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

Flexible hours so I can pick up from school once a week but still work full time. Really valuable to just see their teachers regularly.

I am covered at work so that I can see Christmas concerts and sports days :)

My employer are massively supportive! They allow carers leave days, sick days, and they are all family orientated with their staff.
They even have a huge staff fair each year for all the staff and their families which is completely free!

I'd love to have something positive to say. I just had to leave my job as I was being treated so terribly. They were convinced that I was looking to go on mat leave again so dead ended my project.

There needs to be better protection against women being stonewalled at work.

Im self employed, but in the past my best support was from a part time job I worked at in the evenings whilst at University, who allowed me to transfer temporarily onto a zero hours contract to give me the summer off to travel, whilst not losing my job or bonus. They returned me to my contracted hours on return.

flexible working, maternity and paternity leave, an evening creche,

Expecting at the moment and work in an environment which presents potential risk. Very robust and continuous risk assessment practices. I'm lucky to work with a great team too, who as individuals are very conscientious about what I can/can't should/shouldn't do.

I love my employer. I moved to part time after DC2, then stepped back to another role (created for me) to work part time, term time only when DC1 started school.

Now all DC in school, I have upped my hours but within school day and still term time only. I have flexibility to work from home and can make up hours if I want to go to nativity play or similar.

However, know I am lucky in that this is possible in my area of the business. Many colleagues can't have the same flexibility and do struggle. However, they are very sympathetic to emergencies etc, I feel like I work for humans, not robots.

I went into premature labour at 25 weeks gestation, and i can honestly say both my work place and my partners work place were excellent. My work place not only paid me full pay up to my due date (then maternity pay started) but also organised a collection and gave us £600!, whilst my partner had 6 weeks off work at full pay (I had a C section so needed the help), but returned part time at full pay until our little one came out of of hospital (100 days). we are soo thankful, as with out all the financial help above we would not have been able to cover all our costs of going back and forward to the hospital!
I return back to work in February and hope that my work place will be just as understanding as they were to begin with.

Ive been given flexible hours to suit me and can do the work on the days that work bst for me, i am very lucky in the job i have.

I've reduced my hours after each maternity leave, and don't get too much hassle for missing work due to the seven billion illnesses my kids seem to have. I have access to subsidised childcare and get time off in holidays, usually.

The flipside is that I'm not offered any training or development and my new job description is a lot more junior than previously.

I work in a hospital so i work long days 7am til 7.30pm and i have a One and Four year old, my employer has giving me every wednesday off as my son finishes pre school at 11.30 and i only do 2 and a half shifts instead of 4 and im excluded from night shifts as my partner works at nights, when my son was at nursery my manager gave me set days off that i had asked for, i book annual leave for holidays, but i also have a brilliant support network within my family

I work in an office for an international business, and they've been fantastic at allowing me to change my working hours after returning from maternity leave. We also have the technology in place that I can work from home on my own computer via remote connection, so if my daughter has been ill and unable to attend nursery I can easily work from home and work around her, catching up when she's asleep.

Generous maternity and paternity policy. Flexible working requests are dealt with promptly.

Although I don't work any more, when I did my workplace was very child friendly. There were never any issues about booking time off to see plays, attend appts with DC etc. In fact it was actively accommodated by other staff members as we all helped each other out.

It was also fine for any of us to bring our children to work in the holidays etc. There was always someone to look after them if I was with a client and I looked after workmates children if they had to do the same.

I'm sure this wouldn't happen to that degree now.

My employers are fab: we get a paid amount of time off to look after our children when sick or childcare isn't available. Flexible working and they are so understanding about times when families need more support

When I go back to work after maternity leave I get to work flexibly for 12 months. That means being able to try working 3-4 days a weeks to see if we can afford it, without giving up my full time contract straight away.

My workplace allow me to work from home if any of the DC's are unwell. Its truly invaluable.

My husbands employer(and my ex employer) has flexible working hours. They also allow a system whereby pay is stretched over the entire year, allowing parents to take the full 6 weeks summer holidays off unpaid, but as the 6 weeks lost pay is spread out over 12 wage packets it's much more manageable.

Thanks for all the interesting comments.
Am pleased to say the winner of the Matalan vouchers is gabbybaby
Well done!