Dec 10, 2020
Melanie Belitza is the Head of Technical Documentation and Training at an international systems mobility company where she has had a successful career since graduating with a B.Sc. in Industrial Engineering 9 years ago.
Starting this year, she has been leading her team on a part-time basis (4 days a week) and on the fifth day she is following her passion for life-long learning through exploration of concepts about the future of work and networking. She has been documenting her experiences of this innovative work concept in her German language blog.
Her own practical experience and research of the many different perspectives of working part-time has led her to creating a “Blog Parade about part time work”, a German language social media initiative where nearly 20 professionals shared their own experience and reasons for alternative and flexible work models.
To increase the visibility and awareness of this important aspect of the future of work, Melanie is starting a weekly mini-interview series with the blog parade authors to learn more details about their decision-making process and diverse work models.
In this podcast episode, Melanie discusses more details about her life and work model, how she prepared her team for her working part time and her experiences during this journey. She also talks about the blog parade and the content of the articles, where for example the balance of work and family was mentioned. Additionally, she gives recommendations on how to start the discussion about part-time work with an employer and explains why it has many advantages for organizations to offer part-time and other flexible work models.
Connect with Melanie:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/melanie-belitza
https://twitter.com/BXsuitcase
What we talked about:
6:30 Overview of Melanie's career
8:02 Why did she decide to start working part-time?
9:19 How did she coordinate her working model with her team?
10:17 Melanie's experience of having worked 4 day work weeks during the past 10 months
15:09 Why did Melanie create the German speaking "Blog Parade: Teilzeit" (social media initiative for people to write about their part-time/ flexible work models)?
17:27 What were the main reasons why blog parade participants started working part-time/ more flexibly?
26:59 How do you talk with your manager about potentially wanting to work part-time/ more flexibly?
How to connect with Karin Tischler, producer and podcast host of "Job Sharing and Beyond", and founder of Emily's Path Consulting (EPC):
Website: https://emilyspath.ca/
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LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/karin-tischler/
Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/jobsharingandbeyond/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/JobsharingByond
Twitter: https://twitter.com/karin_tischler
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/karintischlerbc/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/emilyspathca/?viewAsMember=true