£30,532.84.
This is the value of my unpaid work each year. Childcare, cleaning, cooking – money or time, it all adds up to too much whichever way you look at it.
Still, despite spending more time at home than ever over the past 12 months, most of us are struggling to find adequate time for family, work, and even ourselves.
I was struck this week by Louise O’Shea’s comments on just this subject. As a mother and the chief executive of Confused.com, she made the observation that mums at work don’t take any nonsense, because, she says, “they simply don’t have time to”.
My colleagues might agree. But doesn’t that apply to dads too, you ask? Of course it does, and in increasing numbers. We have the lockdown to thank for that.
Lockdown, combined with school closures, has hit working mums and dads hard, but as the first piece in this week’s Read on the Street shows, further change is afoot. Whereas flexible working was once reserved for a minority, the approach to home working we are all experiencing now is going to significantly help parents in the future – but only if business leaders integrate the lessons we have learned into their strategies for the aftermath.
** You can gauge the value of your own unpaid using this nifty calculator from the Office of National Statistics. Let us know how you fared @cstreetpartners.