Finding your way back after baby
Being on maternity leave after the birth of her first child gave Dublin mum CLAIRE FLANNERY a chance to think about what she wanted her future work-life to look like
With a qualification in business psychology and a background in HR, when Claire returned to work she also went back to study and got her coaching qualifications. This gave her the supports to navigate the changes in her own life and after her second child was born, her business was born too. The name for her coaching business, Strength Within, comes from the famous Ralph Waldo Emerson quote: “What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us”.
Claire says she knew from her own experience that getting the right support at the right time in your life can make all the difference to the outcome and this, combined with wanting to do something different and authentic, led to her setting up Strength Within. The big focus in her work is helping people find their way back to work after having a baby, a career break or at other times of transition in their lives. She also runs workshops for HR professionals and line managers to help their staff thrive through change and for expectant parents preparing to take a step away from work.
“One of the big things I do is workshops for women coming back after maternity leave. It’s about getting the head space around the transition and managing the practicalities and talking them through the returning process and helping them remember their own strengths,” says Claire, who’s mum to Seamus (3) and Vaughan, who’s almost two years old.
She says many women experience an overwhelming dip in confidence as they approach the return to work and she helps them to focus on their strengths and the benefits they are bringing back to their employer.
As she marked her first year in business last month, Claire says the whole experience has been hugely rewarding as she’s doing something she loves and is passionate about. “It’s brought flexibility and it works for my family. I’m usually home for dinner and I work four days a week. It’s early days and I do a lot of work after the kids have gone to bed,” she says.
While she says there are a lot of supports to help start a business, she would love to see something geared specifically towards parents and business. “I’d love to see the Local Enterprise Organisations (LEOs) or other related enterprises offer tailored supports for mums starting a business, for example tailored workshops and coaching,” says Claire.