Caregivers and Flexible Work

One of the groups of people often overlooked when shouting the benefits of flexible work, on both sides of the pond, are home/family carers. These selfless people help and care for old and sick loved-ones, at no cost to society, and often miss out on working a full time job.

Over 2.6 million caregivers will benefit from the right to request flexible working in the UK alone, with a further 50 million in the USA.

Rosalyn Carter said it best: “There are only four kinds of people in the world – those who have been caregivers, those who are currently caregivers, those who will be caregivers and those who will need caregivers”.

–>Read On

So you know where to outsource (here) but how do you outsource?

There are many small and home businesses out there that know the advantages of outsourcing. You can’t be a master of all things, although I’ve found most entrepreneurs to be as good as many so called ‘experts’ in their field. So you decide that accounting or customer service isn’t your strong suit and you decide to hand it over to one of our lovely parents. But how do you outsource? How do you put across what you need? What are your procedures and expectations? How do you communicate? How do you find the best service at the best price? What can you outsource?

Personally I use video to show prospective outsourcees what I’m looking for. I show them the procedures I want them to go through and the kind of service I expect and want them to show my customers. As for what I outsource – well anything I’m not good at or hate doing – basically anything that involves numbers. I’ve been outsourcing to my ‘beta’ parents for months to get this site off the ground and I have a great relationship with them but that’s because we’re all aware of the goal and have a sense of belief and righteousness about the project. It’s a nice feeling.

However, in the past I’ve come across some right numpties when I outsourced, we’ve all been there, and learning how to do it right is an expensive learning curve. My best advice is to pay the extra bucks if necessary to get someone with a track record or you just have a good vibe about – don’t let the price guide you, it’ll cost you.

Some people have turned outsourcing into an art form and if you’re interested in learning how outsourcing really can revolutionise your business and family life then I’d recommend www.outsourcemethod.com – they’re in to the whole freedom from your business thing which is great for some and they’re definitely the leaders in their field, but I like to keep close to the ground with my business. Maybe with a few more grey hairs I’ll outsource the lot but for right now I’m all about the Supporting Parents In Business campaign which you need to join today.

I’m not sure if I can spell it out anymore but SPIB allows businesses to post jobs and projects for FREE (no there isn’t a catch) and parents looking for flexible or outsourcing work then apply for those jobs for FREE. That’s it. If your a business or a parent sign up today and you can post jobs and apply for them with a free lifetime membership. Do it now.

Parent Registrations Hits 500

Quite frankly I’m gobsmacked. I mean we all knew that there was a need for a service like hiremyparents but hitting 500 parent registrations in less than a week has taking us all by surprise. Worry 1 being that we haven’t finished beta testing the job board yet and when we hits 1000 it’s supposed to go live. I suppose these are good problems to have, we’ll just have to totally ignore our children over the coming week or so, the irony.

As well as the burst in parent registrations we also have some very exciting news on the business member side of things. We have partnered up with a small business supplier whose list of customers beggars-belief and we will be their sole outsourcing supplier. What this means is that as well as the independent companies posting jobs and projects to our site there will also be a VERY big player pointing all their customers’ job & project needs to us.

If you haven’t registered for a free lifetime business or parent membership yet, do it now or tell someone that’ll want it! This whole thing has accelerated faster than we could have imagined and although I predict a slight delay in our launch we will cut the free membership offer at 1000 for parents and 250 for companies. hiremyparents.com – coming soon!

Working mothers detrimental to childrens health

Here we go again. A UK survey of more than 12,500 five-year-olds found those with working mothers less active and more likely to eat unhealthy food.

They found that five-year-olds whose mothers worked part-time or full-time were more likely to primarily consume sweetened drinks between meals.

They used their computers or watched television for at least two hours a day compared to the children of “stay at home” mothers who spent less than two hours on these activities.

They were also more likely to be driven to school compared to the children of “stay at home” mothers who tended to walk or cycle.

The children whose mothers had a flexible working pattern did have healthier lifestyles but when other factors were taken into account the researchers said there was little evidence that these children behaved more healthily.

RANT: Once again the mother’s of the world have had a bucketful of guilt and worry thrown over them from the establishment for wanting to work for a living and provide an income. We all know that everything would be great if all parents could work from home but some jobs just have to be done at the place of work – it’s a fact of life. What this report – from the Institute of Child Health – doesn’t say is what we can do about it.

For years the government’s of the westernized world have been actively encouraging mothers into work and act surprised when our children all start getting fat and acting like feral dogs. I’m all for parents working, everyone should work, it’s good for the soul and the purse. But it’s the type of work that’s as important as the act of working itself. When policy was put in place to get these parents into work it was focused on the same old methodology of up at 7am, in traffic at 8am, working at 9am. There was no brainstorming going on in those government offices, no “is there a way we can have it all” questions.

If someone had actually made some effort and given it some thought then maybe they would have come up with some enlightened policy for parents returning to work – for the nation as a whole. In S.Korea right now there is a broadband network that can deliver 1000Mbps – a 1000!!! My supplier says ‘up to 10Mbps’ and that’s a bloody lie. Can you imagine what could be done from any location with infastructure like that – any doc, video, software, net-meeting, examination, surgery, interview or architects drawing could be seen, worked on and consulted on in real-time. You’d never have to leave the house.

What if, instead of spending $Bn on turning a 6 lane motorway into a 10 lane motorway each new parent was given a free laptop, an internet connection like the one above and access to a service like hiremyparents. What if, instead of building and extending airports around the world for millions of business travellers to use you gave them an internet infastructure that would negate the need to travel, travelling would just be a waste of time and a needless destruction of a planet that’s already had enough of us.

If governments around the world could just get out of this tunnel-vision approach and see the possibilities that a new generation of technology and inspired thinking could bring about they would save $Tn (actually using the word trillions – mind-boggling), give parents the opportunity to turn their children’s TV’s off and take them for a walk and massively decrease the strain on our global travel network and the planet itself.

It’s a big job – I know that. It would be a massive upheaval for the world of work but look at the benefits, look at the alternative if we don’t do something. It would be like Bladerunner but with really fat kids.

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