The newly promoted COO of a £25m-revenue managed services provider has spoken of the “societal judgement” she felt when returning to her full-time career with two small children.
Melissa Rambridge was this month formally made one of four new Executive Directors of inTEC following a restructure of the business.
Her previous company, Sweethaven, was one of about 15 MSPs inTEC acquired during a seven-year buy-and-build spree fuelled by Duke Royalty.
Previous CEO Simon Howitt has moved to the co-chairman role, while previous COO Phil Astell has stepped into a supporting consultancy role.
“inTEC has flown under the radar for a while. It’s a £25m business and feels like it’s just coming into fruition. It’s got legs to grow quickly and has got that mix of commercial and education,” Rambridge said.
“It’s in the throwaway comments”
While praising inTEC for handing her the flexibility to spend time with her two young children (aged three and two), Rambridge conceded she has felt “societal judgement” for continuing to pursue her career ambitions, however.
“I didn’t really take any maternity leave, which in itself is a bit controversial – I took two weeks,” she said.
“That comes with a fair amount of judgement around how long a woman should be at home with a baby.
“It’s in the throwaway comments. There’s a surprise a lot of the time that you’re still doing a full-time job when you’ve got two young children, and then there’s also the open criticism of other people who aren’t in the room.
“If you don’t want to continue on an ambitious career path because you want to spend more time with the children at home, I think that’s also admirable, and it’s a harder job than walking into the office. But if you’re of ambitious mindset and still want to be in the workspace, that’s ok too.
“I don’t think there should be judgement either way.”
“You can have both”
Rambridge stressed that “you can have both” as long as you set strict parameters.
“I might tell [colleagues] I need to leave at 4pm because I haven’t spent enough time with the kids, or want to pick them up from nursery. Or that I can’t do that call at 6pm because it’s bedtime – I don’t like to miss many bedtimes,” she explained.
“Everyone has been super understanding and I’ve never had any pushback or anyone questioning whether I’m therefore not fit for purpose for the job. It comes round to trust – ‘we trust you to do your job well and understand how important it is to spend time with your family’.
“If anything, it’s the slightly older generation around me who are the ones saying ‘make the most of the time now; you don’t get it back’. They’re encouraging me to reduce travel or to take the days when I need them, and I think that’s brilliant. That’s real progression in terms of a workplace culture.
“For me, the difficulty with the return to work has been more the societal perception and potential judgement around what a woman should do when they’ve had children.
“And then me personally getting the right balance. That’s whatever I – not the Mums at the playground or people at work – feel comfortable with, and that takes a bit of figuring it out.”
“Next phase” of growth
Rambridge said she and her fellow execs are taking the reins as inTEC enters the “next phase” of growth following an aggressive buy-and-build strategy.
“In education, we want to become the go-to-education provider across the UK and Ireland. That means pulling together the right levels of remote and on-site strategy,” she said.
“And then on the business side it’s just to do our job really well and expand through reputation.”
“I don’t have a problem with being asked”
Although Rambridge is showing that women in her position “can do it all”, should this even be a topic of conversation?
After all, would a journalist ask a male C-suite exec with two young children how he’s managing to juggle work with childcare (the answer probably being, no)?
“I don’t have a problem with being asked, as I think it shines a spotlight on it,” Rambridge said.
“If people like me don’t talk openly about it, how do we progress it?
“It’s a difficult one to change. Biologically, the woman is more attached to the child, particularly in those first five years. So it’s about how that works in a fair way.
“The world isn’t going to change overnight. There’s been some good progress, especially over the last three or four years.
“This is about how we steadily keep that dialogue going, rather than saying ‘ah, it’s got better, so let’s leave it’.”
Doug Woodburn is editor of IT Channel Oxygen
