Mom Interviews

On Wednesdays, I work from home. I feel so grateful to be able to maintain this type of schedule and I am grateful to Walmart.com for letting me do this. I drop the kids off at school, work all day, and then we have dinner at night as a family.

How did you organize your schedule to work from home once a week and how did you work this out with your employer?

I used to work at Excite, and when I became pregnant with my first child, my daughter, I asked to work from home once a week. They agreed that I could give this a shot once I built up my relationships within the company and created the infrastructure that would allow me to be effective from home. It worked, and the arrangement was really successful.

When I came to Walmart.com I was in the office five days a week. When my daughter started kindergarten I asked to go on personal leave for three months. I did not want to repeat the experience I had when my daughter started preschool and I was not around to help her with the transition and to be involved in the school.

Being able to have those three months off was an amazing experience. I was the lead parent in the classroom, did tons of playdates, and I got to know the other parents very well. I laid the foundation that to this day has served me well; I have strong relationships with the other parents and teachers at the school.

When I returned from leave, I asked to work from home one day a week. My commute to work is over an hour, and not having to do it once a week is a tremendous help for me. So we did it on a trial basis to see how my direct reports and peers felt about it. It was successful, and I’ve now done that for three years. There are weeks when it does not work and I have to be in the office. But I am prepared to be flexible about it and understand that to make this arrangement work I have to always be available. Working from home is not my chance to get errands done.

Working from home does help tremendously, and for me, it’s an incredible retention tool.

That, and having good childcare, make everything manageable. It makes me feel like I can be successful and handle the challenges along the way.

What is your childcare arrangement and how happy are you with it?

My mom watched our daughter for the first year after she was born, then we had an amazing nanny for the next four years. She went on to open her own daycare center and since then we’ve had a few different people.