Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
LAST MONDAY, AN email from a woman with two young children, aged two and four, landed in my inbox. Frustratingly, it contained the line, “I was told to choose either my career or my kids, that I couldn’t expect both.”
I’ve been supporting women returning from maternity leave for the past 10 years, yet we’re still talking about the same issues a decade later. In our work, we hear first hand the challenges faced by parents who are trying to balance their careers with family life.
We recently did a deep dive into female leadership, nine in ten (90%) women said that progressing in their careers was important to them. However, seven in ten (75%) said that being senior in the workplace isn’t compatible with being a parent, compared to just four in ten (45%) of men.
The requirement to report on Gender Pay Gaps has now been extended to companies with 150+ employees. There is an increased focus on employers to tangibly demonstrate what they are doing to close the pay gap and achieve gender equality across all levels.
Closing the gender pay gap is a complex issue with no one quick fix. One area that could make a marked difference is for employers to understand the impact of the Motherhood Penalty, which according to the World Economic Forum, accounts for 80% of the Gender Pay Gap. By supporting those trying to balance their career with family life, and actively encouraging dads to use leave entitlements and to ‘parent out loud’, organisations could start to shift the dial and accelerate progress.
Flexible working options offer some degree of work-life balance, yet there’s often an unspoken rule that you can’t be part-time and committed to your career.
As one individual remarked recently, ‘asking for more flexibility is great personally, but professionally it’s career suicide.’
Progressing in your career still comes with an assumption that to get ahead you have to put in the hours, and nothing short of full-time is acceptable. This leaves many people, often women, unwilling to go to the next level of their careers because of the impact it will have on the quality of their family life.
Organisations that want to demonstrate their commitment to diversity, equality and inclusion need to create workplaces that support modern family life.
The way we all live, work and parent has changed. In today’s economic climate, most households are dual-income. Employees have higher expectations of the support their workplace will provide. Even legislation is evolving and organisations are having to move quickly to not just keep up to date, but to be viewed as an employer of choice.
Five in ten (55%) employees are already parents. At some point in their lives, eight in ten (80%) employees will have parenting or caring responsibilities.
Families come in all shapes and sizes. Not everyone is a parent, but everyone has something or someone important to them.
Employers who can create ‘nirvana’ — a workplace that enables individuals to balance career with family life, will not only win the war on talent but will also outperform their peers as they see more diversity at senior leadership levels.
A good place to start is ensuring you have the right policies. Policies that reflect the complexities of modern family life and support individuals through the moments that matter, from fertility, miscarriage and surrogacy, to equal parental leave and menopause.
But policies are only as good as the people implementing them. Managers are leading multi-generational, multi-cultural teams and are dealing with a wide range of challenges they often feel ill-equipped to deal with. Many say nothing at all when faced with a sensitive situation at work, for fear of getting it wrong. Equipping leaders with the skills and confidence to lead team members from modern families is imperative.
Attitudes and behaviours don’t always reflect how we live, work and parent. “I know I judge people who finish work at 5 o’clock on the dot. I shouldn’t, but I do” remarked one manager recently. We need to challenge outdated attitudes that measure people on the hours they work and move to a mindset where people are evaluated on their outputs.
In another recent report, nine in ten (92%) workers say they want flexible working options, yet half (50%) of companies are demanding more time spent in the office. There’s a real danger that those who work remotely will be overlooked. Managers need to be aware of the dangers of ‘proximity bias’; this is where the people we see most often, e.g. office-based, are favoured when it comes to promotion and opportunities.
If we want to create truly diverse workplaces, that are not only gender-balanced but inclusive for those who are neurodivergent or who have a disability, then the way we manage performance needs to be carefully considered.
Tracy Gunn is co-founder of Platform 55, a HR platform for employers that transforms how they support modern families at work with solutions for employees, leaders and HR.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
I’m so sick and tired of all these scams going around.
One of those scam messages came into the message part of one of my bookings, it was under legitimate correspondence from the hotel. I sent an email to booking.com to ask them to warn others etc. and to see if they would have it removed. I haven’t heard anything back from them
@Caroline ORiordan: looks like an inside job! How else would they know both booker and hotel info!
@Sinead D: Probably from a low level employee at the hotel.
@Sinead D: Absolutely, very suss, they had all the details correct, even addressed me by my name.
Happened to my other half, it had all her details, the reference, and the dates she’d booked the hotel. The only thing that was off was the price she’d paid, and that was only off by about €20. The only reason we knew it was a scam was because it went into her junk folder.
Contacted the hotel who confirmed it wasn’t them and contacted booking.com to complain because the level of detail they had meant there had to be a data breach. Their response was pretty much oh it was one of our partners (basically blaming the hotel). Our hotel was in a different country to the one in this story so can’t even say it was the same hotel, clearly some leak on booking.coms side!
@Abi Dennis: Booking.com is now too big for its Boots! Cracks are starting to show
Nothing is safe anymore online.
@Emer Daly: It never was@
@Emer Daly: literally nothing?
This happened to me but luckily I doubted it since it was a Russian address. But how did they send the mail in the app?
@Davy Smith: Booking.com seriously compromised
@Davy Smith: They didn’t. If you were to receive a letter in the post with a printed envelope bearing the White House logo and containing a letter with a fancy White House letterhead apparently signed by Biden would you believe it?
What if the postmark showed it was posted in Cork?
Anyone with a laser printer and some knowledge could send such a letter.
Likewise anyone with a computer and some knowledge can send an email purporting to be from anyone they choose. It’s as simple as typing
From: president@whitehouse.gov
In the right place and knowing how to send an email directly through a relay. I’ve done exactly that as a joke before now, I was of course careful to make it an obvious joke on the first of April.
@Steve O’Hara Smith.: The difference is that the scammers somehow knew that the targeted person had made a booking at that hotel. This information could only come from compromised systems at Booking.com or the hotel..
I also received 3 of this emails, one of the hotels in question sent me an email to alert me of the scam. Nothing from booking.com and when I queried it with them and said id received 3 different emails on future bookings they said they’d get back to me, needless to say, I’m still waiting.
Why should booking.com pay Lee for being slow and making an inept decision clicking on a link that’s clearly a fake site link. I would expect the scam is the hotel staff itself either selling the data to scammers or doing the scamming themselves and nothing to do with the booking.com platform. I would avoid the hotel itself.
@Dave Cummins: it wasn’t just some random email, according to the article it came via the booking.com app, hence booking.com may hold a proportion of responsibility if their app wasn’t secured sufficiently
@Dave Cummins: Wise after the event..surely
It almost certainly did not come from booking.com and certainly not from their app – nothing comes from the app. Faking a from address is very easy for anyone who knows how email works, although these days you have to find an entry point that won’t reject the spoof and is trusted by others, but there are plenty of them.
The only way to check is to view the raw source of the email, or at least all headers, and examine the chain of “Received by” headers identifying the mail transfer agents it has been through, they cannot all be spoofed. Then you have to know what the legitimate chain looks like.
Same happened to a friend three weeks ago also hotel in Milan. Still awaiting a response from booking.com
It’s not from booking.com it’s from booking.complete
@Leonski: Not even that booking.complete(some digits).online.
I can’t see the digits while replying.
@Leonski: they got the message from booking.com app so they must have thought it was safe
Look at the url and it’s a scam. Silly lad.
@B6Tr3OgE: ah come on some ppl wouldn’t know that.
@Emer Daly: How could they not it’s right there in front of them.
@Emer Daly: they’re the ones that get scammed then aren’t they? If Lee is out there he should get in touch with me. I’ve a bridge to sell him!
People in Gaza have no water, food and medication. People from Ukraine are now picking and choosing which country gives better benefits to go to, hardly a behaviour of someone who is surviving and fleeing war. Some people are more important than others. Americans conveniently forgot about Afghanistan , they are forgetting Palestinians now too. Ukrainians are only supported because of the power battle with Russia. No such thing as all human beings equal and worthy of having basic needs covered
Fed up of all the scams.
Booking.com owe the customer nothing, if he’s going to get anything back it’ll be through the bank.
The link is fairly obviously fake. Cancelled is spelt wrong. There is so much information out there to help people prevent been scammed, I genuinely don’t get how people get screwed over by something like this which is far from the best attempt I’ve seen
@Colm O’ Shea: Also it starts Dear Guest, that’s a big giveaway!
There is an app called Scamadviser I recommend you all look at it. Possibly one of the best tools for checking scam sites.. while they look OK thus helps big time..
Claiic spelling error should have alerted the person,, “canceled”
@Sinead D: Hew know right goud Ingrish!?
@Sinead D:
It wouldn’t be unusual for American English to be used on a huge platform like that
The scammers are thinking of new scams every day.
@Emer Daly: yes but that’s an old and very obvious scam – why would they need new scams when there are still people who will fall for that one?
Should’ve know better. Clear scam link to be fair..
If this happens to anyone they are protected under the Payment Services Directive 2. Get in touch with your bank and ask to raise a chargeback. It will take a week or two but you will get your money back.
To process a debit/credit card payment someone needs to get approved by a credit card processing company (Stripe/Braintree/PayPal) and this is their liability. The processer will either recover the funds or it is their loss that they will have to stomach.
In short your bank will do all the work. Just get in touch and ask to raise a chargeback.
@Keith Crowe: Booking.com took an additional €50 from my bank account without my permission and PTSB say they can do nothing?
@Rose Sheridan: call PTSB again (sounds like someone just said what they needed to say to get you off the phone). Ask for the visa/MasterCard department and say you want to raise a chargeback due to an unauthorized charge on your card. You are covered under PSD2.
You may be asked for some proof etc, in particular that you have tried to resolve it directly with the merchant.
As background I have worked for Braintree and PayPal (both card processors).
@Keith Crowe: Thanks Keith..good advice
Lee can’t expect a refund, if he was a victim of a fraudster. Checking the email address is the only way to ensure you are not being directed to a fake website. A web address with extra words or digits after the Company name, should raise suspicions.
@Patrick MC Dermott: Checking the email address tells you NOTHING. From addresses are trivially easy to spoof.
the last couple of reservations iv made through booking . com the owner has contacted me and we agreed to cancel the reservation pay cash on arrival at a slight price drop on my end
cut out the middle , was going to say man but ill probably get deleted, middle person.
@John Duggan: risky thing as you have no proof it will be there and vacant when you arrive?
@Rose Sheridan: yes I was thinking the same thing good luck with that approach – leaves him wide open to being scammed for full amount.
Booking.com has gone down hill a lot. They were very good but not anymore. Not even competitive
The biggest issue is the IT departments of a lot of companies are not willing to keep up to date on the latest ways to prevent scams. Also theres no real monitoring to see if state or private companies who hold peoples information are adhering to the latest security and prevention. Its not gonna stop these scammers but I think a fair portion of the issues with online scamming is companies being over confident or almost arrogant around how secure they are
Pay cash over counter…the way to book.
Booking.com is a terrible website. Surely someone can do better.
@John Doyle: You are free to try.
@John Doyle: exactly John! What dya think Paddy Cosgrave is out of a job?
Fob off by booking.com. if this was a phishing email then how did it know the person, hotel and date. Booking.com was hacked.
Setting any from address you like on an email is trivially easy, it’s nothing but a header field in the email. Doing this does not require compromising the account being spoofed only the knowledge to compose an SMTP message. Booking.com are almost certainly correct when they say that their site has not been compromised.
The from address in an email is not something that can be trusted to mean anything.
Likewise those scam emails claiming to have videos of you watching porn and ‘prove’ their access to your systems by appearing to come from your own email address are incredibly easy to generate and prove NOTHING.
The email came from booking.complete, a clever if obvious scam in hindsight.
It has got to the stage when we have to scrutinise every email for these kinds of variants.
@John Mulligan: it didn’t, it came from noreply @ booking. com and then brought him directly to the app with all the previous communications from the hotel.
There’s are tons of reddit threads on this happening to many many people and you can see from other commenters here too that assumed once they were in the app it would be secure and legit,it wasn’t and that’s not the fault of the customer in my opinion.
The link was not from booking.com it was from booking.complete4685.online which is a completely different website. Nothing to do with booking.com or their employees.
have your say