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

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.

 

I was watching a bit of TV last night and there were a couple of Irish entrepreneurs selling genuine Irish dirt, bits of earth, in a nice bag to the American market. They were selling tons of the stuff. Can you imagine going to the bank with that business plan? The manager would have to change his pants.

But however bizarre it sounds these guys are making it work. I’ve no clue what research they did, if any, they just had an idea and it turned out to be a pretty good one. So is your idea a good one?

The good news is that in today’s world of blogs, twitter, facebook and bebo you can certainly get an idea of whether there’s a market for your business idea. As I’ve mentioned before research is everything and nowadays it’s very easy and cheap to do.

No.1 thing to do, start a blog. Make it look nice with some frilly bits and start to talk about stuff relevant to your market. Use various methods to spread that message around the web and see what happens. That’s what we did at hmp. We wanted to know if there was a large enough market out there for us to create a specialised job board for people looking for flexibility. Turns out there are 1000′s of you, so we did it.

Since then we’ve continued to post on the blog because as well as market research it’s also a great customer service tool. There’s no better way to get input and direction than from a direct connection with your readers and service users. We’ve got a whole raft of free online courses in the pipeline – why? Because our members asked for them.

Most of our members are 30+ ladies and gents with drive, imagination and one or two business ideas they want to try out. The problem is that everyone keeps telling them to build a website, set up a facebook page, run a twitter campaign, submit articles, write a viral ebook, look at PPC, distribute their RSS and create a buzz – but no-one has told them how. We listened, via the blog and social media, and now we’re reacting to our markets needs.

In todays connected world you can increase the odds of business success by talking to your market and then build on any success by using the same tools to find out what that market needs and respond to that input. And best of all – it’s free (or nearly). You no longer have to invest in a long term lease to test the water of potential markets, just send a tweet.

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The survey reveals that just over a third (34.6%) of parents who had left work after having children had done so because of lack of flexible work opportunities. Three in 10 (30.7%) cite the cost of childcare as a key reason to quit.

The Employment Act 2002 introduced legislation designed to help working parents. Since April 2003 parents with young and disabled children have had the right to request flexible work. This right to request was extended in 2009 to anyone with parental responsibility for a child aged 16 or under or a disabled child under 18 who receives Disability Living Allowance. People can ask to:

• change the hours they work;
• change the times they work; or
• work from home (for all or part of the week).

Director of Family Friendly Working Antonia Chitty says, “This survey indicates that parents are not getting the flexible work that they need. More work is needed to see whether parents are unclear about their rights, whether bosses are saying no, or whether the flexible work available just isn’t flexible enough. The current provision of funding for 2.5-3hours pre school per day can be nigh on impossible to fit in with most employment: the Government needs to look at the way this is delivered and increase the flexibility of ways that parents can use the funding.”

Parents completing the survey commented:

“My boss was being very demanding, insisting I would get no special treatment and that I had to be in the office from at least 9am until 6pm. This was not an option with a three month old baby so I didn’t return.”

“My daughter was about to start infant school. There was no way I could shorten my hours enough to be there for her before & after school (especially as she was only doing 5 morning a week initially, and I was then working 3 days a week).”

“Working and so many school holidays makes it difficult, especially as a single parent.”

Further results

The survey also found that around one in 10 parents (11.5%) are forced to quit because of lack of childcare. A similar proportion (10.7%) left work because having children changed their priorities.

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“Flexible” work schedules — like eight 10-hour shifts in a two-week period — are also pretty limited. “Half of all nurse executives reported that the lack of alternate and flexible schedules at their [VA medical center] was one of the …

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