The Wandsworth-based company lets parents book a workspace – a hot desk or meeting room – and a place in the on-site OFSTED registered crèche for their child, at times that suit their specific work requirements.  This flexibility will be ideal for independent professionals, entrepreneurs, freelancers, remote, home-based workers or employees who are able to work from home at least one day a week.

“Remote working is on the rise. We are creating a space where parents can work without the overheads of having their own office, while having their child looked after in the same building. This cuts down on the stress of trying to commute from work to collect children on time and it means they can spend more time with their child during the day,” explains Shazia Mustafa, the mother of two behind the brainchild.

“Most importantly though, it gives parents the flexibility they need. Most childcare establishments require a child to be booked in on fixed days every week, usually for a set number of hours. Parents often find themselves on waiting lists just to get their child a spot and often don’t get the days or times they need.  For people with varying levels of work, this inflexibility costs them a fortune, particularly as they still have to pay for the care, even if their child is sick and can’t go. We’ve taken away all of these problems by allowing parents to book space on a pay-as-you go basis,” she says.

Shazia also thinks it will be a great way for home workers to meet like-minded parents, share ideas, network and have more social interaction than they’d have if they worked on their own in a home office. And for mothers who aren’t sure what to do once their maternity leave ends, Third-Door gives them the child-free time they need to put ideas into action.

To celebrate the opening, Third Door is running a competition in which a prize worth £4,000 can be won including free Third Door membership, 30 hours of free workspace/childcare, a Business in a Box package (including logo, business cards, letterheads and website), 3 hours of consultancy with business experts, a smart phone and laptop – everything needed to start up a business.  To enter or to find out more about Third Door, go to www.third-door.com

Yesterday we came out of testing and launched the hiremyparents Partner Programme that pays you to refer our great service and get paid. And this isn’t some 5% breadcrumb deal. We pay our referrers a massive 75% of all revenue created.

This percentage of sales combined with a no-brainer offer to customers means that one of our beta partners pocketed over $5000… in a week!

How? How?….How? – I’ll tell you.

Our PartnerResource Website (this is what’s taken the time) is chocked full of graphics, article, ebooks, emails, tutorials, reviews… everything you need to promote hiremyparents. If you don’t have the skills and knowledge to use these tools… no problem – we have put together a daily step-by-step to do course that will send you an email each day with ‘things to do today’ inside. Follow the steps and slowly build a revenue that will continue to grow and provide a residual income on auto-pilot.

This is no get-rich-quick scheme, we wouldn’t do that to our reputation! The bottom line is – if you don’t get your 75%, we don’t get out 25%! So we’ve made it as easy as possible to earn, and earn quick, through our programme with the kind of results that will ensure you continue to promote hmp into the future.

Take a look at the programme now. It’s available globally and there is absolutely no commitment necessary. If you feel it isn’t for you (ha) just walk away.

Any questions you have should be directed to Steve, your Partner Manager, at steve@hiremyparents.com, or, leave a comment below.

If you’re one of our members then you’ve probably noticed a few changes around the hmp site. It was good before but now it’s the best. And this isn’t an idle boast. We’ve listened to our members, we’ve combed the web and we believe we have brought together the very best resource on the web for anyone looking for a flexible life with a flexible income.

• Our job board now has over 600 flexible jobs on it, growing daily.
• Our new ‘Extra Income’ section shows the very best in instant income opportunities from around the web – vetted by our members
• The Library now has over $250,000 worth of courses, guides and software available for our members to download …and sell!

Combined with our expert panel, our member useable social network and customer service second to none we are ..the best!

Here ends the lesson.

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One of our experts, Antonia Chitty, has just launched a brand new business programme specifically geared towards parents. The press release is below, I urge you to take a look:

One of the downsides of running your own business is that you are the one who needs to solve all the problems and drive the business forward. Doing this singlehandedly can only get you so far. Fortunately, Mumpreneur Guide Antonia Chitty has devised a programme to help mums in business get support and solve their business problems, any time.

The Mumpreneur Guide Business Programme is an online programme that mums running a business can access at any time through the internet.  You can work on modules to help you with business finance, marketing, sales and much more. By working through the programme you can find out where the gaps are in your business planning.

What’s more, the programme means that single handed business owners get support in developing their business. Antonia says, “Each month you can flag up areas that you need input and I’ll help you work through your particular blockages. The programme offers incisive questions that can make you think about your business in a new way.”

Mums who have tried the programme say, “I like the way The Mumpreneur Guide Business Programme works. It’s hugely convenient.” Marian, starting a copywriting business

“Antonia is a very good coach! She is very insightful, has great ideas, can get to the point without loads of meandering and side tracking and obviously knows what she is talking about!” Lisa Cole of www.lactivist.co.uk

There are a limited number of free trials for the Mumpreneur Guide Business Programme available each month so you can check it out for yourself. Go to http://www.themumpreneurguide.co.uk/mentorme.php

Think about what the term ‘balance’ means to you.  Are you picturing a pair of scales with equal amounts in each dish?  The definition of balance in Dictionary.com is ‘a state of equilibrium or equipoise’.  Is this what you’re trying to achieve in your life?

The fact of the matter is that life is never equally doled out in these measures.  Sometimes, work can take up all your time and then you have days upon days with the kids during school holidays.  No wonder people are always stressed and feeling guilty that they’re not putting enough time into various areas of their life – and let’s not even get started on exercise, visiting relatives and all the other little things that take up our time.

So, what’s the answer?  Well, firstly, I think it’s to address the very term.  Why not call it work/life compro-balance?  Simply by changing the term, it changes expectations and beliefs about what is possible to achieve.  The ‘compro’ in this case represents compromise ‘a settlement of differences by mutual concessions’ by Dictionary.com definitions.

The use of this new term reflects the achievement of ‘balance’ in life much more truthfully as in the pursuit of this state, there will always be concessions made.  There is simply not enough time in the day to achieve everything we want to and whereas use of the old term seemed to indicate this was possible, the new allows people to understand it isn’t always.

Think about the term work-life compro-balance, does the use of this term relieve the pressure of trying to be all things to all people?  Allow you the opportunity to forgive yourself if you don’t get everything done in the day?

The second step of the process is to use the term to re-evaluate what you’re trying to achieve.  List the areas of your life that need to be attended to, for example, sleep, children, husband, work, friends, business, housework, exercise, including things that you might like to do but have never been able to before.

Then, think of your life as a 100% whole, acknowledging that the time we have is finite and we can’t create any more out of thin air.  Divide this whole into those things you are required to do (they will need to be factored in first), followed by those you want to do.  It’s up to you how you do this but a weekly or monthly representation would be more effective as some things are only done once a week or month.

By looking at your results you will be able to see a representation of your time and how much you truly have for exercise or coffee with friends.  When you have this understanding, you can not only start trying to reallocate percentages by, for example, hiring a cleaner to allow time for exercise but you will also have an understanding of why you aren’t able to fit certain things in your life, thus reducing guilt and the feeling of pressure.

The resulting feeling of understanding and the knowledge that you are in control of all aspects of your life – that is true balance.

Alli Price runs Motivating Mum, a website and events business offering support and advice for mums in business, or those starting up.  www.motivatingmum.co.uk

 

More Work/Life Balance Articles…

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The more you are passionate about the work you do, the more that work BECOMES life.

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When considering your work life balance, take some time to ask what it’s worth to you. Your answer may hold the key to what to do next.

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Current European rules give pregnant women 14 weeks leave fully paid. In the UK, pregnant women get a year off, with the first six weeks on 90% pay, followed by 33 weeks on Statutory Maternity Pay. The rest is unpaid.

There are concerns that employers could discriminate against women of a child-bearing age if the rules are passed. The UK’s Employment Relations Minister Lord Young expressed his doubts about the proposals.

“We already have a generous system which is better than many European Union countries and works well, balancing the needs of businesses and workers,” he said. “A substantial increase in maternity leave paid at full or near-full pay risks undermining this delicate balance at a time when economies across the EU can least afford it.”

Mary Honeyball, the UK’s representative on the European women’s committee, said: “This bill is urgently needed to level out the current imbalance in European women’s maternity entitlements. The UK currently has one of the lowest maternity entitlements in the EU, third only to Greece and Luxembourg.”

The maternity directive will be debated and then voted on in the next parliament session in Strasbourg on 5 and 6 May.

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These are ways for anyone with access to the internet to perform an action on behalf of a client and in return get paid for that action. These actions could be data entry, taking a call, creating links, performing social media tasks, the list goes on. They offer the ultimate in flexibility because if you don’t do the work you don’t get paid – if you do you do. They can be dropped and picked up as you wish.

Over the months we have posted these ‘performance’ jobs on our job board but only as and when clients have requested them. As these jobs are always available we have now decided to build an ‘Extra Income’ tab to our jobs section that will simply list the best of these kinds of opportunities that you can join as and when your life allows some revenue time.

We hope to get this up and running in the next couple of weeks and it will only be accessible to hmp members, so things won’t get clogged up on the clients side.

Let me know if you have any suggestions for the new section in the comments, what you’d like to see, details you’d like access to, and we’ll let you know when it’s up and running.

 

Having a baby is a leading cause of  poverty traps in the USA, the extra cost combined with time off can cause a down spiral that can put families over the poverty line. What Obama proposes is a fund that would help states launch family leave insurance programs by covering start up costs, and it’s a big deal for the economic security of America’s families.

Paid family leave helps stop family poverty before it starts by offering a bridge of economic security when parents must take time off after a new child arrives. With family leave insurance in place, new parents receive pay via the insurance fund when they take the essential time to adjust to a new child and recover from childbirth.

Paid family leave can also help lower wage gaps between women and men. The wage gaps mothers face are huge, and they significantly contribute to family poverty: Women without kids make about 90 cents to a man’s dollar, mothers make less at 73 cents to a man’s dollar, and single moms make only about 60 cents per a man’s dollar. That wage gap literally takes money that families deserve right off the table. Studies show that having family-friendly policies in place, like paid family leave, actually lowers the wage gaps between men and women.

Sounds pretty good huh?

I’m not a US citizen, have no plans to be (not sure they’d have me) but if I called crisps ‘chips’ I’d be contacting my congressperson via every form of communication the modern world can avail. Put the pressure on America, before the Right torpedoes it just because they can.

Link To Congressional Directory

NB – chips are fat fries

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In a very dark room, where we keep our web programmers, a new website is being built to promote the ‘Supporting Parents In Business’ campaign as a standalone project.

Using various methods of guilt and hot-flushes we have managed to secure the support of many large firms from both sides of the Atlantic. Part of the deal being that they have to promote flexible work and post their flex jobs on hmp. In return they get a socially responsible pat on the back and the chance to put their logo on the site.

We’re trying to make a ‘SPIB’ badge a must have for business, a way to show that they are a considerate employer and adhere to the principle of flexible working. And we need your help.

We need to show employers that flexible work is no longer a nice extra in todays workplace but something that is integral to the choices a parent makes when choosing a company. As an employee or a customer.

To this end we want you to tell business what flexible work means to you. Take 5 minutes to put your thoughts in order and then sit in front of a webcam and talk.

Introduce yourself, explain your family situation and then give us just a few seconds of how a flexible job would mean all the difference to you and your family.

We’re taking the gloves off. Government and business have danced around the subject for years and concessions have been slow in coming. We have the numbers now, and they’re growing daily. We want your voices to be heard on the subject to apply pressure, to make it a social embarrassment not to offer flexible work, to be a business pariah to both employees and consumers.

You get the idea.

Your videos will be shown on the new SPIB website to give it a human face, real people with real views; to bring flexible work out of the confines of the HR policy review and legislative meetings and show the groundswell of support that flexible work has behind it.

We need to push this now. And keep pushing. I hope you’ll help.

Record a short video of why flexible work is important to you and send the file to spibsite@hiremyparents.com – this is just step 1, we will be calling on you again.

Yvette Cooper seems to have dropped any softly-softly approach to reforming the British labour market and dropped a big one on the business community, not least the business secretary Lord Mandelson.

Combined with yesterday’s announcement of the 3 month paternity leave, the right for everyone to ‘ask’ for flexible working arrangements clearly defines a new approach to Britain’s labour market in favour of lifestyle/family versus money/working hours. HR departments around the country are staring teary-eyed at the mountain of paperwork that awaits.

Is this a reaction to cuddly Cameron’s ‘broken Britain’? Legislation that will allow Britain’s families to be families rather than chasing the mighty £ at the cost family time. Who cares? If Cooper pulls it off it will finally tip the scales in favour of families.

No longer will parents be the only ones that can claim flexible work – it’ll be a level playing field. If you don’t want flextime, as a non-parent, don’t have it. But it is there if you want it and that makes all the difference in the subtle hierarchies of the workplace. Before parents had something the others didn’t, now they can choose to use what everyone has the option to use. Big difference.

This is Cooper’s email, whether you’re a Brit or not send her a message of support. She’s going up against small-minded business and the Dark Lord himself, she’s going to need it.

BTW – this is the second day in a row I’ve big’d up a labour minister, it won’t become a habit, I promise.

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