with their employers and each other over whose career takes precedent at which stage. One partner may be offered an attractive opportunity overseas which may leave the other partner either alone in their home country with each of them commuting long distances at weekends, alone in their home country with months spent apart if weekend commuting isn’t feasible, or faced with putting their career on hold while they follow their partner abroad. Increasingly, organisations are realising that they have to be far more supportive of dual career couples than in the past if they are to retain their talent and are coming up with some creative solutions. So be sure to work with your organisation to see what opportunities might work for you and them. Be flexible in your outlook, keep your skills current and ensure you are building a positive career brand based on your key strengths and technical expertise.
Mid-career – many couples want children. Some will know from seeing friends and relatives juggling multiple demands how wonderful and challenging such a life change can be. Others will be blissfully ignorant of the changes required of them and can soon find themselves arguing over the sacrifices to be made.
If both partners want to continue to pursue highly demanding careers a good support system will be needed to facilitate their and their child’s needs. This may be family or may need to be a nanny or child-minder. Either way this has costs – either financial or in the time given by other family members which may impact their own lives more than they anticipated, especially if they are providing full time care 5 days a week, and this can change over time. The demands of a baby are different to those of a 2 or 4-year-old and, depending on the age and health of the family member, may be feasible or too tiring on a fulltime basis. Therefore, solutions that work one year may well not work the next.
What if one partner decides to ‘down-grade’ their career in order to raise a family? This too will have a financial impact as they move from a full-time salary to a part-time or no salary basis. As time goes on, they may begin to feel unfulfilled or even resentful at the sacrifice they’ve made in order to allow their partner’s career to flourish.
So, planning for the future is key to success at this life stage, with each partner being realistic about what they are willing to contribute and sacrifice in order to make having a family fulfilling for everyone. It also needs constant review and renegotiation to ensure the balance for both partners is fair.
Most employers are far more supportive now and provide paternity and maternity leave, child care vouchers, in-house creches, part-time and flexible working – again to ensure they can attract and retain talented staff. Make sure you are aware of the support available from work, network with others in your situation to glean great ideas and coping mechanisms, and keep yourself up to date with your professional body and industry so even when you take a turn to dial-down your career you don’t lose touch and your skills don’t become dated.
Use your diary well – I returned to work full-time when my son started infant school. I loved my job and had a fabulously supportive manager. I managed my emails and workload by using technology effectively at home and work. This allowed me to drop by son to breakfast club each morning and collect him from our child-minder at the same time each evening. Parent evenings, nativity plays and school sports days were advised well in advance and immediately booked out in my work diary, as holiday if necessary, to ensure I could balance my family and work life efficiently. My husband was less well organised and regretted the number of times he either missed or was late for events – not great when you’ve just one child as those opportunities once lost remain lost.
Late career – this stage can bring different challenges and sacrifices. Some senior managers I know would love to move to part-time working but have children to support through university so can’t afford the financial sacrifice. Others want to move ahead in their career, especially if they’ve previously allowed family to take precedent over their career progression, only to find they now have elder care issues to contend with. So, finding a balance at this stage between what work progression looks and feels like is important. Making a pact with ourselves and our partner about the extent to which we’ll continue to work, build a pension, and look after the needs of others needs careful consideration. Do we look for more responsibility, regardless, or consider how the development of others can provide the career development, satisfaction, and legacy we desire? Again, work with your employer to see what flexibility and support they can offer you at this stage in your career.
TAKE AWAY
Life is all about choices and the cost of those choices – call them sacrifices if you will. Being clear about what you really want, what you are prepared to do to achieve your goals and how you will share that with the partner in your life, if you have one, is the key to finding balance and contentment. Be honest with yourself and others – don’t pretend family comes first if you know, in reality, they don’t. This will allow you and those you love to make the right, informed, choices and the sacrifices, if any are required, to feel appropriate.
Context is everything – what do we mean by sacrifice? How far do we want to progress in our career? How driven and competitive are we? If we had to choose between a family event and work which one would win? Let’s look at each life stage in turn – what is likely to be demanded and how might you cope with it.
Starting out – if we are keen to make an impact and progress fast, we may have to sacrifice our social lives or engaging hobbies over studying for professional exams. Many sectors require professional qualifications to be gained in addition to any degree held, for example accountancy or engineering. The extent of our sacrifice will depend on the time required to gain these qualifications. We may be lucky enough to choose how long these qualifications take to acquire, thereby reducing the time sacrificed from our social lives. Then again, the ‘cost’ of taking more time may be a slower career progression as we may find that the projects we can work on are more limited, as some projects require more qualified staff than others. Decide what time span will work best for you.
Early career – by this stage we may well have met partners and want a settled home life. If both partners are pursuing demanding careers this can lead to new tensions.
Dual career couples may well have to negotiate with their employers and each other over whose career takes precedent at which stage. One partner may be offered an attractive opportunity overseas which may leave the other partner either alone in their home country with each of them commuting long distances at weekends, alone in their home country with months spent apart if weekend commuting isn’t feasible, or faced with putting their career on hold while they follow their partner abroad. Increasingly, organisations are realising that they have to be far more supportive of dual career couples than in the past if they are to retain their talent and are coming up with some creative solutions. So be sure to work with your organisation to see what opportunities might work for you and them. Be flexible in your outlook, keep your skills current and ensure you are building a positive career brand based on your key strengths and technical expertise.
Mid-career – many couples want children. Some will know from seeing friends and relatives juggling multiple demands how wonderful and challenging such a life change can be. Others will be blissfully ignorant of the changes required of them and can soon find themselves arguing over the sacrifices to be made.
If both partners want to continue to pursue highly demanding careers a good support system will be needed to facilitate their and their child’s needs. This may be family or may need to be a nanny or child-minder. Either way this has costs – either financial or in the time given by other family members which may impact their own lives more than they anticipated, especially if they are providing full time care 5 days a week, and this can change over time. The demands of a baby are different to those of a 2 or 4-year-old and, depending on the age and health of the family member, may be feasible or too tiring on a fulltime basis. Therefore, solutions that work one year may well not work the next.
What if one partner decides to ‘down-grade’ their career in order to raise a family? This too will have a financial impact as they move from a full-time salary to a part-time or no salary basis. As time goes on, they may begin to feel unfulfilled or even resentful at the sacrifice they’ve made in order to allow their partner’s career to flourish.
So, planning for the future is key to success at this life stage, with each partner being realistic about what they are willing to contribute and sacrifice in order to make having a family fulfilling for everyone. It also needs constant review and renegotiation to ensure the balance for both partners is fair.
Most employers are far more supportive now and provide paternity and maternity leave, child care vouchers, in-house creches, part-time and flexible working – again to ensure they can attract and retain talented staff. Make sure you are aware of the support available from work, network with others in your situation to glean great ideas and coping mechanisms, and keep yourself up to date with your professional body and industry so even when you take a turn to dial-down your career you don’t lose touch and your skills don’t become dated.
Use your diary well – I returned to work full-time when my son started infant school. I loved my job and had a fabulously supportive manager. I managed my emails and workload by using technology effectively at home and work. This allowed me to drop by son to breakfast club each morning and collect him from our child-minder at the same time each evening. Parent evenings, nativity plays and school sports days were advised well in advance and immediately booked out in my work diary, as holiday if necessary, to ensure I could balance my family and work life efficiently. My husband was less well organised and regretted the number of times he either missed or was late for events – not great when you’ve just one child as those opportunities once lost remain lost.
Late career – this stage can bring different challenges and sacrifices. Some senior managers I know would love to move to part-time working but have children to support through university so can’t afford the financial sacrifice. Others want to move ahead in their career, especially if they’ve previously allowed family to take precedent over their career progression, only to find they now have elder care issues to contend with. So, finding a balance at this stage between what work progression looks and feels like is important. Making a pact with ourselves and our partner about the extent to which we’ll continue to work, build a pension, and look after the needs of others needs careful consideration. Do we look for more responsibility, regardless, or consider how the development of others can provide the career development, satisfaction, and legacy we desire? Again, work with your employer to see what flexibility and support they can offer you at this stage in your career.
TAKE AWAY
Life is all about choices and the cost of those choices – call them sacrifices if you will. Being clear about what you really want, what you are prepared to do to achieve your goals and how you will share that with the partner in your life, if you have one, is the key to finding balance and contentment. Be honest with yourself and others – don’t pretend family comes first if you know, in reality, they don’t. This will allow you and those you love to make the right, informed, choices and the sacrifices, if any are required, to feel appropriate.