Sharing the domestic load
Our focus for this Season is ‘Fitting Life and Work Together’ and I'm delighted to welcome Dannii Portsmouth, Vice President of Human Resources at PepsiCo, as my guest. Today we’ll be talking about how she found working during the pandemic and ‘Sharing the domestic load’.
A big thank you to Karen Skidmore: Business, Life & Leadership for sponsoring our second season. Karen and her team are on a mission to put a stop to midlife burnout by helping women to create a new rhythm and flow to their professional lives and are offering you a free easy-to-follow Energy Tracker to help you see how your monthly cycle contributes to your productivity levels. Download your free tracker here.
About this episode
Our focus for this Season is ‘Fitting Life and Work Together’ and I’ll be talking to some incredible women about their careers, work, family and how they juggle everything life throws at us. I’m delighted to welcome Dannii Portsmouth as my guest today. Dannii is Vice President of Human Resources at PepsiCo and has held a variety of strategic leadership roles and led management teams throughout her career and is also about to embark on a new role in the States. Today we’ll be talking about how she found working during the pandemic and ‘Sharing the domestic load’.
Resources
Download your free Energy Tracker: www.karenskidmore.com/theconfidenceconversation
This free easy-to-follow resource from our sponsor, Karen Skidmore: Business, Life & Leadership, will help you to see how your monthly cycle, hormones and seasons all contribute to your productivity levels throughout the year.
Book: Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World
'5 balls of life' speech by Bryan Dyson: Read here
Episode transcript
Joy Burnford: Good morning Dannii and welcome to The Confidence Conversation.
Dannii Portsmouth: Thank you very much Joy. I'm excited to be here.
Joy Burnford: Yes, it's lovely to see you. The theme for season two is all about fitting life and work together. So I'd love to chat to you today about your career and family, how you've found the last 12 months and also I know you've got a new exciting move to the US approaching. So I thought we could talk a little bit about that and how you're going to manage fitting that in with your with your home life as well. And then we might look to the future and see what it looks like for women in the workplace.
Dannii Portsmouth: Sounds great.
Joy Burnford: So perhaps first, let's look at the last 12 months and working during the pandemic, which has been a bit crazy for all of us. How have you managed to fit life, family and your busy work life together?
Dannii Portsmouth: I think the summary is I've got better at it. So, our family, I live at home with my husband and our son who just turned eight in April. So at the beginning of the pandemic he was six and had his birthday locked down, and managed to have his next birthday at least with a small party. That was good. Right at the beginning, like everybody else, you know, Leo's school was closed, so he was here at home with us. Now Andrew and I are both fortunate enough to be able to work from home. And so we weren't needing to juggle that. However, my role requires a lot of attention to our Covid Task Force. And in the UK, we have a population of about 4,500 people, about 3,500 of those were not able to work from home. So I had to continue going to work every day, whether that was in a manufacturing site, or whether it was out in the field with our customers. And so my hours in the beginning were very long, facing into things I had no idea what I was doing with, for example, setting up safety controls, understanding the different requirements and guidelines coming out from the government, which seemed at one point to be updated every day. And at the same time my husband was working and Leo was here homeschooling. We were also very fortunate that Leo's school had already started a transition to teams, they're already setting the second half of the junior school up for that. So they were ready to go, which was fantastic and just very fortuitous. But convincing a six year old to sit on their bottom is very challenging. And I think the other thing is Leo is an only child. And so he is used to when we're at home with him, we're fair game, we're there for playing with. And you know, in the beginning, I was working maybe 16, 17 hour days. And so that wasn't really possible.
Joy Burnford: Yes, I mean, some people at least could sort of take a step back potentially from work. But if you're having to then step up as well, and juggle. I just basically stopped as much as I could working because I'm going to literally burn out if I have to keep doing this. And I guess a lot of women in particular have probably suffered.
Dannii Portsmouth: Yes, I think that's right. My job involves meetings pretty much all day and I'm very lucky that Andrew's job didn't so he did have a bit more flexibility to be with Leo, or at least try and do the work first thing in the morning, so that it was done and then Leo was free.
Joy Burnford: Mine did a lot of screen time, unfortunately, doing the whole feeling like a really rubbish mother.
Dannii Portsmouth: Yeah, that came with it. And I think what was great about that time, though, is that certainly in our HR team, we spent a lot of time together, talking about that. And so even though we had that guilt, we had it together. And I think that that was really important.
Joy Burnford: Do you think doing that whole working remotely, did it affect your confidence in any way? And how did you deal with that?
Dannii Portsmouth: I don't think it affected my confidence, it definitely affected my resilience. And that meant that I did things that surprised me. So I would be on a call and get very cross, very emotional. And I remember one particular meeting with our UK exec and being the only one that had the different view. And that leading to me having to turn my camera off because I got so upset. And I was like, well, I can't cry in front of these guys so had to turn my camera off. And I stayed angry, which is unlike me, for about eight hours. So even when my boss phoned me that night, I was so cross I couldn't even answer the phone. And that doesn't really happen in normal life. Like I'm normally much more able to let go of things or you know, shrug it off and that was very challenging. And I remember saying to my husband, I was sat in the kitchen and said how am I ever going to go back to work if I'm just going to be crying all the time? Like I couldn't just walk out of the meeting room. And you know, he's an engineer. So not really into these deeper, meaningful conversations that often but on this particular day, he was like, well, if you did feel like that, would it be the end of the world if you walked out the meeting room, probably not, as long as you're not stomping your feet as you go. And it just helped to kind of take that air out the bubble if you like, we laughed about. But I've had a few occasions like that. And I think just having experienced that myself has helped me recognise it in others. And I'm also very fortunate I work with some fantastic women, really, really fantastic women. And we have had, you know, some long chats together, some tears together, talking about how we really feel what's really going on. And that has helped.
Joy Burnford: Definitely, I think there's been a lot more of that hasn't there, the whole empathetic, and we talked about it last year, the whole empathetic leadership coming through as well, and people being much more empathetic about, you know, how people are feeling and being invited into people's houses and having that kind of possibility to have those conversations. I had a chat with a friend the other day, and she was saying, when she was growing up, she was always told that you can have it all as a young girl, or you can have it all, but not that she'd have to do it all. And I love this sort of quote. And, and I wonder, can you tell me a little bit about how you manage domestic responsibilities at home? Because I think this is something that challenges a lot of women, whether you're with a partner or not, you know, how do you split that whole mental load?
Dannii Portsmouth: It's such a good question. It's interesting you said, how do we split the mental load? Because I'm not sure we do split the mental load. I am very lucky. My husband is fantastic and does lots of things around the house. In fact, just before we started this recording, he arrived with a laundry basket of washing, folded, ready to be put away. I don't think there's that many husbands that are doing that. It's interesting, as my mum often says, you know, you're so lucky. So I am very fortunate, however, I find that the mental load is the challenging thing. And I have been known in this lockdown, to say to my husband, who said, just tell me what you need me to do. I was like, that's exactly the point, I want to be the one that receives the list. And then I can just do those things. And I think we're just wired having had many chats with friends about this, I think we're just wired differently. I think we're wired to do all the thinking. But that is the piece that's exhausting. And I remember when I had Leo, my mum saying to me never criticise anything, if the babygro goes on the wrong way, or the nappy is back to front, it doesn't matter, the baby will not die. And don't criticise, let it just be what it is. Because if you go around fixing everything, that is going to become your role. And I think that was pretty sound advice. I'm not always good at it. But it was pretty sound advice. And so we do a lot of talking about those things. I do a lot of talking. And he does a lot of silent nodding.
Joy Burnford: We had a chat last week, actually, because I had exactly that, you know, my head was just so full of stuff. And I just said to my husband, who's also called Andrew, I just can't fit anything else in my head, I'm literally about to explode, I had a headache as well. So physically, I had a headache. And I just thought, we've got to share this a bit more, because I just said I can't do this. And he manages all the football stuff for my daughter, beginning to end, and manages the whole process of that, which is brilliant. And I don't have to even think about that. And he then very kindly offered to pick up the food and is actually thinking about what food we need for the week, which is brilliant, because it's like, actually, that's one thing I can take off my list. And I think that for me, if there's any advice for any of our listeners, it's actually don't just delegate one bit of a job, try and collectively group something together that you can hand over, like you would at work.
Dannii Portsmouth: I actually went to a great talk on International Women's Day or around that time. And the lady was talking about having a set of cards that you write down all the jobs on. So the washing, but she says end to end, washing and putting away and all of that, the shopping, so on and so forth. And then there's, I don't know, you end up with 50 cards. So you split those. And so you have 25 cards each. And you can swap, you can swap cards, but you can't end up with more than 25 cards. So I might want to swap for example, putting the bins out with doing the weekly Ocado shop, right and then we switch the cards but we've all both got 25 which I thought was a fantastic, practical thing to do. We haven't actually done the whole 50 cards, but it did lead to a really good conversation around what are all the things and how do we split those. So we're also doing things that we like, because I quite like emptying the laundry bin like I have this weird sense of satisfaction when I see an empty laundry bin. I like putting it in the washing machine, I don't want to put it away! That was actually an example. We were like, we're not going to do end to end, I'll do that, make sure the piles are put in the washing machine, but I don't want to do that.
Joy Burnford: The cleaner puts my washing away for me because I'm just like, I really can't bear that.
Dannii Portsmouth: That's brilliant. That is a great idea. But a very practical, you know, this card idea, I think is a really practical way of thinking about how you split things.
Joy Burnford: Really good idea. I'm going to try that. Let's talk a little bit about your move to the US. So you just explained to me that you've got a job in California, and that your husband's actually going to take some time out and you know, be more of a house husband, tell me a bit about that, how that's going to work for you? Or how you hope it's going to work for you.
Dannii Portsmouth: Yes, so we've been very fortunate to be offered the opportunity to go to California. And we're moving there in five weeks, five weeks today, in fact. So I've lived abroad before, but it was before I was a mother. So obviously, quite different. And we've talked about this concept of would we go on that kind of adventure. And when it came up, it was, I can tell you, it was the first week of December, dark and raining outside. And somebody phoned me and said, how do you feel about California? So you're like, Yes, we should, we should definitely do that, we'd be crazy not to. But it led to conversations about how we're going to do that. How is that really going to work when we're trying to integrate ourselves, but also integrate a small human into a whole new life moving him from one side of the world, almost to the other, it's an eight hour time difference in California. And what we've decided to do is, the assignment is three years, so the plan at the minute is Andrew takes those three years and doesn't work. Now, we'll see how that pans out. But definitely what we've agreed is the first year he won't work so that he can be there to make sure that Leo is at school when he needs to be, he can get to after school clubs, we don't have to think about the wraparound care. Because we're very fortunate here in that we live quite close to family. And we've got a really fantastic support network that came through the school. And we do a lot of well, pre Covid times, we did a lot of shared lifts and things like that. And so Andrew will move to become primary caregiver whilst I work. So that's the practical side, I can tell you already, I'm already worried about how I'm going to feel about that.
Joy Burnford: How does he feel about it?
Dannii Portsmouth: He's quite excited by it. I think what he's excited about is the golfing. So in his head, he'll be off golfing when Leo's at school. And you know, there's a reality of, it might be a bit lonely. Are there other dads that he can hang out with? So those sort of things, those sorts of thoughts are now kind of bubbling to the surface. And for me, my thought bubbling to the surface is, you know, maybe my own worst enemy is, am I going to be okay with that? I'm going to hand the reins of all that childcare stuff properly to somebody else. And although I, you know, suffer with mental load and things like that, as we all do, I enjoy it. I enjoy being the one that puts Leo to bed every night, I enjoy being the one that is organised about what's coming in the week ahead, getting the bags ready. And all of those things, even if I protest every now and then. And I'm worried about that changing our relationship. So there's quite a lot of emotion as you can imagine in our house.
Joy Burnford: I can't wait to see how it unfolds and I'll talk to you again in a year's time and see how the whole move has gone. Really exciting. Brilliant. So let's talk a little bit about obviously, you're in HR, so it'd be great to chat a little bit about advice for our listeners from an HR perspective. As you know that one of the biggest challenges we've faced in the last year has been about blurred boundaries between personal and professional life. How have you managed that in terms of being able to switch off and maybe find things for yourself, when you're working at home, there's a lot that you just can't switch off. And I'd just love to know, from your perspective, how has that been for you? And what's your advice on how to manage that?
Dannii Portsmouth: Yes, as I said at the beginning, I got better at it over time. I think that the key thing here is boundaries. And I know it's true, not just in this last kind of crazy 12 to 18 months that we've had, but also in my life, when things are hitting breaking point is because I break the boundary, not somebody else. And what I found in the pandemic, it took me about five or six months getting to the exhaustion point before I realised, really is that those boundaries were even more important. And so we were very disciplined about having breaks in the day. So having that break at lunchtime so that we could play in the garden together, making sure that we had family dinner together. But I found myself, I've set my computer up, and we're fortunate enough to have a spare room. So I've set up my office in the spare bedroom upstairs. And I am ashamed a bit to say that I found that when he was in the bath instead of sitting in there with him chatting about his day, I was just, I'll do a few quick emails. And then I put him to bed and on the way downstairs, I'd just stop and do a few quick emails. And it just became untenable. Like I said, I was working crazy. I'm not sure I needed to, but I was just this constant on and the laptop was always there.
Joy Burnford: Is that because you felt guilty because you were taking time out during the day. You know, spending a bit more time with Leo, do you think?
Dannii Portsmouth: I think so. I mean, I hope that when we look back and once the dust settles that enduring memories will be a daily walk and treasure hunts and baking together. But in between all those photographs are moments of tearing my hair out, crying. And it just got to the point that I can't do this anymore. I cannot do this anymore. And actually, it coincided with an initiative in PepsiCo, which we can talk about. But what that got to is, we're going to have every single lunchtime that I take that 12-1, absolutely no meetings. Now, Leo went back to school as well, of course, at some point. But I kept that 12-1 just to take myself out for a walk, get some fresh air, or just be away from the screen. And I think that, you know, I was, I guess, like, most people, I was eating breakfast on meetings, I was eating lunch on meetings, at some point, leaving dinner outside the door, carrying on eating and my waistline wasn't loving it to be honest. So I think all of that to say, what I have learned, and my advice to other people is be clear on the boundaries, and you cannot pour from an empty cup, you cannot. In pre pandemic we would have been commuting, you don't need to use that time to work, you need to take that time to take care of yourself. So at some point, I was doing a walk around the block as my commute to work. I never walked to work, I mean, I live 60 miles away from work, right? So when I wasn't working, but I would use that time to just do a walk. At the end of the day, I close my laptop down. But I put it in a drawer, so I can't see it anymore. So it's not looking at me as I walked past from, you know, putting Leo to bed, and to whatever your setup is at home. I mean, some people would have, you know, a separate room that they can shut the door on, great. Even if you're still working at your kitchen table, I think closing your laptop and putting it away every day. It's just really helpful for it to be out of sight. And I think the other thing is contact, I mean, I spent a lot of time contacting, not just with my boss, but also with my team about what they need, because we all need different things. And I'm talking about it as a mother. But of course we've got the people in the workplace who are living by themselves during this time. And that was just as hard if not harder. I'm not sure I would have changed my chaos to kind of be by myself all that time. So talking about what we need. And we have that commitment in our HR leadership team, is we're not rescuing anyone. So it's for us to say I'm feeling x. And what I need is why. And when we hear what somebody needs, we do everything in our power to give it to them. And that's definitely been enabling for us.
Joy Burnford: I think you're right. I always talk about my tank of petrol, you know, you need to think about what you actually need to fill that tank up. When I was saying the other day to my husband, I said what I really, really need is one night away a month, I was like, I just want to escape for a bit away from everybody and the dog. Get away for one night, even just go and stay with my mum for a night, you know, just something that can just change the scene because I'm working at home, I'm doing all the domestic chores, and all that kind of stuff. And I just feel like I can't escape, especially, you know, during this lockdown times have been really hard. So, you know, something to think about, I haven't managed it yet. But it's nice to sort of have that goal. So I know we talked a little bit last year about PepsiCo changing meeting disciplines. And I'd love to hear how that went. So that was about how, obviously, people are on zoom all day. And this is more of an organisational thing. But I loved the idea that you tried to change the standard meetings from an hour to 45 minutes and then half an hour to 25 minutes. How did that work?
Dannii Portsmouth: We did. So we had a lot of feedback from teams that it was just, I mean, we have quite a big meeting culture anyway. And it got worse, because here's the thing with zoom, I mean, it's a good thing as well. But it's a double edged sword. You're not limited by the amount of seats in a meeting room. And we're quite an inclusive culture. So we were kind of inviting all sorts of people into meetings. And then once you invite you don't feel like you can say no. So you end up going to all these meetings running your day, you know, a day that might have been 9-5, 8-4, suddenly becomes 7-7. And actually, we were inspired by some work that our team in Spain had done, which was based on the book Deep Work, which is essentially about how do you restructure your day to do the things that are important, and not get distracted by the small, urgent things. And we agreed as a UK exec, if we're going to change things, we need to set the tone and we need to agree things that we know are going to be hard. But we've got to set the boundary. So we did five things. We said look, we're not going to have meetings outside of 9-5. So first thing. Second, 12-1 is protected time every single day so there's no meetings. It's up to people what they decide to do, and if in that time they want to find a colleague and chat that's up to them. But there won't be any meetings, that 12-1, and that has been our most popular one of the five. We don't hold meetings on a Wednesday morning. So Wednesday, 9-12, and then obviously with lunchtime, so 9-1 is meeting free time, we call it deep think time. And then we've really looked also at how do we structure our meetings and as you said the fourth element is the meeting length. So no, there's no more half an hour meetings, they are 25 minutes. Or if they're an hour long, they are 45 minutes. There should be 15 minutes so that every meeting finishes at least five minutes to the hour, so that it's time to get up, go and get a cup of tea or whatever it is you want to do. And then the fifth thing, which is also important is about being invited to the meeting. So we use POP, which is being clear on the path when you invite people, the purpose of the meeting, the outcomes you want, and the process you're going to take. So then people can look at that and say whether or not they can add value. And then being empowered then to say actually, I can add value to that, or, more frequently, there's no POP and declining the meeting. It's fair to say Joy, that a big change, it's a huge change for us. So when we did, we've done one, two, surveys now and the latest 94% of people like it, want to keep it, the thing that's easiest for people to implement, and that they enjoy is this 12-1 time. The thing that is difficult is changing the discipline around do we need the meeting in the first place, the POP piece and also having that Wednesday.
Joy Burnford: And I think having that POP piece just gives a code for talking about it, rather than having a difficult conversation which is great. It seems like it'd be a really sensible thing to do. Brilliant. It's been such an interesting conversation. I'd love it if you could just give our listeners perhaps one top tip for juggling everything life throws at us, what would that be for you?
Dannii Portsmouth: Oh, goodness me. I am, as you say juggling. I think of the juggler speech by Bryan Dyson. And for those that haven't heard it. It is, you know, we're constantly juggling balls. And if you name those balls, one would be health, one would be family, one would be work, one would be leisure time. And here's the thing, the work ball is rubber. So if you drop it, it bounces, it recovers. Health and family are glass balls. So if you drop them, if they don't break, they're still going to be damaged. So I would say my biggest tip, and I'm trying really hard to live by this, is to do everything I can to wrap those health and family balls in bubble wrap and to keep my eye on those more than the work ball because we can all bounce back workwise. We've seen so many stories where if we don't invest in our health we can't buy it back later, and same for family. So I would say hold your boundaries and look after those balls.
Joy Burnford: I love that and what a fantastic note to end on. Thank you so much, Dannii and all the best for your trip to California and look forward to hearing all about the journey as it unfolds.
Dannii Portsmouth: Thanks very much Joy.
Joy Burnford: My pleasure, thank you. And that’s it for this week. Thank you very much for listening and I’ll be back again soon with another Confidence Conversation. If you know anyone who might find this podcast useful, please do pass on the link and it would give me a real confidence boost if you could subscribe, rate and leave a written review (on Apple podcasts here or on Podchaser here). If you like what you’ve heard, sign up for updates where I’ll be sharing tips and notes from each episode and you can send in your ideas for future topics.
And remember you can download a free easy-to-follow Energy Tracker to help you see how your monthly cycle contributes to your productivity levels at www.karenskidmore.com/theconfidenceconversation.
Thank you, and until next time, goodbye.