Workplace biases, increasing child care costs and a genuine desire to spend more time with their children are leading greater numbers of women to opt out of the workforce. Helping them along are several up-and-coming companies, founded specifically to aid working and stay-at-home mothers find the flexibility and benefits they need.
Among them is Allison O’Kelly, CEO of Mom Corps, based in Atlanta. The company sprung from O’Kelly’s own experiences in trying to find the right work-life balance.
“I’m a CPA, and when my first child was born, I was trying to find work where I wouldn’t have to be in the office every day,” she recalls. “I started doing contract work for small clients, and soon I had more work than I could handle. I got some friends involved,and quickly found that there were so many other people needing the same opportunities I did.”
Hence, in July 2005, O’Kelly branded Mom Corps to serve as a matchmaking service between employers looking to recruit top talent and former full-time professionals turned stay-at-home mothers. Resumes for highly qualified and educated women - CPAs, attorneys, IT specialists among them - are maintained in Mom Corps’ database of 1,500 applicants.
“Employers mostly call us for small, short-term project work, but also for longer-term stints, filling in for someone on leave,” O’Kelly explains. “We also do a lot of permanent part-time placement. We make sure employers are getting exactly what they need, and we’ve received positive feedback about every singe person we’ve placed.”
Placements meet moms’ needs as well. “For women with younger kids, we find work they can do from home; women with older kids can’t do full-time work during the summer,” she says.
Although Mom Corps has been active for just over a year, “word is spreading very quickly,” according to O’Kelly, and she believes the company is “opening employers’ eyes” about flexible work arrangements.
Image by Mom Corps.
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