Been hitting the holiday boutique circuit early this year. What I see behind many of the jewelry tables and handcrafted baby bibs are incredibly talented women. I always ask them if this is the training they got in college or if handcrafted giftware is a second career. So far I have met an attorney, a chemist and a several former teachers. One thing they all have in common is that they are mothers who left their first careers to care for their families. Not one of these women can conceive of how they could have crafted a work schedule that would have allowed them to remain in their chosen careers. Everyone of them is hard working, multi-tasking, loyal, clever and entrpreneurial. Last I checked these are the keywords management is looking for when they discuss attraction and retention strategies for their departments.

Funny thing is that when you look at a professional's work day and compare discretionary time available to what a mother has available to apply to her small business you see how similar they are. Due to meetings and interruptions, the average employee in an office has about 2.5 hours of discretionary time. The time is fragmented and represents less than 25% of the work day. A mother has similar uncontrollable interruptions including visitors, phone calls, crises and a to-do list that would take longer to complete than there are hours available. The glimmer of a solution for both employee and mother is to gain control of more of the day. One way I can recommend is to plan the day in advance and to estimate how long it will take to complete the tasks on hand. Estimating how long a task will take allows you to prioritize and drop tasks that you know in advance won't get handled. This is actually quite a relief as it cuts out the worrying you would have been doing all day about that task.

From a big picture vantage point, I want businesses to see that tasking a talented woman in her field of interest for a focused period of time offers benefits for both. I look at these women running their businesses at the holiday boutiques and recognize that they are achievers. They don't just work hard at work. They think about their work a lot of the time. They also acknowledge the value of paying attention to their families or their health (they all looked fit to me). In short, they are fully engaged with the task at hand. Who knew, a "happy workaholic!" I encourage business leaders to reach out to the valued employees they want to keep and find a way to configure the business at hand to engage the vast talent pool represented by professionals who are available fewer hours. They create value for the world wherever they are -- hire them for what they can bring to our business ideals!