#52 – Evolving the 9-5 Workday through Parent-Friendly Co-Working

with Amanda Munday, Founder & CEO of The Workaround

Bonus Material: Download the Companion for this Episode

Amanda Munday is the founder and CEO of The Workaround, a parent-friendly workspace with high-quality child care located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. After attempting to balance hiring a marketing/sales team for the tech start-up she had previously been working at with raising two small children, she realized that there needed to be more support for parents in the workplace. Hence, in October 2018, The Workaround was born.

Along with founding The Workaround, Amanda is the author of Day Nine, a post-partum depression memoir published in April 2019. She has received international media coverage, including being named an inspirational speaker in Forbes Magazine, and she is a regular contributor to The Globe and Mail, where she covers topics such as parenting, purpose-driven business, and the necessary evolution of the normal 9-5 workday. She is also the co-author of the Parenting Playbook, a free resource for tech founders to support parents in the workplace. Amanda currently serves as President of the Board of Directors for Creative Preschool of East Toronto, and in 2019 she joined the Board of Directors for the Danforth Mosaic Business Improvement Area (BIA).

In this episode, Amanda goes in-depth on what it was like to be both a parent and a full-time employee, which is what inspired her to found The Workaround; her challenges in launching The Workaround, and how those led her to rethink certain aspects of her business; the cultural stigma of parents in the professional world, and how society needs to rethink the professional structure to accommodate accordingly; and her vision for 2020 for both herself and The Workaround.

Want more episodes on impact-driven companies looking to uplevel the day-to-day work routine? Listen to:

• #45 – Mission-Driven Success: How to Achieve Work/Life Balance and Better the World through Business with Madeleine Shaw, Co-Founder of Lunapads and Nestworks

• #50 – How to Create a Thriving Company Culture: From Purpose & Values to Shorter Workweeks with Becci Gould of Kin & Co

• #06 – Putting Your Employees First to Serve the Community Above and Beyond, With Allison Gibson

“We are parents, and we are professionals, and we have other parts of ourselves, too. Our life is not over because we’ve moved into parenting.” –Amanda Munday

CEO Amanda Munday (far right) with some of the Workaround team

Topics Discussed: 

• Amanda’s inspiration for and experience in launching The Workaround
• What the first year at The Workaround was like
• The cultural stigma of parents in the professional world, and how society should change in this regard
• Her challenges in parenthood while maintaining a great career

Links from the Episode:

• The Workaround on Instagram
• Amanda on LinkedIn, Twitter
• Day Nine by Amanda Munday
• The Parenting Playbook by Amanda Munday, Anna Mackenzie, and Nora Jenkins Townson
• The Toronto Star piece