Guess what; new mothers work better than girls

Caroline Wahome, who runs a middle sized recruiting firm in Nairobi, finds that many of her clients have increasingly preferred hiring job seekers who do not have children, especially when it is about taking in a woman.

She says female workers without children are preferred by employers because of the assumption that they have all the time to focus on work, and demand less flexi-time.

However, a recent study is about to send them back to the thinking room. The study is titled, Single Parent and Employment 2014: Who Works Harder, Women with Kids, or those Without?

Carried out for Microsoft, it involved 2,000 women and 500 employers, to establish how their performance changed after becoming a mother.

Well, more than half the employers – 57 per cent of them to be precise – found that mothers made better team players than women who did not have children.

Nearly one third, or 29 per cent of the employers, saw their employee’s team work improve after they give birth, while 35 per cent said the multi-tasking skills of these employees got better.

Even though some employers see demands for flexi-time by breastfeeding mothers as a cost, organisations that have instituted such policies confess that they have seen improved efficiency from the working mothers.

Take the case of a woman who has come from maternity leave.

VERY COMMITTED
The study finds that after the extended absence from the work, such mothers subconsciously concentrate on making up for the time they have been away from work, more like trying to “repay” for the time.

Epimach Maritim, the human resources director at G4S in Kenya, a global logistics and security company, agrees that because mothers have a cause to live and work for, they put in their all.

“Even though mothers may work lesser hours due to family constraints, they make up for it through greater dedication and efficiency when at work,” Maritim says.

“Staff who are mothers have shown a greater commitment. They also show greater responsibility towards their job, which, I believe, is driven by obligation towards their family,” he further explains.

On the flipside, the female employee without a child tends to spend a lot of time furthering their education and attending training. And when at work, staff without children may not necessarily give their best to the employer.

“On the contrary, they engage a lot on social media interactions on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram etc, and sometimes on small talk in the office. They feel no particular responsibility due to the fact they have no children to fend for,” Maritim argues.

FLEXI-TIME
The study presents a pretty much similar contention. Basically, having a child changes a woman’s outlook and provides her with more daily leadership, growth and management experience than she typically gets on the job.

The study also reveals that mothers unnecessarily compromise their salary expectations based on the number of months they have been absent from work.

When these women take part-time and flex-time positions, they also give up far more than they should in total compensation.

Consequently, what makes the female employee without a child even less better at work, according to the study, is their negative response towards flexi-time that only benefit mothers. The non-mothers say they too deserve a life.

The family-friendly policies that help parents spend more time with their children can be unfriendly to those without kids, particularly if the childless co-workers are left handling all the weekend shifts or the last-minute business trips that the working parent cannot handle. 

Nevertheless, in many workplaces, experts say, there is the risk that managers will naturally show a bias to the parents when divvying up who is going to work a holiday or take a night shift.

That, in turn, leaves the childless co-workers discontented.

The study suggests that a better system would be to give everyone the same amount of flexibility, with the understanding that people have different non-work priorities.