Meet the entrepreneurs building an army of digital mums
Digital Mums wants to help small firms have better access to talent and tackle maternal employment all in one go.
Around 54,000 new mothers in Britain lose their jobs every year, according to an EHRC report from last year – nearly twice the number found in similar research back in 2005. It’s stats like that which partly prompted the 2014 launch of Digital Mums – a start-up aiming to help get mothers back into work while bridging the digital skills gaps for small businesses.
Nikki Cochrane and Kathryn Tyler train mums to become social media managers over six month courses, giving them the foundations to find flexible work afterwards. Cochrane says that so far ‘every mum that’s wanted to find work has done so’ after completing a programme.
The co-founders initially looked into setting up a PR business which would help small firms with digital skills (both having digital background themselves). ‘What we realised was that we couldn’t help them all,’ Cochrane explains. ‘We needed an army to help us. So we thought what does this person look like? The work can be done remotely, they’d need to be really good at nurturing communities, a good listener, stay calm in a crisis, and the more we thought about it the more we realised we’re describing a mum.’