With the increased awareness of diversity and inclusiveness growing across the world, I would like to share some real-life stories of how we move from work life balance to work & life becoming inclusive of each other, what it has been like for new parents in our industry on their journey of becoming a mums and dads.

I will talk through the key 4 stages I see the journey being broken down into and talk through some of the things that as leaders in your organisation you want to think about if you have the right support mechanisms in place.

A reflection point throughout this talk, is if you yourself as a leader have the tools and confidence to support some of these topics and are the leaders that you look after set up for success for the same conversations with their team members?.

A lot of the things I am going to talk about today are currently labelled as ‘mental health’ which people are nervous to open up about as they could be labelled as someone with a mental health problem, which our society is still not supportive enough about today. I would like everyone to think about these points as our ‘Emotional Wellbeing’ which gives them a much more positive label so hopefully over time this change in label will become easier to talk about.

The things I am going to talk through today might be personal topics that you don’t normally talk to your employees about. I do however encourage you to think about how the person going through these things feels. If you feel uncomfortable with the topics (IVF, Breastfeeding, Anxiety etc.) imagine how they may feel talking to their line manager about them or their peer groups! Lets just try and make one of these easier to talk about in the workforce.

I don’t have all the answers to these challenging topics, all I hope to do today is to increase awareness of the things as leaders we should be thinking about and working towards improving our support processes and tools around these topics. We have come a really long way in making our world more diverse and inclusive, however I hope to highlight today how much work we still have ahead of us and I hope that we can keep the conversations going as it is really important to support our team members through all stages of their lives.

The four stages of the journey that I am going to talk through today are:

1. Pre-pregnancy - so many emotions, but most of it is hidden for both males and females...

2. During pregnancy - anxiety, stress, confusion, scared, let’s talk about emotional health

3. Parental Leave - mums and dads need different support during this period

4. Becoming a working parent - for the new parents and their peer group at work

Work life balance is no longer a thing, advancement in technology has moved this needle from a conversation about balance, to a conversation about successful integration. Let’s talk about how technology is making these 4 stages of becoming a parent harder and how we can use technology to make it a little easier.