Best family friendly practice in your workplace - what support do you get from your employer? Share your story and you could win £200 from Matalan NOW CLOSED

[AnnMumsnet]

As part of our Family Friendly programme we'd love to hear about how your workplace has helped you cope as a parent (or when you became a parent) or how your partners workplace supports parents - perhaps over the recent summer holidays or when your child started school? For example - are you allowed to work a different shift to cope with school pick up, or in the summer holidays, does your work place provide a crèche or support any days out via vouchers etc?

If your employer is not actively supportive, what could they do to make your working life as a parent just that little bit easier for you or your partner? How do you manage childcare in the holidays?

And if you're not in employment at the moment: what could an employer do to make them appeal to you as a family friendly employer?

We're delighted to welcome our 2015 Mumsnet Family Friendly members: Barclays, Pizza Express, Butlins, More Th>n, McDonald's, Unilever, Old Mutual and Matalan.

Share your thoughts on this thread and you will be entered into a prize draw where one MNer will win a £200 voucher to spend in Matalan .

thanks
MNHQ Family Friendly Team

Letting me work compressed hours over set days (rather than 5 randomly timed shifts a week - NHS ward nurse here) means I know what days I'm going to need childcare for rather than phone the nursery up and panic they've still got availabilty each time the new ward rota comes out. Plus doing compressed hours means DD only needs to go to nursery 2 days a week (which makes a huge difference as her nursery is £48 a day, so a huge saving on her going 5 days a week.

My employer doesn't really do much but I am extremely lucky that my colleagues (and me) will step in and cover/swap/come in early. Between us, we have created a very flexible workplace

We need more part time term time positions. Child care holiday costs just makes it so prohibitive to return to work.

More home working and flexibility to do some tasks in evenings would be helpful too!

My employer is fantastic. Flexi working - start times between 7-10 and finish 3-6:30 pm / 12:30 on Fridays. That's just standard. There are over 250 different part time working patterns you can request for numerous work/life balance reasons (not just children). Shut down between Christmas and new year. Special Paid leave at management discretion for time off for dependants (ill, child care cancelled etc). With management agreement and appropriate plans in place you can take unpaid leave for school holidays. Term time working options too.
Generous maternity and paternity packages that are over the legal minimum requirements.
It's a FTSE100 Manufacturing company and engineers and professional staff are often head-hunted so they need to have attractive employee benefits.

My work has been very flexible and it has been a major help. I have had the option to work at home on occasions which has been great and also flexibility and understanding in things like being able to attend my children's school events such as assemblies and sports days. My employer too the stance that as long as the work is done they weren't too worried about when it was done.

It really is a big perk that I sometime guess I take for granted and forget how difficult it would be if that wasn't an option.

I have a very small workplace and the boss is very understanding. I work part time, term time and although I have regular hours, there is always flexibility when I need it. If I need to start late for any reason or finish early, it's never a problem. I am trusted to work my hours and there is never any checking up on me. Although my kids are now 12 and 14, there is no pressure to change my hours to work year round, which suits me just fine for now. This works both ways as well - because of this, I'm happy to make arrangements if I need to be in a meeting which takes me over my usual hours, or takes place in the school holidays (within reason!).

Fantastic support form my employers - I'm able to start and finish early so DP does the morning drop off of DD at nursery and I can collect her at 4pm. They've also been wonderfully supportive of my needing to discretely take time off due to morning sickness and now with lots and lots of maternity appointments as I'm expecting twins. Maternity leave and pay itself is very good as well. I'm aware I'm really lucky in that as well as having a supportive employer in terms of corporate policies, my manager is also very understanding and supportive - pretty much as long as work is completed to a high standard and within deadlines she doesn't mind when or where it is done. This means I often log in late at night after DD has gone to bed to finish something up, so I never have to miss pick up time. :)

Flexi time is a godsend! I work Full Time in Higher Education and if it weren't for the flexi time then I would really struggle. It works well and I wish more employers offered this.

Both DH and I work for the same large technology company, and the company has a Flexible Working policy for all employees. What this means in practice does vary depending on the role you're in and the requirements of that job, but for pretty much everyone I know it means:

we can work from home unless we have face to face meetings;
lots of meetings are done on the phone so people don't need to commute to an office;
flexible hours - you're expected to be there most of the time, but if you decide to go to the gym in the middle of the afternoon that's fine;
you're expected to make up any hours you miss, but that's up to the individual to do and not particularly monitored (other than if people are clearly not working the hours expected).
we are measured on results, not presenteeism
we have a range of reduced hours options - part-time, compressed hours, annualised hours
we can buy(or sell) holiday - so I usually buy an extra week or 2.
we have a culture where it's perfectly acceptable for people on calls to say "I've got to drop off now as have a school run to do" - had this the other day with one of our male Execs.

What's strange is that many women perceive technology as an unattractive industry to work in..

I think it comes down to individual managers in my workplace. My current manager (who I've since returning from my last mat leave 5+ years ago!) is great (hence why I've stayed so long). Despite a demanding job, she is super flexible when I need any time off for appointments, she never expects me to take them out of holidays or unpaid personal leave. It helps that she has children herself. I've heard terrible stories from people with other managers in the same dept, who can't get time off for anything and they're really stuck when I child is unwell. From a benefits perspective, outside of the usual, childcare vouchers, etc, they also offer 15 sessions of paid emergency childcare, which can be used for pre booked holiday clubs (as well as emergency nannies etc.). This saved me loads of money in the summer holidays!

Not an employer but my college fund my DDs nursery so I can study. Although they don't tolerate lateness or unattendance but I agree with this. A crèche is definitely helpful for parents!

I also work in a school which is great for the holidays but rarely allows you time off for watching children's plays or assemblies. This is time you don't get back with your children and it would be nice if they were more family friendly.

I get to pick how many hours to work and then pick up more if needed. Other than that my job doesn't really allow for more come and go.

I'd love flexible hours. It would save so much on childcare. They can be flexible at times, but this is only for rare emergencies. I remember them telling me 'You can go, it's fine'. My son was in A&E - too right I was going to go!

The only positive think I can say about my current employers are that they seem to be understanding when my child is sick and I need time off. My last ones made me feel guilty and horrible when there was not much I could do.

I have had to take my children into work when there was an inset day I'd forgotten about and had no childcare. They were very nice about it and bought the kids some books, magazines and lots of biscuits.

I'd also love decent childcare to be more affordable.

Husband is in the military. They are very supportive of family life. Obviously there are periods when he has to be away but when he's home they get Friday afternoons off so baby doesn't need to be in childcare.

I can work flexi time -ie start early, leave early so am home for supper, bath, book, bed routine

I'm lucky in that my job is pretty flexible and I'm in control of my own hours, which means I can work round child illness etc. The flip side of that is that I work lots of evenings and weekends. I haven't yet had to deal with working out what to do during school holidays - the flexibility will only go so far....

school friendly hours would be great
termtime hours

i know this is almost impossible in some lines of work but it would be good

I've just come back to work after maternity leave and to be fair, my employer has been amazing. I took 10 months off and before I left, my HR department worked out how much I would earn over the course of my maternity leave and divided it by 10. It meant I had a wage every month and never had to go through the very lean months of no income. Now that I've returned to work, my employer makes a contribution towards my childcare costs which is amazing and they have been really supportive, allowing me to phase in over a month. This has allowed me to get my DS to settle into nursery slowly, taking a lot of the stress out of it.

I get extra maternity pay, more flexible working hours and childcare vouchers. Pretty good company to work for

My old workplace was amazing with maternity leave, coming back to work and flexible working. I honestly never has a problem. I came in later and left later when I was pregnant to avoid the rush hour and post baby on my return I started earlier and left earlier to fit in with childcare. I think they would have been fine if I wanted to go part time too. i've stopped work now with another new baby and won't be returning as it involved some travel which did make it hard but if I was looking to get back into work I think home working flexible hours would be the ultimate. On a slightly more realistic level, working school hours and term time hours only as a part time job would be great. It's all about fitting it around school for me.

I teach and unusally my head actively encourages us to attend events for our own DC if possible by covering our classes and rearranging ppa time. I think it is unusual in schools. I haven't been able to attend everything but I have been to a couple of nativities and sports afternoons and appreciate the gesture.

Where I work is not very family friendly. Rotas get changed at last minute, the worst bit about that is that you are not asked if you can do the altered hours, they just assume you can.

My reduced hours after maternity leave were agreed with no trouble and my work are great st knowing that I need to leave at 5pm on the dot to get to pick up on time! So if a call comes in at 4.50pm my colleagues normally volunteer to take it so I don't get caught on the phone and end up late.

My work is great-2 days in the office 3 half days from home. Covering school hols is hard so we use a lot of holiday clubs but at least I can swap my hours around and say do 3 long days then have 2days with DC. Flexibility works both ways so when we're busy I'll work evenings and weekends as required.

I joined my current workplace 2 years ago in an office based role and I am still in awe of the family support it gives. I have an 11 year old son, lost my dad last year and have an elderly mum with many chronic health problems including a low grade cancer and failing kidneys which means she has different hospital appointments every 6-8 weeks at 4 different departments.

As well as the usual company perks of childcare vouchers, family healthcare, compressed hours so we get Friday afternoons off, my manager always puts family first for every team member whether their dependants are children or elderly parents. I have found dealing with issues with my parents has been harder and less predictable than childcare for my son.

She allows us to have flexible hours for childcare or parents hospital appointments and trusts us 100% to balance our time whenever we want. If it makes the commute easier we can work with our laptop from our home or our parents home on these days. We can also regularly work from home during school holidays as we need to provide cover for each other. Any support/time off we have requested has always been prioritised as she just understands as she had elderly parents herself, and she trusts we won't ask for it if we don't really need it.