New research from on-demand staffing app Coople reveals British women have never been busier. The findings show a significant proportion of working women juggle more than one job, as well as the bulk of the housework.
A survey of 2000 employed people in the UK carried out by OnePoll and commissioned by Coople reveals one in six women (16%) are juggling more than one job and 3% of these have three or more jobs.
With 14 million women in the UK now working, this means 2.24 million women have more than one job, and 420,000 have three or more.
On top of multiple professional roles, a recent survey by Oxfam shows British women do more of the domestic tasks in their households, with women in both fulltime and part-time employment contributing to a greater share of the household responsibilities. The poll illuminates that more than two thirds (67%) of women feel they do the bulk of housework compared to nearly a fifth (18%) of men.
Coople’s survey reveals 75% of these time-starved working women who don’t have flexible working hours ‘wish they did’. Moreover, 72% state that flexible working has affected – or would affect – their lives for the better. Specifically, 48% feel it has impacted or would impact their personal life positively, 26% say it has reduced or would reduce their stress levels and 15% feel flexible working has increased or would increase their productivity. Coople has observed evidence of this on its flexible working platform; in fact 65% of the company’s UK job applicants and 78% of returning applicants are made up of females.
While the survey results show that almost a fifth of women work more than one job, a large and perhaps surprising proportion (33%) do so out of choice, stating “I like it”.
Predictably, for women the primary purpose for an additional job/jobs is to earn more money (64%), however nearly a third (29%) say their main reason for an additional job is to learn new skills. Coople supports and fulfills this desire through its app, which regularly suggests returning job hunters to try out new roles. Almost a quarter (23%) of women state they have another role ‘for variety and to experience new environments’, 15% do so ‘as a hobby’, 8% because they are looking to move into another industry and 2% say they work for two or more companies to meet new people.
Jacques de la Bouillerie, MD of Coople commented: “The findings that many British women often now juggle two or more paid jobs as well as household activities mean it’s never been so important for Britain to wake up to flexible working. Not only do these findings highlight the positive effects for employees who have the ability to work flexibility, they also reveal the benefits to the employer – such as increased productivity. I’d go as far to say that these findings also shed light on a wider trend for the definition of ‘flexible working’ in the future; not just flexible hours, but also flexible work lives.”
