The Operating Table: An alternative perspective on Statutory Maternity Pay, plus where to access a pot of ￡25m for R&D innovations.
Milly Barker
Fractional COO at Pay As You Go COO. I can help your growing company get more sh!t done. Serial startup COO. MBA. ex-Amazon.
Hi, I'm Milly and I help startups win.
I believe everyone deserves a chance to make their entrepreneurial dreams a reality and Pay As You Go COO was created to help that happen. I’m an expert company builder and I want to help you beat the odds and build a business that’s destined for success, without breaking the bank.
Find articles, insights, tips, and tools below - all designed to help your growing company.
Is Statutory Maternity Pay always a bad thing?
First-up, this isn’t clickbait.?I’m not here to polarise opinions for engagement. I don’t care about vanity metrics. It's just that ever since I sat down to write my first ‘novel’ at 7, I’ve been processing information and forming opinions by writing them out and then debating them.
Humour me a little and engage in the debate or choose to ignore me entirely - either way, I’m not beating a path to being a cut-price Katie Hopkins over here. So, Enhanced Maternity Pay - is it always a yay or can it be a nay for diversity?
I don’t have kids, I’m never having them, so I’ve never paid much attention to a company’s maternity/paternity/parental leave policy. That changed when I started to think about bringing on full-time employees for my own business.
I want to be a considerate and supportive employer, a Founder who understands that my team doesn't give anywhere near as many sh!ts about my company as I do, someone who understands that life isn’t just about work and who puts systems in place to protect that understanding.
But I don’t think that, for me, that includes giving out generous parental leave allowances.
I'm not anti-child or anti-parent; I support those choices and the decisions that everyone makes for their own lives. They’re not always the same as my choices but, assuming they're not screwing someone else over, that's completely irrelevant. You do you, boo.
But it wasn't until my mid-30s had properly turned into my late-30s that people started silently doing the reproductive maths and stopped telling me ‘Oh, you’ll change your mind when you meet the right man’. When people question your choices, it's hard not to question those choices yourself and not being emphatically pro-parent feels like a bit of a taboo. And not the hot Tom Hardy kind.
But I really do believe that parental policies don't have to be the first thing you add in in order to build a diverse, inclusive, and flexible workplace.
I've chosen not to have children and I also choose, as an employer, not to pay more than is legally required of me for other people to have children. I choose this because I want use that money to support everyone’s non-work needs and create an environment that honours the individual - regardless of their choices.
Below are four things I plan to implement in my company as I strive to create a flexible and human-centred working environment for everyone.
I've written a full article about my choice on my website; head to the link below to see me really over-explain myself. There's data and everything.
Useful Resources
I’m the ultimate cheerleader for early-stage companies and I’ve got the knowledge you need to take your brilliant ideas from the drawing board to the board room. Did you know you can get a lot of those for free on my website?
Find investors, accelerators, tips, tricks, tools, and more to help you beat the odds and build for success on my free resources page.
A few recent highlights:
UK registered organisations can apply for a share of up to ￡25m for R&D innovations that can significantly impact the UK economy. Proposals must be business focused, and show deliverable, realistic, adequately resourced plans to achieve return on investment, growth and market share following project completion, but applications can come from any area of technology and be applied to any part of the economy.
HearstLab's mission is to close the gap in venture capital funding for women by helping founders build healthy, sustainable and highly scalable businesses. Winners receive up to $100k in investment from HearstLab, plus three months of hands-on support. The next UK event is in London on 16.10.2024 and applications close on 22.07.2024.
The Santander X UK Awards is Santander’s annual entrepreneurship competition for emerging businesses. 3 winners in each category will receive an equity-free cash prize (up to ￡25k) and business support. To be eligible, your business must:
- Offer an innovative idea and/or offer a solution which has potential to disrupt the market and which is scalable.
- Be incorporated and registered as a UK company.
Upcoming Events
On the 25th of July between 10am and 1pm, BIPC Lewisham are hosting a free workshop on the secrets of financial forecasting with Esther Kyesimira.
The Workshop will cover:
1. Mastering Financial Forecasting: Dive deep into the art and science of financial projections, from balance sheets to profit margins.
2. Strategic Decision-Making: Discover how financial forecasts can set the direction of your business.
3. Esther’s Toolkit: Esther will reveal her arsenal of tools and techniques for transforming data into actionable insights.
I’m Milly, Founder of Pay As You Go COO.
There are about 800,000 new businesses started in the UK each year and 62% of those will fail really quickly. I’m on a mission to stop yours being one of them.
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If you’re dreaming of getting more sh!t done in your growing company, why not book a free call to see how I can help?
Making founders & operators the hero of their story | Career Mentor & Business Mentor | Operator for Hire
8 个月Love this, Milly, thanks for sharing all this helpful info!