The Third Way Between Workplace and Family -Social Enterprises that Help Mothers Return to Work
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This article is part of the 21st issue of LEAP — Voices of Youth e-letter. Subscribe now.
Caring for the family is often considered the sole responsibility of women, especially mothers, who may find it difficult to strike a balance between their family and work. Under such gender oppression, innovative models established by social enterprises just might be able to propose a new practical lifestyle.
Bringing Mothers Back to the Workplace
Tsai Yu-lin, the founder of Flexible Jobs, a social enterprise in Taiwan, had previously worked in the technology industry for over a decade. After being promoted to a high-level manager in the company, she began to realize that many of her female friends in a similar position were facing difficulties balancing work and family.
Tsai believes that it would be a waste of social resources if these mid and high-level executives had to leave the workplace, which would also interrupt their individual career development. With her insight into the workplace ecology and familiarity with the corporate world, Tsai founded Flexible Jobs in 2016 to help people, especially women, with interrupted careers find new jobs.
Unlike other recruiting firms, in addition to serving as a platform for information flow, Flexible Jobs also ensures the quality of job matches and rate of success through concrete actions.
Flexible Jobs’ customers are corporations or NGOs of all sizes. Before introducing talents, Flexible Jobs helps these organizations examine job requirements and even offer recommendations on job redesign and gender-friendly protocols.
Before job matching, the recruiting team interviews each applicant to fully understand their capabilities, experience, as well as work models suitable for them. This attentive process fully demonstrates how much the company treasures each talent and available job position.
In addition to the job matchmaking business, Flexible Jobs also hosts lectures and workshops regularly for the benefit of the public. The events help women with interrupted careers to return to work with ease by providing information, such as career exploration, resume writing, interviewing techniques, and family support resources.
Flexible Jobs: Balancing Family and Workplace
One client of Flexible Jobs had 15 years of experience in international sales but stopped working for over three years due to giving birth.
Because of her desire to work, after communicating with her family, she got employed through Flexible Jobs, and the job allowed her to leave work on time while achieving certain flexibilities. Even though her position and salary are less than her previous jobs, this is a perfect beginning for her returning to the workplace.
Flexible Jobs proposed the idea of “flexible jobs” to resolve problems of mothers’ unemployment. The company has found that the traditional work model of “same place, same time” no longer satisfies the requirements of modern times.
For employees, flexible work allows them to “do the best they can”, to take care of their families while pursuing their needs for achievement at work and economic requirements.
As cloud-based technology and AI technology become wide-spread, corporations can find suitable “professional talents” needed for different jobs, instead of employees who must be on standby all the time. Providing employees with more flexible plans is one way to demonstrate an agency’s support toward employees, which helps companies retain talents. This is a win-win approach in an era when corporate social responsibility has become increasingly important.
A Gender-Friendly Workplace — Taiwan Could Be a Pioneer
Besides, to maintain their existing services, Flexible Jobs also launched a new project this year — a preparatory course for expecting parents. They began to hold workshops in companies, guiding expecting parents to plan for balancing family and career starting from the beginning of pregnancy. Hopefully, this project will help such parents to alleviate their anxiety while retaining talents for the companies.
Thanks to the efforts of the pioneers, women have the basic legal protection of working rights in Taiwan, including two-month maternity leave, unpaid parental leave, and a guaranteed quota for women’s political participation. Therefore, to transform the value of work and care work in practical implementations is what Flexible Jobs does to further women’s rights.
The ranking of Taiwan’s gender equality performance is first in Asia and sixth in the world, as calculated based on the Gender Inequality Index compiled by the United Nations Development Program in 2019. The labor participation rate of women has also increased gradually every year. However, statistics do not reveal the hidden pressures over women’s careers. Tsai believes that: “As the most progressive nation in Asia in terms of gender concepts, Taiwan will become an important inspiration for other countries if it can develop a comprehensive set of flexible work models.”
Also in This Issue:
2021 Asia Pacific Social Innovation Summit –The Connection between Gender and Social Innovation
Focusing on gender, youth, and local, social innovation is not for the high class but a tool to present marginalized voices.
Gender Observations of Social Enterprises in Taiwan
Gender equality must be discussed consciously, to have more models for future female entrepreneurs
Author : Hsien Liu
Freelance writer / Graduate student in Journalism
