Thirty-five-strong consultancy: Wagstaffs

At eight months pregnant, Design Business Association director and Wagstaffs manager director Clare Anderson is well aware of the pressures a pregnancy can exert – both on the individual and on the employer.

Playing an integral role in the DBA’s drive to improve the industry’s maternity infrastructure, she maintains it is in the interest of employer and employee to accommodate one another.

Anderson joined Wagstaffs shortly after being taken on by The Brand Union (DW 12 June).

‘[The issue of maternity provision] was a factor in my leaving. I felt strongly that I wanted to work in a flexible way. They [The Brand Union] felt that, given the nature of the Millennium identity project I was working on (the New Millennium Experience Company identity for the Dome), flexibility was not an option,’ she says. Her departure was amicable on both sides.

‘Pregnancy made me really focus on the need for flexibility and I wasn’t prepared to compromise on that,’ she adds.

Anderson works largely on-line from home and pays regular visits to the office. She praises Wagstaffs for creating a flexible working arrangement which ‘didn’t seem to be an issue’. She plans to continue her flexible working after her child’s birth.