A dad-of-two left his job as a head chef to secure a better-paying role allowing him to spend much more time with his family.
Sam Blakley, 33, realised he needed a break from his frantic former job serving up plates at a prestigous race course, when he was forced to work over Christmas.
He told Express.co.uk: “I had to tell my daughters I was working on Christmas Day. The look on their faces said it all – I had to stop.”
A friend recommended he apply to become a telecoms engineer for Openreach and with his wife’s backing, he retrained for the new career.
18 months on, he is a chief engineer and loves the work-life balance of the new job. He said: “Not only do I make a better living, but I’ve reduced my working hours by more than 20 a week.
“I spend more time with my wife and kids, and feel relaxed when I’m with them. It’s made a huge difference to our lives.
“The job is great, too. I get to meet different people and the team is very supportive. Openreach also trained me up from scratch with an intensive course at the start of my apprenticeship.”
While working less hours, he has managed to maintain his wage as he now earns £32,800, up from his previous salary of £32,000.
Mr Blakley, from Portsmouth, worked for over a decade doing 70-hour work weeks, but then furlough gave him a taste of flexible family-focused lifestyle.
He explained: “Lockdown made me realise I was working myself into the ground and wasn’t spending any time with my family. I had a second child on the way and my wedding was round the corner. Something had to give.”
The food fan still uses his culinary skills to batch cook family meals on the weekend, including his unmatched Spaghetti Bolognese.
Asked for his advice to anyone thinking of switching jobs, he said: “Just do it. It was a tough decision, but if you don’t try something else, you’re never going to know.”
Openreach has launched a research project looking at the everyday lives of its engineers, called ‘With Every Fibre’.
Millions of homes were recently upgraded to better broadband speeds thanks to the Fibre to the Premises technology, which affects around 12.5 million homes and businesses.
FTTP offers much better download speeds than ageing copper cables, offering speeds of 900Mbps which is more than 10 times quicker than copper cables.
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