Working with Children

My name is Florian Heise, and I am an Architect, Father, and a full-time director at Heise Architecture, a practice I founded and run with my wife, Rachel Heise, who is also an Architect and mother. We have been engaged to work on a variety of projects but recently have been working in the commercial and retail sections, with often demanding and tight timeframes. We also have a three and a half-year-old toddler, Minna Heise, who has been coming to work since her early days alive. Our son, Fredrick Heise, who recently turned one and has been coming to the office the day after he was born. I would like to share our story and explain why are we taking this approach to raising our family and how this is allowing us to balance family and life while answering the question of how we make it all work?

During my university studies, I discovered a fantastic book titled "A Pattern Language" by Christopher Alexander. For those not familiar it is a systematic collection of knowledge, organized in patterns, that one would use for designing the master plan for a city or town down to the detail of where to position a post or column on a small veranda deck. One of the more memorable patterns in the book involved education and exposing children to the workplace.

As a child growing up in Victoria, both of my parents ran their businesses, and my mother had a mobile hair care business and my father had a building design and construction business. With a large office attached to our home, I played in the office. I have memories of Ammonia filling the house from my father's old plan printer. So when Rachel and I were discussing how we could balance the challenges of family and work, the thought of having children in the workplace did not seem strange or alien.

I received a phone call one Thursday around lunchtime from Rachel; I was told to finish up my work for the week as I would not be coming into the office tomorrow as Rachel was in labour. Rebutting my suggest that she should come into the office and work so she could brag about working through labour, Rachel is a very patient woman, I excitedly informed our staff that they would be on their own on Friday and proceeded to clear my desk. The next day, Minna Diane Heise was born at 1 in the afternoon after a text book birth weighing 4kg, with an exhausted mother. Before Minna had arrived, we had decided that Rachel would be joining us back in the office as soon as she was comfortable and that Minna would be along for the adventure. I am embarrassed to admit that we probably spent more time preparing the office for the arrival of our little one than we did at our home

Staff vaccination becomes an employment and health and safety concern when bringing a new born into the office.

Rachel started working back in the office once Minna had received her vaccinations and we were comfortable that she would not be at risk of catching anything from our staff. For our second child, we have implemented a requirement that all staff have to receive a whooping cough vaccine.

Minna would join us in the office every day, with Rachel breastfeeding, napping, playing and taking care of her, while also fulfilling her work commitments. During this period we experimented with scaling back Rachel's responsibilities to a managing and team support role without directly managing any projects. Naturally, deadlines the responsibilities of running a practice would catch-up to us, and we would have to work late or through the night, with Minna sleeping comfortably in the server room.

Having a baby in the office can be a delightful distraction and is a good excuse to step away from the computer

Having a baby in the office can be a delightful distraction and is a good excuse to step away from the computer, although we have found that Minna has had to learn to keep herself entertained and occupied when we are busy. (Note: The above video is a joke. While I am a typical dad, I would naturally tape down the chair before I would use it as a baby gate.)

Eventually, we hired a personal assistant and baby wrangler to take care of Minna during the day and also to help with general office duties. The additional support a personal assistant provided, allowed Rachel to start managing projects without being constantly distracted by Minna. After a year as Minna grew into a toddler, we found that she could essentially be left to her adventures as long as the office was safe and everyone made sure to take notice when she was too quite.

We've had to relax our one earbud rule

Naturally, our staff had to adapt to sharing an office with a child, and we had to relax our one earbud rule for headphones when Minna was crying. Having a separate server room with the noise of the fans was a necessity, especially during nap time. Our staff have had mixed reactions to having a child in the office, most didn't seem to be overly distracted and learned to work with a baby on their lap or standing on their desks. If Minna were overly distracting during a meeting or phone call, we would take her for a short walk out of the office, which would calm her down and allow work to continue. Once Minna started to walk, we learned that disabling the power button on all of our computers was a requirement.

    Disabling the power button on all of our computers was a requirement.

We are now nearly four years into our experiment of bringing our child to work and have moved office, won fantastic new projects and have trained a new generation of Heise Alumni during that time. We have not noticed any issue with clients or any discrimination regarding projects or opportunities. Project commitment and meeting deadlines are more important than briefly interrupting a phone call to tell off a child, or having a three-year-old pretend to take minutes in a meeting.

One issue is that we have had to buy everything twice, two change tables, two beds, two everything, to set up the office as a home away from home. Minna has often been put to bed at the office when we have had to work back to meet a deadline or prepare for a presentation. We have also had to make sure that our staff share a similar approach to discipline and are confident tell off a toddler when required. Our staff also have to get used to discussions regarding changing nappies, breastfeeding, and accidents as they happen. Watching a young 22-year-old run screaming out of the server room when the nappy bucket is opened never gets old. Also, a bonus is threatening to assign the job of emptying the nappy bucket to the slowest performer every week.

As a father watching my daughter and son grow up in our office has been priceless, I have not had to miss out on anything and while most of our children's firsts have been in the workplace, I was there for every one of their milestones. Rachel's career has not had to take a break, and she has managed a contract for a national retail brand while raising our daughter in the office. Minna seems happy and responsibly normal, her drawing and pen handling skills are well developed, and she is developing a gregarious personally with the coming and going of people into the office. We make sure Minna plays with other children, the neighbour's girls and at the playground as often as possible.

With companies tricking women into sacrificing their most fertile years with egg freezing and the current culture of separating family and work I believe we need to design and creating new ways to achieve work and family balance and equality in the workplace.