I'm every woman: Fulfilling careers without the personal sacrifice
Speaking on Day 2 of the Women in Technology Festival, Amy Taaffe Evans of the DVLA, shared her story of her learning that maintaining high standards at work shouldn't come at the expense of wellbeing, and of how she has used that learning to enhance workplace culture.
Day 2 of the Computing Women in Tech Festival brought together a variety of informative, innovative and inspirational women, each and every one of them committed to increasing the proportion of women presently occupying roles in the STEM sector, which continues to hover around the 20% mark despite significant efforts to increase diversity.
Amy Taaffe Evans is Head of IT Controls at the DVLA, and delivered a keynote presentation entitled "I'm every woman: Fulfilling career ambitions while fulfilling personal ambitions."
Taaffe Evan's role within the DVLA is centred on people, which makes it a complex, multi-faceted undertaking. The focus of her and her team is to deliver an environment where a growth mindset can flourish, which is a great place to work and where the talent pipeline is healthy and well maintained.
In addition to professional responsibilities, Taaffe Evans is the mother of two teenage daughters and a high-maintenance dog. The difficulties inherent in balancing all of these elements of this equation resonated with the audience. A very familiar sounding statement was Taaffe Evans's admission that held herself to extremely exacting standards.
"It can be challenging to be kind to myself and to prioritise my needs when ensuring that everyone else's needs are met," she said.
That challenge, of maintaining good physical and mental health in the face of supporting everyone else around you is also very relatable. Women, in their capacity as daughters, sisters, wives and mothers often end up absorbing the emotions of everyone around them, particularly in times of crisis, and that can take its toll.
Several years ago, Taaffe Evans's immediate family was affected by two very serious illnesses in a short space of time. It was an incredibly difficult time as the pressures of caring for her gravely ill mother and brother, coincided with the challenges inherent in raising young children - and putting in a full shift at work. Taaffe Evans travelled endlessly, often through the night between her home in Ireland and Wales for work but always felt the need to arrive at work with her game face intact.
"I felt pressure to be superhuman. It wasn't because I was being made to feel that way by my employer or my own leadership chain, but I had unrealistic expectations of where my tipping point was and I ignored the fact that you can't fill from an empty cup. I hid a great deal of what I was doing and its impact. Some closer colleagues could see that I was close to crumbling and offered support - much of which I ignored. What I didn't do was take time to rest, renew or take stock. Weeks later, consumed by shock and grief, I crashed."
Sadly, that experience is very far from unique. Many women, particularly those working at reasonably senior levels, have absorbed a message that any kind of domestic incursion into their working day is somehow unprofessional. The pandemic has been a leveller in that respect, as for the first time the families of male colleagues showed their presence for the first time in many cases.
Wellbeing matters
Taaffe Evans found coming to terms with the immense strain she'd been under a real challenge, but ultimately the reflection proved a very positive exercise - and not just for her.
"I had an opportunity to think about the type of leader I wanted to be and the type of organisation I wanted to be a part of and lead. I asked myself, my team and colleagues if we were leading with integrity and investing in people, not just in terms of their professional development but in terms of getting to know them on a deeper level to be able to provide meaningful support and guidance on any topic, be that professional development or personal growth.
"Were we really cultivating positivity and inviting dialogue? We had adopted a positive growth mindset but were perhaps not putting it into practice in the way that we were working. Were we doing enough to champion the importance of wellbeing and encouraging people to talk openly as a way of informing our approach?"
Taaffe Evans's team developed a series of initiatives centred on wellbeing, and faced an acid test of them with the arrival of COVID-19 in early 2020. The timing was brutal, but the upside was the the team were quick to spot the downside of the "always on" remote working model that materialised, as the natural mental and physical breaks that typically occur in the office were suddenly absented from our working days.
A number of initiatives and campaigns were run to encourage staff to maintain balance, and these have since become embedded in the wider organisation. Employee polls which were baselined early in 2020 and have been conducted regularly since have recorded much greater levels of satisfaction in the four key areas of leading with integrity, investing in people, championing wellbeing and cultivating positivity.
Nonetheless, finding a work life balance isn't a "once and done" task. The elements are continually evolving, and Taaffe Evans says she's evolving with it.
"Maintaining balance is an ongoing challenge for me. I have to work on and reassess regularly but my awareness of that is key. It's really important to have honest conversations with yourself about what you can handle, where you need to dial back and where you need support and to ask for that support before the sense of overwhelm begins to bubble up.
"Managing our own expectations of ourselves is key before we can communicate and manage other people's expectations of us."
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