if you have a good flexible / family friendly employer, who do you work for?

[burpies]

Just want to know which employers are actually flexible? My current employer has the family friendly policy / flexible working on its job page but in reality they're not. When I got the job I asked if I could work 8-4 and got a straight no!

It's got me thinking which employers actually are and aren't just giving lip service.

Is the NHS? Local authority? Private sector?

I work for one of the big name engineering consultancies. They're great to work for.

@SweetPetrichor

I work for one of the big name engineering consultancies. They're great to work for.

That’s interesting.

When I left engineering consultancy (ins then obs) 16 years ago, flexible working was starting anytime before 8.30 and finishing anytime after 5, and no one was bothered if you didn’t take all your leave.

I worked in the NHS for 18 years some were very flexible others were not - I think dependent on the management.

I work for a University. I agree with those who say it's often down to the department or individual managers. I work in research so need to be able to work flexibly (experiments don't always finish when they should) and in return my line manager is flexible with me. This way of working works well with the team and there's usually someone around to deal with problems from 7am until 7pm.

We did have a new admin team leader start who insisted the admin staff worked 9-5. It went down really badly and there was a complete revolt when the team leader started picking and choosing their hours.

Large children’s charity. Imperfect in many ways but an excellent job whilst raising young kids.

Large utilities.
Very good. We were actually given two weeks additional paid discretionary leave if required during lockdown for things like childcare.

Additionally, in practice it's flexible for all parents, so fathers' update of shared parental leave is increasing, and it's common for all parents, not just mothers, to have some form of flexible working in place. It's nice. It feels like I don't have a beacon to my head saying"slacker" because I work compressed hours and have to take time off at short notice. And it really pays off for the company, as every digs deep when required, as the flexibility works both ways.

Civil service. When I returned after maternity leave I could choose exactly what hours and days I wanted and this was 20 years ago! I’ve also been working from home twice a week for well over a decade. They were ahead of their time for flexibility and family friendly hours.

Civil service are recruiting thousands of staff (especially at EO grade which for DWP is 27.5 k)

Other departments are available… they are recruiting at higher grades but not in such vast numbers.

I have worked in several independent, family run pharmacies and found them to be very accommodating. When I worked for a large corporate insurance firm there was no flexibility, no compassion, nothing.

I’m a secondary teacher and there is pretty much no flexibility at all during term time. You end up missing loads. I was allowed to go part time (suited school as they were asking for voluntary redundancies at the time). I work 3 days, but I don’t get any say in what those days are and in the past I’ve had to split my hours over 4 days too.

Civil service here. Absolutely love my job and good benefits but lower pay.... however my job is perfect for me.

NHS has been fab for me. My job was supposed to be 9-5 but I asked to reduce the hours by roughly a third and it wasn’t an issue. Never had a problem getting time off for school concerts/ sports days and no eye rolling if I get called away if one of them isn’t well.
However, I think a lot of it will depend on your line manager and rest of the team. My role had been vacant for 3 years so think they were just delighted to finally have someone in post they’d have agreed to most things!