I started out in leisure 30 years ago worked hard with long hours and lots of cleaning, but loved the variety of the role of leisure assistant. I was fortunate in the amount of training opportunities available, from aqua instructor to cleaning supervisor training, pool plant courses and many others. Back then local authority leisure was a role for life so opportunities to progress were few and far between, this led me to make the decision to move onwards and upwards. As I progressed in my career being a CLOA member was never on my radar. I always knew about the organisation but it wasn’t (in my opinion at those times) for people like me, aspiring ambitious leaders who always wanted to learn more, it was for those who had already made it and knew everything!
In my 50th year I have been spending some time reflecting: Am I where I want to be or where I thought I would be and if not do I want to do anything about it?Twenty years ago these questions would have been directly and probably only linked to my work, but as I get older (it happens to us all) and supposedly wiser, work is still a very important part of my life…but only a part.
I have been fortunate to work on three continents with many cultures and in a wide range of venues and types of organisations including local authority, leisure trusts, higher education, private operators and even in the oil/gas industry. The variety of roles has varied across international sports events, opening major leisure venues and from being a contract manager to the other side, overseeing contracts for the local authority. I have been extremely fortunate to work with and be mentored by amazing people along the way and without doubt I wouldn’t be in the position I am now without fantastic people helping me and showing the way. I also want to stress that these people were not always my formal leaders/managers, I have learnt just as much from peers and other colleagues.
Around fifteen years ago I made the decision to stop my career and have little people. I had taken redundancy from a role so there was no real thought about what would happen workwise in the future, my focus was firmly on family life. Little people came along with all the chaos that brings with it, it is still continuing with teenagers and although wonderful boys, their tantrums are less cute!
Even as the children started to grow I never stopped keeping an eye on leisure opportunities just out of interest, to see who was where and doing what. My wife found that strange, a bit like my Rightmove addiction to looking at all the houses we couldn’t afford, unless we win the lottery.
Within this time, we moved over 200 miles away to the South coast, as the family settled and the children were moving on towards secondary education, I was becoming a little stir crazy and needed something more, something for me that wasn’t based around the family.
Over 15 years ago I had been to look at a large leisure facility as research into a new facility that I was involved with. The role to be the client officer working in local authority for this particular facility was now being advertised and only 20miles from where I now lived.
Even though I had been out of the industry for over 10 years by that point I was fortunate enough to be interviewed and get the job! To be clear the job is more than just being the client officer for an amazing facility, but this is certainly what the initial draw was for me. Fortunately, the interviewers saw past my career gap to all of the skills and experience I brought from previously working in the industry along with other skills in non-leisure roles and took the chance. I was very honest that I would always work to the best of my ability and work hard, but that family commitments would come first if I had to choose. Without an element of remote working I would not have been able to take this role and to me one of the biggest benefits of hybrid working is the ability to bring more homemakers/carers and people with other commitments back into the workforce.
In the past extremely qualified, knowledgeable people have had to make a choice between work and family. From discussions with people at the school gates this has been the case for so many and a real loss to businesses and industries across our countries. I think and hope we are on a better course now, but we need to continue to recognise that there are many reasons for gaps in people’s careers – it doesn’t remove prior experience and knowledge.
30 years ago, most women knew they had to choose between a family and their career. I had hoped that had changed, and my personal experience has been supportive. However, a recent study from The Gender Equality Index UK, of UK local authorities has revealed that there remains a significant gender pay gap in the sector Gender equality: first UK-wide index reveals no local authority has achieved full parity | King’s College London. Amongst recommendations for changes to national family inclusive initiatives and rights, it states the importance of women accessing professional networks. I could not agree more. Men have done this for years, and now it is understood why – we are better together.
Not long after starting my new role I was conscious that my network had shrunk significantly and also my industry knowledge needed to be rapidly brought back up to speed to enable me to do the best job possible. Thinking about where I could go from all of the organisations that are around for professionals in our industry CLOA seemed to be the right fit for me. So, I joined, paid my fees and started to attend some of the roundtables and sucked in as much information as I could from the ebulletins. After being a member for less than 2 years I saw a post asking for aspiring leaders to have a chat about joining the CLOA Executive Committee.
Being older, wiser and probably more confident generally than I was 20 odd years ago, I thought what I have got to lose, so attended an online session to chat with some of the current Executive and other interested CLOA members. Even at my age I was still in awe of the then Chair and the Vice-Chair during that conversation and their experience and accomplishments. But I realised that I also have experience, skills and knowledge that may be useful to others and that conversation helped cement that and showed that it was recognised by others. So, within a fairly short space of time I too was a member of the CLOA Executive. That was two years ago now and, in that time, my key roles on the Executive Committee have been as a member of the physical activity sub-group and also, I took on the role of CLOA representative on Sport England’s Moving Communities Board. This year I was asked to consider standing as a Vice Chair of the organisation. Again, many of those insecurities came to the fore, but through discussions with colleagues within and outside of CLOA I eventually decided to throw my hat into the ring and was successfully appointed at this year’s AGM.
I still don’t know everything as none of us do, but as an Executive team we all support each other to fulfil the roles in advocating for our members and what we as an organisation stand for, which is being an independent group who want the best for our communities. So here we are today, a Mum of two (that’s still my most important role) who took a long time away from paid work, back working in an industry that I love and being part of an organisation where people really want to make a difference. To me that’s one of the great things about CLOA, none of the Executive Committee are paid roles and the work we do is on top of our paid jobs, but each and every person is passionate about improving the end game. We know what a difference culture and leisure make for communities and we will continue to sing about it from the highest hill to all that will listen and sometimes even in the ears of those who don’t want to listen. One of CLOA’s clear values is #everyonecanlead and we can, young, old, vastly experienced or relatively new to the industry we all have our own skills, knowledge and perspectives which together form the backbone of our supportive peer-led professional network.
Moving forwards, we would like to encourage other aspiring leaders to put themselves forward and help ensure that the association continues to be reflective of a diverse range of experiences and draws on a wide pool of talent. If you are interested in joining the Executive Committee, you can find out more about the Roles & Responsibilities of Executive Members. Do also reach out for an informal chat to explore how you could play a leading role in CLOA’s work by emailing info@cloa.org.uk or reach out to me via my LinkedIn page.
Penny Greenwood-Pearsons CLOA Vice-Chair
