Taking a Career Break

My first two career breaks were maternity leaves. They were most definitely career breaks though. I took 8 months the first time and a full year the second time. I really enjoyed my maternity leaves but I'm not stay at home mom material. I needed to get back to work!

My third career break is about wanting to see what else I can do. I've been in a corporate environment so long, I wanted to remember what I can actually do and have time for my interests. It's also about being able to enjoy my kids more because my brain isn't overloaded with work stuff. I'm looking at whether I can set up a lifestyle business that generates enough income that I can make a career change. 

Others take a career break to travel (I might do that later), to look after a sick relative, to study, to spend time on a hobby such as music or sport, to write a book. 

Some people are just fed up with their jobs and being stuck in a cubicle all day. They want to get away from it all and re-evaluate their lives. 

Are you worried about what will happen if you take a career break? Perhaps everyone will forget about you. Perhaps you will lose your skills. Perhaps the job will change and you'll be left behind. 

In my experience nothing much changes at work when you take a career break. Even a year long career break like my second maternity leave. And that's in the fast-paced IT industry. I found it pretty easy to just slot right back in.

It is worth taking some time to get back up to speed when you first return. Invite a few key people for coffee and you'll soon know about the important things that have happened. 

And what if you don't want to go back to your job after enjoying a period of freedom? Well during both my maternity leaves there came a point where I was ready to go back to work. This time, I'm not so sure. This is something you should think about throughout your career break - you'll have the time. If you decide that you don't want to return then you'll be able to plan an alternative. Many people find something else they can do to earn money while they are on a career break. 

And what about your identity? Is your professional life a key part of your identity? Will you feel purposeless during a career break? It's possible! I know lots of women who have taken long breaks to look after their children and it's something many of them struggle with. I knew I could easily live without professional recognition, but I couldn't let go of earning money so I decided to work part-time during my sabbatical and build up my own small lifestyle business (nothing like a corporate career.) Some people volunteer or throw themselves into leisure pursuits so they don't even think about work. 

To get the most out of a career break it needs to be planned. If it's a maternity leave then just plan the return, newborn babies don't follow plans :-)

Some things to think about:

• What will your role be when you return? I decided to find a new role each time I returned from maternity leave. I used my career breaks as an opportunity to move into a new area. It was a great way to move to a new role - I had few ties to my old job and I'd had time to think about what I wanted to do and make a good case for it.
• Find out if you will be eligible for any bonuses or pay rises during your career break. Make sure you and your manager understand the rules. 
• Plan your finances. How will you live without a salary, or on reduced maternity benefits? Make sure your career break plans fit with the available finances. You can have a very cheap career break, or you can travel the world in luxury. My maternity leaves were planned and we had always lived below our means. I decided to earn a reduced income doing something fun while on my current career break. 
• Have a clear plan of what you will do during your career break. You can always adapt as you go along, but the worst thing would be to waste time and not accomplish something meaningful during your career break. Write yourself a career break bucket list. 
• Make a clean break. Make sure your colleagues understand that you will not be getting involved in work matters once your career break starts. There's no point taking a career break and still working!

When the time comes to return from a career break you'll probably have a very different outlook on life and work. 

You'll have gained a different perspective and developed your life skills. You'll be better at working out what's important and valuing your time. 

Think about what you want to keep from your career break lifestyle and build it in when negotiating your new job. I negotiated slightly reduced hours to make sure I would get time with my kids. 

I found I was much less willing to give up my evening to meetings that really didn't achieve much and I was much more ready to delegate to junior colleagues. I was more efficient because I valued time more. 

A lot of people worry that they will never make up for lost time after a career break. That wasn't my experience. People tended to think in terms of elapsed time and the current quality of my work rather than my time away and reduced hours. 

I think more employers should encourage career breaks. They create more well-rounded employees. A career break can get someone out of a rut and they may well come back full of ideas that they wouldn't have thought about if they were stuck in their normal routine. 

Career breaks are also a good way to reduce short-term outgoings while keeping key employees over the long term. 

If more people took career breaks that weren't maternity leaves then women wouldn't feel left behind when taking time out to look after children, and men would feel more able to do their share with the kids too. It would level the playing field. 

This article uses public domain images from Pixabay.