After six months’ maternity leave, our head of social, Lynnette Abbott, has returned to work with a spring in her step and the promise of a hot cup of coffee. Here’s her take on what it’s like to balance two ‘day jobs’ and how she’s found her return to the coop…
I should probably start by saying I was in labour while the team were enjoying their Christmas 2021 party and I’d be lying if following their axe-throwing antics via the company WhatsApp group didn’t feel like a weirdly ironic metaphor at the time. Once the baby eventually arrived, I took a couple of months to regroup and then came into the office for my first ‘Keep in Touch’ (KIT) day, which felt like a spa break at the time. KIT days aren’t for everyone; at my previous employer I didn’t do any, but this time around I wanted to make sure I still felt part of the team and because I was taking a relatively short maternity leave, I wanted to be able to come back to work with as much of a handle on things as possible.
During my KIT days, I’d catch up with clients, get a feel for how the team was doing and focus on more project-based work – writing campaign ideas, helping out with new business pitches, that sort of thing. I managed one day a month and then a couple more frequently towards the end, which was a brilliant balance and meant Emma, my maternity cover, could skip off onto a well-deserved sabbatical shortly after I returned (which I’m trying not to take personally as I hear Bolivia is lovely this time of year).
I must say Emma did an amazing job without me. When you go on extended leave, even when you go on holiday for a fortnight, it can be a daunting prospect, but with five years’ PR and social media experience under her belt, I knew she and our clients would thrive in my absence. And I wasn’t wrong. Emma introduced new systems, enhanced how we analyse our client social channels, won some new business, bolstered existing scopes of work and introduced Meltwater into the fold, which enables us to not only strategise and assess our clients’ social activity more effectively but importantly benchmark against their contemporaries and dive deeper into potential content creator and influencer partnerships. No pressure then.
When I first came back properly at the end of May, Emma and I straight away got stuck into handing back over. The joy of social media (and being awake all night, every night) meant I’d managed to keep a good handle on what had been happening with our clients and any newly announced developments in the world of social media. This, along with my KIT days, left me feeling fairly cobweb-free, but I still had to drill into the detail of who now did what on the team, which Sophie I was actually managing, and be brought in on the most recent client developments.
I’ve been back for a month now and other than a few new (rather brilliant) team members, it’s too much of a cliché, probably, to say that it feels like I never left, but it does. I often say that working in social media is one of the only jobs you consistently get worse at, the longer you do it… there are constantly new features and trends being announced, but that’s one of the reasons I enjoy it so much.
Juggling two kids and a busy job is by no means an easy feat – most days I’m up at 5.30am after a broken night and don’t stop until 8pm once the kids are asleep when I get to grab a bite to eat, stare at a wall for five minutes, dream feed the six-month-old and then start over again, but the flexibility that Little Red Rooster gives me allows me to stay on top of both games and I’m genuinely pleased to be back at work with my fellow Roosters and clients, alike.
Moving forward we’ll be expanding the team further (check out our work for us page if you’re looking for your next challenge), working with clients to ensure they’re always getting more bang for their buck and continuing to combine a social media and PR strategy that means our brands get the best representation imaginable.
