WERKIN with Michelle Kennedy on how to support returning parents in the workplace
Michelle is Founder and CEO of Peanut, the social network for women. Michelle is also a mum. We spoke to Michelle about founding Peanut, work-life balance and more.
Michelle Kennedy felt an overwhelming loss of identity when she had a child. Corporate Michelle and Michelle the friend had established identities. Michelle the mother, though, was this very strange person who didn’t have their stuff together. They constantly felt like they were getting the whole motherhood thing wrong.
“I’d see other women in the area I lived in who looked really together, that freaked me out as well, and I thought – I can’t be the only person who feels like this,” Michelle thought.
In trying to get resources for how to be a mum, Kennedy had a problem. She was extremely frustrated at the way technology intersected with motherhood, or frankly, didn’t. It was all clunky and outdated. While other products like Instagram and dating apps were continually with the times, mother’s were relying on old-school forums for the online part of their lives. That was the frustration.
The solution soon came. Michelle had experience #WERKINwith dating technology like Tinder, and therefore knew the technology could help 21st century mothers. She could apply the features and concepts of these social networking apps to help modernise motherhood.
“It felt like a natural progression to take the algorithms we were using for dating and apply them to women. So that I could meet someone going through the same thing as me. Who doesn’t actually want to spend all day talking about baby poop.” She says.
The idea eventually became a reality, and Peanut was born. It’s a social networking app to meet, chat and learn from like-minded women. Back in December 2019, there were over a million users. This has continued to increase.
With the solution in place, new challenges became internal: How to make the workforce as successful and happy as possible. These notions were first brought up for Michelle when she returned from maternity leave.
Often, going back into the office after maternity leave can feel conflicting. You know you need to be there, and that it needs your attention, but equally you have an entire human to look after now. It’s a hard balance.
“Having an organisation that supports you and your talent, says they ‘know how good you are, how dedicated you are, just get the work done. How you do that is up to you’ was a message I felt perhaps I didn’t receive. And I put an enormous amount of pressure on myself and my family to be back, and seen, and to be normal Michelle. It was very difficult.” She says.
Naturally, the ideas of flexible working have become far more broadly important since the pandemic hit. Physically being in the same space is not as important as it used to be.
“We’re always working now. We have phones that make us accessible at any time. We don’t need to spend as much time face to face as we feel we should. It’s almost that we need people to give us permission to say ‘I don’t care where you work, I don’t care when you work, as long as you get the work done’. For example, as a software developer you work strange hours anyway. You might be coding at 2am, that might be when you’re in your zone.” Michelle says.
When it comes to nurturing your colleagues, flexibility is key. “Don’t let that talent go.” Michelle says. If your employees are valuable, it makes sense to find a way to meet their needs, make the relationship work.
To hear more from Michelle on motherhood, Peanut, supporting your workforce and much more, you can listen to the interview on all good podcast platforms and on our website. You can also follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn to keep up with the latest guests and more.
You can learn more about Michelle and Peanut via the following links: @shellkennedylon | @peanut_app | Peanut