Helen Wright
Pulling together

The festive period is often a time of reflection.  As December rolls around, we're sometimes haunted by the ghosts of Christmasses past.  Of years when the office was festooned with tinsel and the wistful tones of Mariah Carey echoed around the departmental kitchen.  This can go either way, of course.  You might feel a touch of nostalgia for the years when reindeer sweaters were de rigueur at your Friday morning accounts meeting.  You may, on the other hand, shudder at the memory of an office Christmas lunch of lukewarm turkey and soggy sprouts.  Either way, this time of year has a habit of focussing the mind on the issue of RTO - the "Return To The Office".

Pulling together
Helen Wright
The Big Cheese

What makes a good leader?  How much impact do our senior managers really have on our day-to-day experience of work?   And is the movement towards equality and flexibility for all really dependent on great chiefs?

The Big Cheese
Helen Wright
Bright Sparks: Top Tips for Returning To Work ...

In an attempt to smooth the path of our friends in the 9-2-3 community, we've put together some top tips to help you to return to work with confidence, and bag the best flexible jobs on the market in 2024.  Read on for more details...

Bright Sparks: Top Tips for Returning To Work After a Career Break
Helen Wright
All Four One

Ah, September.  Month of blustery mornings.  Of afternoons where the leaves crunch satisfyingly under your feet.  Of endless confusion about the day on which PE kit is required.  Don't you just love it?

 We can't help but feel a flutter of excitement at this time of year.   Possibly it's because of the sudden silence at home, or the reduced demands for snacks and screen time.  Maybe you're celebrating the excuse to dig out cosy sweaters and to retreat inside with a book.  Or perhaps it's the fact that the air is just that touch fresher, the colours that fraction richer.  Everyone I pass is walking with a little bit more purpose in their steps.  However old we are, as the new academic year rolls around, I think we all feel a little more driven - that it's time to set ourselves some new goals, and that we finally have the bandwidth and the space to achieve them.

All Four One
Helen Wright
Who cares?

Here at 9-2-3, we often talk about the challenges of balancing childcare with careers.  Of how flexible working can help people with disabilities to access the workplace.  About how flex can help older employees extend their working lives.  But there's another group of employees out there whose place in the world of work is also increasingly under threat…

Who cares?

school hours

Could coding be your new flexible career?

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When thinking about your flexible work options or a new career change, have you ever considered coding?  

 

Most of the websites and apps you use every day have been built from code. Essentially, coding is telling a computer how to perform complex tasks through different programming languages. Everyone can learn to code, you really don’t need to be a maths genius or tech geek - these are just outdated stereotypes. 

 

23 Code Street is a women’s coding school. For every paying student, we teach digital skills to a woman in the slums of India. Below, we’ve rounded up our top 4 reasons about why coding makes a great flexible career. 

 

 

  1. Work remotely and banish the 9-5

   

How does no longer working from 9-5 sound? 

 

To be able to code you just need a laptop and some good wifi!  Due to this, lots of coding jobs can be done remotely either at home, in a cafe or wherever you prefer within the hours that suit you. If you don’t want to work for a specific company, you could freelance and work with different clients that interest you. Lots of our graduates are working mums who learnt to code to be able to work from home flexibly and have a better work/life balance. 

 

    2.  Learn an in-demand skill

 

There’s currently a huge digital skills gap; employers are looking to hire people who know how to code and have a technical understanding. As our world becomes more and more digital, the number of tech jobs is increasing. This report found there are over 7 million jobs which require coding skills and programming jobs overall are growing 12% faster than the market average. By learning to code, you’ll know an in-demand skill and have plenty of jobs to apply for. 

 

3.  Put your previous skills to good use

 

Coding is a great way to combine your old and new skills. All our students come from different backgrounds and apply the skills they’ve gained from their previous jobs when learning to code. One of our current students is a language teacher which is helping her understand the syntax and functions of the code. Some of our graduates have gone on to use code to enhance and upskill their current professions too. 

 

4.  Enjoy a rewarding career

 

Let’s face it, not all flexible working options are that rewarding. Coding definitely is. You can’t help but feel excited after you’ve started to learn to code and build your first webpage or feel proud after you’ve been working on a project for weeks and see the finished outcome. You’ll definitely feel a sense of achievement and want to show off your work!  Read how passionate our graduate Halimatou felt after learning to code. 

 

 

If you're interested in learning to code, click here to find out about  our new pilot webinar course starting in July and if you’ve  got any questions just drop us an email via hello@23codestreet.com

 

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#LetsAllFlexTogetherDay Launch!

 

 

The hashtag says it all, lets ALL flex together day is a chance for us to celebrate two things;

 

  • The love of flexible working

  • And the 1st birthday of the 9-2-3 Club!

 

So what better way to commemorate the birth of our unique networking Club by bringing people and business together to give flexible working a go, for one day and see the benefits unfold.

 

By flexible work we mean a few things:

 

  • Flexible hours - so logging on between school drop-offs i.e. 9am-3pm, or even finish off work at home when the kids are in bed

  • Remote/ home working

  • Part-time hours - for example, 2/3 days a week, of five hours, five times a week

  • Something simple like working through your lunch hour so that you can leave an hour earlier

 

Just recently, the Financial Times shared an article about a firm that had initiated a 5-hour work week, they ditched the 9-5 and said it was ‘life-changing’ for the business with fewer sick days and record levels of new business. It highlighted two brilliant things, that firms are willing to shake things up and give this a go and that flexible working actually can and does work.

 

So how can you join in?

 

Celebrate with us ONLINE:

 

Employees

 

If flexible working isn’t on the table in your current job then this is the perfect opportunity to ask them to give flex a go, just for one day and let them see how productive you can be - show them the benefits through the articles we’ll be posting and prove that you can get exactly the same work done (or more), whether this is at home or through flexible hours and perhaps this could help reassure them that this is future-proof - fight for it, it makes complete sense.

 

Employers

 

We understand that this is a complete break from the normal 9-5, it may send heads into orbit but this is just one day out of the year for your employees to prove to you how this can work for you as a business. Flexible working is known to encourage employee productivity, improve happiness, so we’re asking you to give flex a go on the 12th September, 2018.

 

What you need to do:

 

  • Lets ALL flex together on the 12th September and shout about it by using our hashtag #LetsAllFlexTogetherDay

  • Let us KNOW about it - post your photo’s to our page, wherever you’re working, whatever time you’re working, join in and engage!

  • Tag yourselves and your businesses if you’re working flexibly that day.

We want everyone to know just how great flexible working really is!

 

Come and celebrate with us in person!


As well as joining our online community, you can come and celebrate with us in person at Unipart's HQ in Oxford (more details to come soon).

 

We’re planning a great day with some great speakers and as well as all flexing together, we’ll be celebrating the 9-2-3 Club’s birthday!

 

The 9-2-3 Club was launched 12th September 2017 in Westminster (check us out here), we had a fantastic day launching the club with some great attendees and speakers and we plan to do the same this year, looking at how far the Club has come and how it’s grown with the fab networking events we’ve had the chance to deliver.

 

The Club has given us a great opportunity to meet fantastic people and business’ and the feedback we commonly get from Club attendees is overwhelmingly supportive, that’s why we want to celebrate with as many of you as we can on the 12th September.

 

We hope to see you there and for those who can’t, we want to see you ONLINE so we can all flex together and celebrate!

 

Keep an eye our Facebook and Twitter page as we release more details about the upcoming day!


 

 

#LetsAllFlexTogetherDay

 

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