This International Men's Day, we are celebrating a modern man.

This November we are doing something we’ve never done before: recognising International Men’s Day. We regularly mark International Women’s Day (8 March) by showcasing the amazing work women in our industries are doing to make a difference.  

The fact is that one of the biggest challenges professional women face is balancing childcare responsibilities with professional ambitions. However, if childcare responsibilities were more balanced – or if employers recognised that ‘working dads’ also need some allowances, then women would have more equal advantages at work. The goal of course is equality – a future where anyone regardless of sex, race, religion, sexual orientation, etc. can flourish equally.

Thankfully, many men today take very active roles in parenting alongside their careers. We spoke with one such man, Jonathan Lewis-Jones, Managing Director (Publicis Commerce) at Publicis Groupe. Jonathan has responsibility for driving and developing commerce capabilities across Publicis in the UK. He has 20 years’ experience working both client and agency side; beginning in advertising at LOWE he worked across a variety of global brands. Then he went to join Nokia’s digital marketing organisation, which became Microsoft Mobile. Here, he worked in several roles across CRM, content, operations and strategy which resulted in him leading the global ecommerce function. He then moved to a WPP ad tech business before joining Publicis Media in 2017.

We talked to Jonathan about his career and balancing his work and life as a dad. This International Men’s Day, read about Jonathan’s experience and how flexibility has freed him to be a more productive “working dad.”

Tell me about your career and how you balance this with being a dad. 

I run our Publicis Commerce team in the UK, which is a consultancy practice within Publicis driving commerce capability across all of our agencies. 

I started my career in advertising before going client slide for a long stint and I now find myself back agency side within Publicis Media. I am also a single parent with 10-year-old twin boys who live with me half the week, so life is busy. Like many of us there is just an awful lot that needs to be crammed into the working week. 

One of the draws about going client side was that I thought it would be more conducive to having a family and being a present parent. However, coming back into an agency environment after so long, I have been pleasantly surprised at how times have changed. The way that Publicis embraced flexible working was one of the key reasons I joined a couple of years ago.

What does flexible working mean to you and what does it look like for you?

Flexible working means being trusted and trusting your team to deliver their work wherever they may be. In our industry though, I do not think though that flexible working means working more at home than in the office. We still ultimately work in a people business and building relationships in the workplace is critical. 

For me flexible working is being able to work and concentrate at home if you have a presentation to write rather than being in open plan. It is being able to drop the kids at school, pick them up or attend a play and not feeling guilty because you know you will be making up the time elsewhere. It is about not having to do a 4-hour round trip commute 5 days a week and being able to find the right balance of wellbeing and productivity.

Flexible working is a needed acknowledgement that our lives are busy and sometimes complicated and if you want to get the best out of your people, then this needs to be recognised.

Personally, for me it is all about time management. My diary is like a brightly coloured game of Tetris clearly marked in different colours when I will be doing what and that includes childcare related stuff.

My team has full access to my diary, I would never hide having to leave early to do school pick up, dentist appointment or school play. However, it is then my responsibility to reassure them through my actions and output that I am more than making up for any flexi time taken off to look after my children.

This means that I then adjust my working day accordingly, catching up on work in the evening or over the weekend. I’ve done food shops at work and presentations at home. You just do whatever it takes to get everything done. I strangely find that sometimes the busier I am the more productive I am.

For years, we were told to make a real distinction between work time and home time. Ironically, I now feel like I have achieved far more balance by mixing the two more.

Read more on the Hanson Search blog

Previous article on this topic: Why we need to talk about working fathers 2017

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