While she’s been working with the business on and off for 12 years – in a culture where babies and young kids are as much a part of the office as the furniture is – Olivia says the matter of flexibility is just getting personal for her as she prepares to have her first child.
“I want to try and challenge those assumptions that to be a senior woman in your thirties and forties with kids you have to be working 8am to 7pm, going home to put the kids down, and then working another three hours in the evening,” she says.
With a team of 31, mostly working from the Sydney Business Chick office and managing events all over the country, Olivia says that their flexibility policies may not be as robust as those you’d find in a large corporation, but that they make a culture of flexibility work by ensuring people always feel safe.
“We allow people to be real and vulnerable and to not feel fear around what they need,” she says. “People feel safe if they believe they can be upfront and honest. I think that’s the number one thing in creating a culture of flexibility. We’ve worked our backsides off to try and make that a reality, so that no matter what people have going on, they can trust their leaders.”
Olivia adds that her six leaders are empowered to set the rules for their own teams, and are encouraged to demonstrate the kind of behaviours they expect from staff. “I can’t have the leadership group working from 7:30 to 11pm and saying ‘look at us, we’re flexible!’.”
The office also has a policy of finishing up at 4pm on Fridays, as well as a rule that once a month team members can pick a Friday in which to work a half day. “That’s especially great for people without kids, or who aren’t working flexibility or from home, to access some time to themselves. It’s ingrained as part of the culture. It enables people to leave for a wedding in Kangaroo Valley for the weekend, or simply just to go home and catch up on a series they’ve been wanting to watch on Netflix. There is no shame, do what you want.”
Meanwhile, Olivia says communication has been key to helping staff transition back from maternity leave. One staff member has recently returned working one day a week, while another is working from home and remunerated according to a project rate, rather than a set number of hours or days. “She doesn’t have to tell me what hours or days she’s working, she just needs to deliver a product and how or when she gets it done is up to her.”
The flexibility culture is also supported by Business Chicks founder Emma Isaacs, who has always worked her own hours. and often brings her kids into the office when she’s back in Sydney from her current base in LA. She’s also just announced she’s pregnant with her fifth child. “Most Skype conversations with Em, she’ll have a kid on her lap,” says Olivia. “There’s no hiding of children. It’s who we are. It’s the reality that sometimes you need to bring your kids into the office. We all just pitch in and help.”
Well aware that the CEO role is not something she can simply dip in and out of, Olivia feels confident she can now spend a few months focused on her baby because she has the right people available to cover her.
“I know that I have six leaders who have my back so that I can do this,” she says. “That’s the key to flexibility, making sure you have the right people in the right roles.”
Now with more than 35,000 members, Olivia says Business Chicks’ current focus, including with its new look website, is also about flexibility: it’s moving to encourage more engagement of members online, including more video content that could see some of its events live streamed in the future, and a new app to help members better access each other. “We’ve always been about women coming together, we need to scale that by encouraging more of it online.”
