Embracing Motherhood in the Hospitality Workplace

Last week was International Women’s Day, and today is Mother’s Day. I see a lot of posts about empowering women into leadership positions for International Women’s Day, but not so much around Mother’s Day, which I guess is because people see it as a day of saying thank you to their own mums.

Wrongly, within our business culture there is a massive link between motherhood and succeeding. I am a huge believer in not having two versions of yourself. We are ultimately all just one person constantly balancing all aspects of our lives, personal and professional. Where leaders don’t or won’t accept that, I see it as a sad state of affairs for the society we live in and it reflects incredibly badly on that leader and the organisation.

I’ve seen firsthand the stigma that goes with motherhood, perhaps surprisingly in both male and female led businesses across hospitality, agencies, technology and finance sectors. I’d like to say it’s parenthood, but that’s just not the case. I’ve sat in boardrooms where decisions have actively been made based on assumptions about what a mother or woman of a certain age might be able to commit to. I’ve been directed not to hire women because of their age; I’ve seen a colleague actively shunned when announcing she was pregnant; I’ve seen clearly qualified colleagues passed over for promotion because they have a family. I’ve witnessed women replaced while on maternity leave and others had their whole remit restructured not for their benefit but because of bias. I’ve watched mums struggle to put their families first when that was needed due to concerns about how it would affect their careers, then bitterly regret it later. I’ve been told by many women in hospitality that they’ve been actively advised they cannot be senior operators due to their family commitments; and frankly, it is all utterly ridiculous.

I’ve mostly worked with and built teams that are majority female, not through prejudice, but by selecting candidates who are both qualified and empathetic. The reality is that because of the above stigma and challenges, you often get overqualified candidates if you offer the flexibility that working parents really need.

Structurally, at least here in the UK, our whole system is entirely flawed for working parents, with school hours not covering the working day, limited or no wraparound care, and when it does exist, it’s expensive. For many parent friends and colleagues, they’ve turned to private education to try to overcome this, and they’ve been hit again with the addition of VAT. The change in national insurance thresholds has further reduced any financial incentive for companies to offer part-time work. Add to this, that many companies are forcing large swathes of the workforce back into the offices full-time after huge progress made in flexible working post-COVID and it feels like we are working backwards.

For the past decade, I’ve run remote and flexible, often multi-national teams, focusing on setting clear objectives and ways of working, then giving people the space to do their best work, with the flexibility to work around their other commitments. The results have consistently been over-delivering against targets, being amongst the best performing teams in the respective companies, rarely losing anyone and showcasing incredible passion. In many cases, we’ve fought against other leaders who see work as linear and all-encompassing; frankly, many of whom may be rich and successful, but who I feel incredibly sorry for, as I’m sure one day they will wake up and realise they missed the best of their children growing up and question what life was really all about.

I really think the issue here is that many people in power just don’t get it. If you are reading the above and recognise yourself, I’ve got one request: BE BETTER.