What's THE best thing an employer could offer working parents

[MrsNuckyThompson]

I've joined a task force at work and we're trying to come up with some 'blue sky' ideas around this topic. Obviously budget will be a consideration, but let's assume for now that it isn't - just trying to get a feel for what most people value. If you could design something pretty special to make working life easy for working parents (although with a particular focus on mothers to increase gender balance at work) what would you offer? Assume a decent maternity / paternity offering already. Could be things like:

• onsite creche
• guarantee of part time hours
• compressed working week available (ie 9 day fortnight)
• summer hours (half days on Fridays from May-September)
• emergency childcare provided
• reimbursement for cleaner at home

I think ideally it would be something which could make a splash like the recently announced 1 year paid paternity policy at Virgin. So, go wild!

PS : the benefits of flexi and remote go WAY, WAY beyond those with small kids
they make all employees happy.

My kids are late teens - but the fact that I can take holiday when I like and then log into the system from the balcony of my villa in the Med is what makes the organisation lean and mean.

we had an emergency item to handle at work
a text message out to all team members and it was shared and sorted at 6pm on a Friday with nobody leaving their homes
THAT is effective working.

Guaranteed part time or flexitime. The childcare stuff is great but plenty of working parents don't need to use it, and those who do won't necessarily be interested in a creche. They may have other preferred options. Cleaner just sounds a bit random, a lot of people don't like the idea of someone coming into their home. But probably just about everyone would like a bit of flexibility with their hours now and then. Even if they're happy enough with 9-5 every day normally, we all need to go to the dentist now and then so the ability to stay an hour late for a couple of days instead of having to take a full morning or afternoon off would be useful to everyone.

Whatever benefits you decide, they should be available to all employees, not just parents. Obviously non parents don't need childcare facilities but have plenty of other reasons to vary their hours etc.

I like the idea of a cleaner! The company could employ the cleaner, who could go round all the houses who want the service. Gets over the finding a suitable trustworthy person issue.

My dream employment benefit would be an on-site kennels facility. Employees bring their dogs to work and put them in the kennel and can walk them during breaks etc.

Actively promoting job shares.

Making staff redundant whilst refusing part time working requests is ludicrous.

No meetings outside of 10-4

No "networking" events in the early evening

Understanding that if you have a pre- school child in childcare then you have to be contactable.

Understanding that you have to pick up your child when they're sick and no you can't stay just until the end of the meeting.

Flexitime.

Term time only contract
Term time only nursery. I dont want to pay for nursery if im on holiday or at home with the older dc

Crystal good points. Also, realising that scheduling meetings / events during half term / Easter holidays means a lot of people may not be able to attend.

My workplace already has summer hours - it's hugely popular although becoming a bit of an issue now the whole world seem to have adopted it. Summer Hours on Friday PM in Australia is Friday early AM in the UK etc. It means Friday is a no go fr global meetings.

flexi time.

term time working. Most of my colleagues without school age children would rather stick pins in their eyes than holiday when schools are off, they go at other times.

able to work from home when kids are sick, even if it's just for half a day. mine are a doddle when they're poorly and not raising hell.

Ability to do the job wherever, whenever. So flexible approach to hours, location, necessary IT.

yy to flexi time to ALL staff. only manager get any flexibility in our office, all the full timers have to take leave when they have things crop up .

Ability to buy annual leave and flexi working including from home would be ideal for me

Annualised hours would make a huge difference to me. A swipe card to get in and out to record when you've worked rather than random emails to the clinical nurse manager requesting TOIL ( that you are never able to take as there are so few charge nurses available to cover your time off which is why you have time owed in the first place).

I don't work near home so on-site child wouldn't help but if you could arrange for my primary school to have drop offs at 7.30am and picks up between 5 & 6pm without charge for breakfast or homework club I would love that please

My employer is fantastic and I can work flexibly and at home. But what I would also like is easy access to childcare when they say I have to travel to a meeting. And emergency childcare when children are unwell. Add the ability to reduce hours in the summer holidays and things would be perfect.

Is this office based work?
Maybe 9:30-3:00 in office with working from home to make up hours
No hassel if employee has to take time off to look after unwell child, and can work from home instead.
If employers could look at school hour office working it would be a huge help to most parents, as wrap round child- care is not only expensive but in some areas non-existent. Let me know when you are recruiting !

If certain things cannot be available to everyone all the time (eg you cannot have everyone off at the same time) you have utterly transparent rules that are demonstrably applied fairly.

A (subsidised) link to a reputable emergency childcare agency.

Making a grant to a provider of holiday play schemes to secure priority access. Or starting your own (possibly getting together with other employers, like the pan-Whitehall scheme).

Ensuring that additional childcare if you have to work beyond your contracted hours are easily claimable expenses.

Avoiding key meetings starting before 9:30 or after finishing after 3:00.

Another vote for flexibility/ability to work from home, but I couldn't agree more with BerylStreep, this needs to be available for all and we have to help fathers as well as mothers.

A lot of initiatives to make the workplace more family-friendly are well meant, but only reinoforce the perception that women shoulder all caring responsibilities and need particular arrangements. Only when there is an equal "risk" that a man will ask to work part-time after the birth of their child, will we have reached some semblance of equality...

Flexible working hours for everyone whether they request/use this or not.

I have slightly flexible working hours. My childless/childfree colleague really resents it. She has started going on about all the 'parenting' she does - the guy she is dating has teenagers who occasionally sleep at her house. But she hasn't applied for anything flexible just bitches about my contract. Big boss is useless and does nothing about it.

Argh.

Also helpful:
Letting kids watch TV in empty meeting rooms.
Free car parking. On the days I do the school run it costs me to park as I can't cycle in in time.

Flexible working for all employees with core hours. Ability to be able to work from home some days, arranging meeting during school hours and maybe a play scheme during holidays. They're an absolute bugger to find.

If you want it to make a splash, get rid of working hours full stop. Measure people on outcomes, don't have official working hours - assuming this is practical, not possible in retail but would work in most consulting/corporate functions jobs for example.

Flexi time/location in jobs with self direction, office jobs and the like where the work is a process to be done within a time frame. Since the job can flex, it makes senses to let the employees sort themselves as needed, though I can see requiring them to post their plans in advance so others can work with and around them.

On the other hand:

Reliable schedules for jobs where workers must wait for the customer to call or walk in the door. Food service, retail, and other services. Medical care. These jobs cant really flex except in case of emergency, so being able to plan ahead for the rest of their daytime hours matters a lot.

Flexi time and the ability to work from home. And meetings can ONLY be during the core hours. I still fail to understand the bums-on-seats culture in most companies.

I wish retail employers would would stop the night shifts 5 nights a week and not even entertain flexible or part time working as in dps case. Or if you do work part time or at weekends at least have the option of having one weekend of in 3 for example.

Too many people assume that work just means office based jobs nine to five full time. Retail, catering, hospitality, those on shitty zeros hours contracts have no chance of being able to be flexible due to the nature of the business. For example I am on zero hours contract, I am a house keeper. I clean hotel rooms and have to stay until I finish, this means 2 pm or 4 pm. I am not allowed to go until those rooms are finished. This means I am late for picking the kids up from school and if dp is on nights we are stuffed.

So, I don't know what the op business is but based on my job I would say
No employer on zero hours (unless specifically requested)
one weekend of in 3 (our current system is unfair, I've worked every weekend since I've been there whilst others have had the weekends off because they have x y and z)
Being able to go and pick up sick kids from school without a fuss. It's difficult to phone in sick in the morning with sick kids because you are made to feel like shit, I don't plan on my kids being ill and not having any willing family to help.

YY to what pp have said - I think talking about working parents is in some ways the wrong conversation. The right conversation is talking about how flexible working and other benefits can apply to all staff.

Only offering flexible patterns and other benefits to parents is potentially very damaging to teams. It's hard enough being the member of staff who has to sprint out the door sometimes with no notice. I can remember what it was like before I had kids, it's hard to be entirely sympathetic when they just left, or phoned in ill, or got other perks. Of course now I see that you really don't have a choice and of course your child comes before anything else.

But you need to manage teams, or whole companies, and creating a division in working conditions and perks is not helpful.