Case Studies

Work Life Balance Case studies

Several of the SAT members have caring responsibilities. Here we give some
examples of how they manage to balance these responsibilities with work:

Michael Butler has two school age children and his wife is also in paid
employment. He does the school run most mornings and always tries to keep
evenings and weekends free to spend time with his family. He took two
weeks paternity leave after both children were born and takes occasional
leave on school closure days or if one of his children is ill.

Mark Weal has two children under the age of four. This has meant careful
selection of overseas conference trips and planning of meetings to enable him
to be home to help prepare dinner as much as possible. In order to balance
this, some evenings are given over to work once the children are in bed.

Other SAT members such as Mike Wald, Su White and Yvonne Howard have
grown up children and so have less caring responsibilities at the moment. In
the past they did combine work with taking care of children and their jobs has
allowed him some flexibility to share taking children to school or picking them
up or attending school functions or working from home if required by his
family’s needs (e.g. birth of children and illness etc.).

Camillia Zedan is a female postgraduate researcher within ECS. She is also
chair of the IEEE Southampton Student Branch and part of the university’s
rowing team. Doga Kuyucu, Trisha Poplawska, Anthony Brown are ECS
undergraduates and, on top of their studies, are actively involved in student
activities in ECS (ECSWomen and ECS Society).