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Time Jugglers

By Namita Bhandare

Managing home and a career was always tough but women in the metros can now choose from an increasing array of options to work flexible hours. India Today's Namita Bhandare takes a look at the part-time and flexi-time job market.

Sayali Pathak is your average mom. Married at 24, one daughter, supportive in-laws. For Pathak, nothing in the world matters more than her daughter. And yet a few years ago when her daughter started school, Sayali, a law graduate, found the hours beginning to stretch interminably. I was qualified and wanted to do something productive, she says. Yet, I wanted to be around for my daughter.

A few years ago, Sayali would have been forced to make a dreadful choice between being a career mom or a stay-at-home- one; between long blood-and-tear hours serving a corporate god or the warm and fuzzy world of parent-teacher meetings and charity lunches. No longer. A growing tribe of flexi-time workers now find that they can get fulfilling jobs and yet be back in time to tackle home-work, kiddie crises and grocery shopping. For Sayali, salvation came in the form of law firm Amarchand & Mangaldas & Suresh A. Shroff and Co when partner Pallavi Shroff said she was game to taking her on part-time. And Sayali was able to work out a deal that keeps her occupied with enough time to take her daughter to the park. It's worked out wonderfully, says Pathak. Echoes her boss, Shroff: I would certainly consider hiring more flexis.

Other flexi-workers find they don't have to step out of home at all. Rupa Fernandes, for instance, quit her job with Tata Yellow Pages soon after the birth of her baby. Now, she juggles selling mutual funds for Prudential ICICI, holiday resorts for Thomas Cook and doing data entry jobs for Datamatics. You can easily earn Rs 10,000 to Rs 12,000 a month by data entry alone, says Fernandes.

Flexible time options are fuelling a quiet revolution on how work-places are structured. Certain jobs are very amenable to flexi-time, says Anita Ramachandran of Cerebus Consultants, a human resource development consulting firm that also hires flexis. For instance, she says, dotcoms are suited to flexi-workers. Adds Rachna Chhachhi, founder ceo of Redforwomen.com, a career and business site for women that claims to get 1.5 million hits every month: A large number of working women have been dropping out of senior management because they cannot draw a balance between working well and managing a home well. Flexi-time is ideal for these women.

According to a survey conducted by Redforwomen-Universal Consulting research on 80 industry sectors conducive to flexi-work, 44 industries were shortlisted. Top hot industries were healthcare, insurance, dot coms, retail, content provision, media and entertainment and travel and tourism.

It's a win-win situation. Corporates save on valuable office space and cut on human resource costs. Moreover, outsourcing projects and hiring consultants instead of full-time staff also means keeping the headcount down and hiring good talent at low costs. Our experience with professionally qualified flexi-workers has resulted in focused, high quality work delivered on schedule, says N. V. Tyagarajan, ceo, GE Capital International Services which has only recently introduced the concept of flexi-workers primarily recruiting in human resources and the credit side of GE Capital's businesses. Says Chhachhi: The company saves on costs in terms of support staff for the professional, medical, provident fund and other benefits and physical real estate in the workstation for the professional.

Flexi-workers allow us to handle peak loads and allow us for longer working hours, says Ajay Mehra, vice-president (marketing) of Westside, a chain of retail stores. Since the retail trade goes through cycles of high and low activity, flexi-workers provide an ideal solution to the company: they are there when needed and during lean times don+t pose an unnecessary financial burden.

But for working moms, flexi is a way of saving valuable hours commuting which in a city like Mumbai can often mean forever. But not all flexis are moms. I had no life apart from work, says 24-year-old Priyanka Seth who chucked up her job with an ad agency to go solo, writing content for a finance portal.
Much of the trend is technology-driven. The Internet, connectivity and global access have freed more and more women from their desks to working from out of their homes. Many working moms now find it a lot easier to work out of their homes with a pc, modem and printer. But the trend is also propelled by the changing nature of work. More dotcoms, for instance, mean more jobs for content providers+many of whom work out of their homes. New professional avenues like medical transcription and working at call centres have also contributed to the growing number of flexi-workers.

Of course, there is a downside. In the workplace, you learn constantly from people around you, says Priyanka Seth who misses the interaction that comes from working full-time. Moreover, flexi-workers get no benefits like provident fund and paid leave. However, if you are a flexi-worker, you also have the liberty to take on more projects and earn more, points out Chhachhi. And while career growth as a flexi may not be as hot as that for a full-time professional, GE Capital's Tyagarajan believes women can make a career by working on a series of assignments that vary in scope and performance.

The key is serious discipline. Says Ramachandran. Flexi-workers must have a high degree of certainty and corporates must be process-oriented to monitor and keep in touch with flexis. As far as companies are concerned, no one's complaining loud enough, yet. It's not economics alone, says Tyagarajan on the benefits of hiring flexis. The company has an immediate and instant access to a talent pool of professionally qualified people.

And in these days of scarce human resources who could possibly say no to that? Especially if you're a harassed mom juggling work and home.

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