I sometimes have a picture of myself arriving at my desk at 6 am, cleanly launching into a day’s work, organized, focused and effective. Stopping at 12 am precisely and enjoying a relaxed lunch before spending another few hours tying up loose ends for the day, then leaving my office and going back early to spend time with my family, relaxed and with a sense of being ahead of the game and organised. Of course, it doesn’t quite work out like that! As a woman I am juggling my responsibilities as owner and director of a growing company with my role as a mother and the needs of a small baby.

In my vision of the Perfumery I see a happy, creative, thriving and enjoyable environment rather than just a job. If I am going to spend this much time on something then it has to be worthwhile. I wonder if this sense of creating an environment, a warm, colourful, human work world, is a woman’s way of running a business? I think that many women today have to manage career and family commitments on a daily basis, and so the lines between work and everyday life are less defined for us. Or perhaps it’s more true to say that having to reconcile these contradictions shapes the types of businesses that woman create to be more human, more complete.

For example, I have found that I am unwilling to hand the baby over to child carers before she is at least a year old. This means that the fantasy of lying on the bed taking a rest with a good book during baby nap times is just that: a fantasy. Every minute of nap time is used to respond to emails, speak to staff and plan new products. My office hours often start at 7 pm after Céleste is in bed. Pillow talk with my husband can be along the lines of ‘Where should the Soil Association logo go on the Rose Otto packaging?’ or ‘Did you order new jars?’ We’re never really sure when we’re at work and when we’re off, and if the weekend is only time I can get something done, then I work at the weekend.

It’s not ideal, but then it is maybe no less ideal than when one or both parents have to be absent from their children for 9 or 10 hours a day, and family time being reduced to a couple of hours in the evening when everyone is tired. During the day I carry Céleste around for hours as I go about the business, arranging displays, talking to staff, checking stocks and even reorganizing warehousing with her on one hip. When an urgent phonecall comes in or I have to mix oils or blend teas, Céleste is handed over to one of the staff, or my husband, to play with until that task is finished. Based on what we each have on our list that day, my husband and I agree who will look after her for which bits of the day. We laugh as she unstacks all the baskets in the Perfumery, makes friends with customers or is just plain cute. The pace of work may be slower but there’s a lot more humour.

Managing a small child and a business simultaneously reminds me that it’s important to know what one wants from life. I’m delighted that the Perfumery has been growing steadily over the last few years but I don’t want to end up running a factory. Yes it would be nice to pay off the overdraft and the bank loans but beyond that, what does one really need? What I have discovered over the last ten years is that it is very satisfying to do work that creates something which people appear to like and to value. Also to have work that is varied and flexible and in which one works with other people, like Yvonne, Christina and Peggy, in a spirit of support and cooperation. My husband often reminds me that nowadays he works twice as many hours for a third of the salary of his old job, but we both enjoy the work we do, in a way that we never did when we had what we now call ‘real jobs’.

I think the drive towards cheap goods and services is not healthy for humans. Yes, bigger companies with ever more streamlined processes may give us cheaper flights, and the buying power of massive chains may reduce the price of a pint of milk or a cabbage but they create soulless jobs where the employees have neither responsibility nor freedom for creativity. And a supermarket chain owned by institutional shareholders and hedge funds probably cares a lot less about you and your cabbage than the farmer selling his produce at a local market or the family run grocery store.

There is of course a need for big companies. Big organisations are necessary to create things like MRI scanners and passenger jets and electric cars. But I think we also need human-scale businesses, businesses where satisfying work is not sacrificed to profiteering, where there is room for real people to make real products. Our businesses and our work need to have room for babies and mothers, for human creativity and human error, and for laughter.

With our best wishes for the coming holiday season and 2011.