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!

Some of this is obviously pipe-dreaming for many businesses - you can't magic up a place for a creche where place there is none or car-parking where the office has no space.

Others have said that whatever you offer must be available to all - which is obviously right, if not you are breeding resentment and lawsuits - but it goes farther than that. If A who has no family responsibilities is on a part-time schedule which means not working on Friday afternoon, negotiated when there are enough staff to make that easy; then over time that changes and it becomes difficult; then B comes back from maternity leave and wants her Friday afternoon free because of childcare issues but that would leave not enough bums on seats and public-facing staff on duty - the answer must be No, with no pressure on A to start working Friday afternoons, whatever A is doing on those Friday afternoons, however trivial it may seem compared with childcare. Work/life,not work/family balance.

And that's not always easy and sometimes it will lead to resentment too.

Love some of the ideas here. Should say that the majority of employees are already given the chance to be very flexible already in terms of where and when they work in the sense that people dot around from office to office, and can work from home easily without it being a 'thing'. That's already open to most employees (other than those who need to be in a particular place - like our receptionists!). Everyone - even very junior employees have a laptop and mobile, and our remote access is great.

So that really helps a lot of people already and I see that actually maybe we shouldn't diminish how valuable that is.

I think someone voiced above the thing about ATTITUDE to part time or other flex arrangements. We already have a policy but it often seems that each individual manager will have their reason to say no to a request, and so it doesn't seem to happen in practice as often as it should.

No meetings outside core hours - no matter at which level of hierarchy!
Part-time / job share without losing all career opportunities

Treeceratops

meetings can ONLY be during the core hours

My line of work is the law. Meetings with counsel, which we snootily call conferences, or consultations if counsel is a QC, commonly take place in the evening because counsel is in court during the day. The better the counsel the more likely to be in court. You just have to suck that up - as do counsel, many of whom also have young children whom they would like to be home to feed, bathe, read a story to, put to bed, rather than discussing the business of your client with you.

What you suggest is not realistic.

I find that some companies expect you to be available 24/7, because they gave you a laptop and mobile. It should be clear that you will not be expected to be available all day just because you are working from home.

Flexi hours, seasonal shift work and onsite childcare

Definitely agree with the attitude to part time being key.

Flexi-time is the biggest life changer here. Dh is at work by 6.30am meaning he can pick up the dcs on his way home and we have a lot of family time in the evenings, which is amazing.

Sadly although his company profess to want to encourage working from home, dh is actively discouraged from doing so by his manager, so it doesn't happen.

I don't know if it's really relevant in this context, but moving the focus, from being seen to be present at a desk 9-5, to actual productivity. Whilst working part time I've felt judged for not being at work when I am not contracted to be in, despite the fact that I produced more in three days than many did in a week. It was demoralising.

Teem time only (or option to take extra holiday if required) - I find lots of employers offer school hour working part time jobs, but no consideration is given to how to cover school holidays

Childcare for when the child is sick would have made the biggest difference to dh's and my stress levels when we were both working. We already had very flexible jobs but there are times when you can't work from home (lectures to give).
On-site childcare that covers all the hours you are expected to work would be good too - our kids were in a campus nursery but it closed before the end of the teaching day and on bank holidays when the university was still open!

Andrewofgg I tend to disagree. These things ARE possible, assuming that everyone understands there must be exceptions to every rule. So from time to time it might be necessary to do an evening conference, but most of the time I'm sure diaries can be managed. I've never had a problem with scheduling conferences for more suitable hours and if they have to be in the evening, simply arranging them by phone.

I genuinely think our profession is so stuffy and stuck up its own backside. Lots of other professions manage to make flexibility and more parent-friendly arrangements work more often than not, so I don't understand why lawyers are so insistent that their work is so bloody important in not being possible flexibly! All our clients are working flexibly for heavens sake, so why can't we?

Andrewofgg
In my work I sometimes have to do evenings and away
but the point is that I am measured by what I achieve, rather than the number of hours my coat is on my chair.

If you have a day of paperwork reviewing that could just as well be done at home, are you expected to go in to the office?
If so why?

Flexible working makes sense in all professions.

Sadly its a lot harder in many jobs because if we walk into John Lewis we expect the staff to be there
but that comes down to the fact that employers do well to allow people to go part time, on the premise that they will be offered the extra shifts

and part time does not just mean mums,
it also means people nearing retirement who want to cut their hours
it means those not well enough to work full time

it also means those with other commitments (like local councillors or school governors or charity trustees)

Conferences with counsel can be problematic, but equally I worked for a legal charity/law centre type set up for a while that offered flexitime for everyone. Most staff didn't actually have kids, but we all enjoyed the core hours and TOIL setup. There's also the possibility that if a solicitor has to attend a conference with counsel at eg 6pm, they could be allowed to leave at 2.30 to do the school run and then return, if they like.

LadyStark's idea is also a brilliant one. Obviously there are lots of jobs, not just retail, where a specific number of people need to be in a specific place for a specific number of hours. Which is fair enough. There are also a great number of roles where this isn't the case at all. When I worked at a (different) legal charity, I was able to complete enough work to meet targets in a shorter period of time than most of my colleagues. Our day was 9 to 5, I could've managed to get most of it done by 3.30 unless I had appintments after that of course, and everyone else seemed to do 9-5.30 because there was a lot of pissing about. I resented the shit out of having to hang around an hour longer because everybody else was so disorganised.

Flexi time available to everyone, not just parents and financial incentives for those workers who are left without any option of flexitime because it's all been taken up by certain individuals

I'm a parent who has childcare and I have to forgo flexible working to accommodate another parent who hadn't got childcare. Don't I deserve something extra? I'm not a charity.

For me it would be three things. Reduced child care costs, through a staff discount in an onsite nursery. Emergency child care help. For example if GP's look after DC and they become ill then the company can help you find child care for the day. And a greater flexibility of working hours. So I can start work at 10am but work till 6 instead of 9-5. Or work 9am until 2pm, pop put to get the DC from school to leave with GP, DP, friends etc and then go back to work an hour later 4 till 7 for example.

I think there needs to be greater flexibility for individuals as not very family falls into a specific bracket.

MrsNuckyThompson

I genuinely think our profession is so stuffy and stuck up its own backside.

No dissent there! But Treeceratops put the word ONLY in caps which suggests a failure to accept that there have to be exceptions. As for phone conferences: they work when they work. Which is not always; face-to-face round the table often (in my experience; your mileage may differ) produces a spirit of harmony and cooperation which gets results which on-the-phone cannot match.

hiddenhome

If the parent with no childcare made a particular arrangement before you asked for yours and the two are incompatible - and sometimes they are - it's JTB. As it would be if the colleague ahead of you was not a parent at all but somebody with a life outside work and wanted a particular part of the week free for non-family reasons. Everyone's private life must be equally respected.

for me a creche to take my son would have been amazing before he was old enough for nursery/school.

Flexible working, over a week or fortnight

Working from home one or two days per week

(although with a particular focus on mothers to increase gender balance at work)

Increasing gender balance will be helped by flexible working for all, not just for mothers.

Id quite like a 30 hour week. 7.5 hours a day and Fridays (or another day off). 13 week holiday contracts would also work. Those with Kids take all the school holidays off and those without have to take term times off. Pay can be adjusted to hours.

You can’t force non parents to only take term time off. What if their partner is a teacher so are limited to school holidays for their own holidays?

No Spell99. You can't stop people without children having a holiday when the schools are off.

Some people without children have grandchildren or siblings' children. Or they want to holiday at some event which takes place in the school holidays - when single I once had to argue for a week's holiday in August to go to the Three Choirs Festival.

As others have said, flexi time is great but ours isn't really flexible enough to make a difference. Core hours mean that I can't leave til 3.30 which is too late for school pick up, and have to be in by 10, which tends to be too early to go to a school assembly or get there after a medical appointment.

Also the option to work term time or reduced hours in holidays but still have some annual leave to use in term time.

A policy that all managers deal sympathetically with childcare emergencies or requests for a few hours off for school events etc -this can often be inconsistent with different teams.

Subsidised childcare.

A good thing my work offers is a few days a year paid dependents leave for childcare emergencies.

Lots of good ideas suggested here!

A bit of a wildcard, but one thing I remember from my childhood is that my DDad's workplace used to run days/events for the children of employees. During certain days of the school holidays, DDad would take us in to work and drop us off at the nearby venue. DBro and I would have a fantastic time doing activities, watching a performance, etc, and then we'd travel home with DDad again afterwards.

I don't know whether it was free or subsidised. But having an option for subsidised holiday events arranged by the employer, making sure to actually cover full office hours (9:30am - 4pm does not help if you work 8:30am-5pm AND need to get to and from the venue), would make juggling/funding childcare for the holidays a lot easier!

Also, the company gets to demo their brand and indoctrinate the next generation.

I work flexibly. It's brilliant and makes such a difference. Free or heavily subsidised child care would be amazing as would an onsite nursery.

We also have flexible benefits including bring able to buy more annual leave - also very helpful.