What could your place of work do to better support working parents?

[Sleeplessem]

Pretty much as the title says :)

Lockdown has pretty much been universally challenging on numerous levels and it has certainly changed a way a lot of us work. For parents of all ages, it’s been a shakeup to say the least. Some people are able to work for home which means they’re there for dinner and bedtimes, maybe it even means reduced childcare costs. Then there are the challenges, school closures, childcare falling through due to covid, exams at home, self isolating the list goes on.

So my question for all parents, what could your workplace do to better support working parents? I’m not necessarily talking mat/ pay or pat pay here, but maybe even socially especially in wfh environments.

Love to hear what everyone thinks

TBF, my Team are great (and were before COVID). People are always willing to try and arrange meetings around times that are difficult for others, and willing to step in and take over things (like training) last minute if someone has an issue.
It is a culture though - because someone has done it for you (or you've seen the willingness of people to help others out), then you jump in to offer to help when you can as you know everyone else will too. However we are all senior managers and experienced staff on the Team so no-one is there to take the mick, and no-one would dream of trying to work without childcare in place, or have any sort of expected 'right' to constantly start work late / finish early / never work during school holiday time etc. The difficulty comes when there are staff who do try and take advantage, and forget the "give" in 'give and take'. There are so many threads on here where you see people are all about "their entitlement" or "their rights" and not willing to consider their colleagues or employers and use a little common sense.
Give and take has to work both ways.

Also, not just for parents. It should also be there for people looking after elderly relatives or other vulnerable adults.

What they could do better is to allow us to return our timesheets with what we actually work, and not do this ridiculous pretending that we don't work more than 6 hours without having a 30 min break, or we don't work between 7pm and 7am or we don't ever work on our non-working days. I spend a good 1/2 hour a week 'adjusting' my timesheet to pretend I fit into the named hours when it makes no difference to anyone if I choose to take two hours out one afternoon and work in the evening instead. (I know, a minor, but very irritating point). We used to be able to swap days easily if we worked PT (again, not an issue for my workload as we arrange our own diaries) but they've clamped down on this now and try to micro manage it, so they have now lost all the goodwill and flexibility I used to have to cover things for them on my NWD, as they are making it so difficult to then be able to take the day back.

Global role west coast US company, every single global meeting 5-7 pm!! I have understanding partner but when 3 nights out of 5 you don’t see your children it gets a bit much. Did not use to mind it too much as could be flexible with start times etc when in office but since Covid WFH has meant b2b meetings from 9-7 most days. Although WFH seems like a good plan in reality it just means working day stretches even longer and expectation that you are always available.

Honestly my work is fantastic. They don’t care when we work, just that we get the hours done and logged. We all have proper equipment for wfh. Everyone has been offered the option of reducing hours, and salary proportionally, during the pandemic if we need more flexibility and many have taken this option. It’s been so popular that the program is being extended indefinitely.

There is a culture of understanding that occasionally a young child makes a break away from a sahp or a nanny and interrupts or that an older child who doesn’t need care might need help with school work. We all have some sort of system in place for those super important meetings that can’t be interrupted, but the day to day calls that a kid sneaks into just get a laugh and a shooing out the door.

I really couldn’t ask for more. It’s good for my employer too. Despite some occasional stresses at work, I have no desire to look elsewhere for employment. I know that i have a great situation.

I benefit from a supportive working environment....but its largely due to my line manager and peers. It isn't really a result of anything the employing organisation has mandated. Eg there is no unequivocal right to flexible or part-time working (but many of us do).

We're mutually supportive, we understand that childcare fails happen to most parents and we understand our colleagues have family/caring commitments as well as work commitments.

We expect (and appreciate) commitment, efficiency, time-management, productivity, reliability, teamwork.
In return we trust each other to deliver those things, whether we are doing a school pick up at 3.30pm or managing children being off school etc.

We don't expect each other to be on call between 9-5pm and don't do presenteeism. We know we can support each other and do our jobs well without sitting at a computer 12 hours a day.

Many of us work 4 days a week (with a 20% pay cut, not compressed hours) but we're trusted to continue to deliver. And we do.

Many of us have stayed here for years, because of those things.

Nothing in the employee handbook has made these things happen. Its happened mainly because most of the senior managers in our dept are in the same boat.
In departments in our organisation where the senior staff are men with SAHWs, its very, very different.

Everywhere I have worked has been pretty good for people with children. When people are WFH they have always been able to say they can't make meetings at certain times due to school runs, even before COVID.

The one thing I can think of is for places to accept/promote compressed hours if people want them. When (fingers crossed) I have a baby, compressed full-time hours over 4 days would be my preference and it would work perfectly with the nature of my job. But my friend on mat leave mentioned she had never even considered that as an option, even though it would make way more sense financially for her, so she's going to check that out with her HR now.

Also, when I was young my dad's company used to have family fun days where they put on events for their employees and family. I know places aren't really like that now but I think it's a really nice way to show your employees you're supportive of their family life so I'd love to see something like that come back.

It’s really interesting! My company is a global well known company but It seems to vary hugely from department to department. Mine is really good! Very flexible and understanding, although it’s mainly middle, snr management and snr leadership in our department so I think that plays a huge role.

Organisation as a whole is pretty good, 6 months full mat pay is 40 weeks service or more and statutory if less.

I wonder if there is anything that can be done in work places in terms of self care for parents, i think we neglect ourselves sometimes, in an ideal world what do you think that could be done at work to promote self care? or what sort of self care at work do you think would be interesting or beneficial?

I’m going to be honest and say my company (one of the large banks) is absolutely amazing. Really supportive of us working flexibly, makes sure we take our leave allowance, no complaints when we’ve needed to work around home schooling, and if we work over our contracted hours for some reason, encourage us to take a morning or afternoon off (that goes for all not just parents of course). They also don’t mind if a child suddenly appears on a teams call!

The only thing I’m not happy with at the moment is being dictated to how and when I can use the office. My team are all over the place só being told I can only go in for collaborative work is bullshit - I’d have to travel hundreds of miles for that. Sometimes you actually want some adult company and an environment that’s not your spare room, especially when my daughter is being looked after by grandma at our house and keeps interrupting me.

They could allow condensed hours. They don’t because they “expect everyone to work over and above contracted hours anyway”.

Re self-care, I think that's a really great point, especially as for many parents work is the only time spent away from their children.

My work has an on-site free gym, and also sometimes has masseuses come in. We also have an employee assistance program that we can use for financial and legal advice etc etc. We have private healthcare as a benefit-in-kind we can opt into.