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!

I'd like to be able to buy additional annual leave - 25 days just isn't enough.

I'd also like to be allowed to work from home to look after a sick child. At the moment I have to use annual leave, but due to the nature of my job I can't just drop everything, so end up working anyway. This annoys me. A lot.

Flexi-time would be good too (I reckon I'd get an extra 15 days a year annual leave).

If I have to travel on a weekend, I'd like a bit of time back in lieu (e.g. the ability to leave an hour early to go to a school play/concert).

Some kind of holiday childcare provision. It is a nightmare finding this for children at the younger end of secondary school - especially for half terms.

Finally, if I'm going to have to work outside my contracted hours (this happens when I have meetings with China or the US), and therefore pay for extra childcare, I'd like this to be reimbursed. I don't see why I should have to pay. It is my responsibility to cover my normal working hours, but not any additional hours outside these.

It's not exactly innovative, but in terms of making life easier, I think flexi time would be the big one. And the ability to actually use it. Too many employers offer flexi time on paper, but actually use it as a way to get free overtime and don't actually let staff take any leave that they have built up.

The real secret is to get bosses on board with flexi and remote working

once they realise that email gets answered just as quickly from home, presenteeism drops away

I don't think presenteeism drops away, rather the nature of it changes. Instead of being expected to be physically in the office, employees are expected to be glued to their blackberries.

karma
My sister used to get that.
I persuaded her that the sky would not fall in if she waited an hour.
Then two. Then three.
Her boss had a few hissy fits but then learned to cope with the fact that all stuff gets read, but only the truly urgent is answered.

it comes down to training them

Make the flexible working available for non-parents too, and encourage them to take it up.

That way there is no resentment, and no reason for someone to favour a non-parent over a parent when it comes to hiring or promotion.

In order for this to work, you need to hire people you trust and have managers who can tell if someone is doing their work even if they are not physically in front of their eyes. Working from home has to be actually working.

TalkinPeace, personally I am very good at ignoring my blackberry. I check it but only respond if it's actually urgent. If it can wait until the morning, it does. But the reality is that this puts me at a disadvantage. I'm not seen to be working hard, which is just as important as to be actually working hard. And because of this a lot of interesting work passes me by just in case it may mean the odd late night. (Which btw I am willing to do just so long as it's genuinely required.)

Another thing I've noticed is that a lot of informal mentoring and networking takes place out of hours. It's when everyone else has gone home that you can have a quiet one on one chat with your boss. If you're the only two let in the office at 7pm, you may as well go and grab a drink. Grabbing a quick coffee at 7.30am you get the gossip from your colleague you haven't seen for a while. If you're using flexi time to work non standard hours this may be to your advantage. If you're using it to work from home, you lose out.

karmakameleon

That's exactly it. I miss the chats about what senior people really think, blue sky thinking that leads to being asked to do interesting and high profile work etc all because I'm not there after 6.30pm unless I've been asked and have arranged childcare.

I think the base of 15 hrs free child care would be great if it were for all year not just term time and for children of any age. It woukd make it a lot more feasable for people (predominantly women) to return to work after maternity leave. Eapecially if the return could be part time and or flexible. I think that would be achievable, help staff retention, you would benefit from a greater skill base and increase the no of women in the organisation.

Yeah, cultural change.

Also

True flexitime, ours is functionally useless because core hours are 10-4 so no use for school pick ups.

I read the seven day weekend (Ricardo Semler) about a decade ago. He has lots of staff friendly policies that I could see working well.

I'm a little rusty on it but the gist from memory was people write and business justify their own job description, parameters and salary. He also talks about the empowerment people receive from creating their own job title and how sometimes its the smaller things that give individuals a sense of value.

Its quite a big thing to think through and most people are quite conservative by nature but I could imagine it brings a whole new responsibility and ownership of role to a workplace.

If an employee could justify that theres a business case for them to work 2 office days and then 7pm - 1am other days and then fulfill that role they've shown the business needs and generate the work they've said they will then its a win - win.

If you want staff retention and people settle into the perfect flexible work schedule, devloped just for themself by themself, then they'll find it near impossible to move.

As this thread shows one persons flexi is different to anothers so why not have no standard contracts and let people write their own.

For me I worked in Engineering management and then moved into company data management in a job I loved then had a baby with complex needs. Now diagnosed Autistic. I'd love to work, my brain is slowly going to mush but realistically term time only after school drop offs with leave to get DS (and my youngest also complex needs, but less so) to appointments I can't really see being business justified.

I'm slightly torn - as both a parent and a manager. Whilst all of these flexible working options are great for the people wanting them, it can be really difficult to manage across a team. Whilst a lot of work can be done remotely, or out of core hours, if we have upset students in distress, for example, someone needs to be there to deal with them, which means not everyone can have these flexible hours. Also, at a certain level of seniority, it becomes unrealistic in a lot of cases, sadly.
Maybe I'm just envious as I don't get terribly flexible working, childcare, much working from home, etc!

Id love "anytime" working. My office is open 7.30am and closes 11pm every day of the year except Christmas Day. I currently work on a roster, so I am told what hours within that I work but I would love to be able to self roster and for it to be easy. What makes it hard is that the office has to be manned during those hours and there are only four of us.

If it were a bigger dept. I would love self rostering. I could easily work 7.30am-7.30pm a few days in a row just to bash the hours out. And im sure others would rather come in at 7.30pm til 11pm after theyve put their kids to bed or whatever.

Self-rostering sounds good in theory but in work which has to go on round the clock or other "unconventional" hours management has to be able to cover the least popular shifts and I doubt if it would work. The only fair way is to treat everyone's private life as equally important and allocate every sort of shift equally- then allow people to swap; but allow, not force, require, bully, pressure, or blackmail them. If A whose children are in the school play asks B who has no children to swap shifts and B says No it's No!

It the difference between those who can be flexible because they don't have family commitments and those who NEED to be flexible because they do. We must make sure they have equal opportunity... and this does not mean treating them the same.

I don't think Spell's suggestion goes far enough. I think preference for AL at any time of the year.

Some parents can't afford to go away in holidays and some need emergency leave, some can't afford to have holidays until they see last minute deals and then can't because a colleague without children "got there first" If we make it acceptable for families to take leave when they want, schools will less stuffy about children being taken out and the cost of holidays and holiday care will come down.

My wonderful employer offers these:

20 weeks fully paid maternity leave

20 weeks fully paid adoption leave for mums and dad's

If you return to work breastfeeding we have a pumping room with fridges.

If you return to work breastfeeding you can work 60% and be fully paid.

6 months parental leave per child (for Mums & dads) this can be taken anytime up to the child is 12 so for example you can use 1 month each August.

Flexi hours which means the offices empty at 12 on a Friday! There is also teleworking when you want.

2 hours off fully paid for each medical appointment for you or your child.

Means tested on site Crèches with priority for single parents

If your child is sick and you bring a doctors certificate you are then given the first day off for free (on full pay). On the second day you stay at home you only need to take 1/2 a day's holiday. Single parents are given 100% of the time off as long as it covered by a medical certificate.

If your child is hospitalized you are given the days off and fully paid

You can take a month off if a parent is very ill. This is paid at 50% of your salary.

We pay school fees to an international school which has an after school day care centre (which also runs in the holidays!). The child care centre is also means tested.

There is a daily shuttle from work to the school and back again at 5pm.

We are not in the UK!

One of my old bosses basically asked you what hours you wanted to work, there was a mixture of f/t and p/t.

I was young and single so worked long days Mon - Thu and had Friday afternoon off.

1 person chose term time working, another mornings only etc.

if we have upset students in distress, for example, someone needs to be there to deal with them, which means not everyone can have these flexible hours.

Rubbish, you make sure you have enough people in the office at all times, I worked in a hospital that did this (we had on call for emergencies), if patients were booked in we had enough staff in, if no one was booked in we had a min of 1 cath lab 'team' so one tech, 2 nurses, 1 radiographer.

OP have you considered 'on call' - ideal for people with older kids, you can take the time off in the school holidays but know you have to come in when needed, you are paid a small amount for being on call and wages when called in. I'm thinking a parent of early teens, where they are quite independent but you might not want to leave them all day.

OP

Think about not just parents but other people who might benefit, some people may want a day or half day for religious reasons, or because they shop for an elderly neighbor etc etc.

No Maurice people who can be flexible because they have no dependants are entitled to enjoy that flexibility for their own benefit, not bound to give it up to others. What you suggest would be grossly unfair and probably age-discrimination: possibly gender too. No employer can grade private lives in order of importance or worth.

Agree with Andrewoffgg on that one.

Also, on a personal level, I suspect having hours other than 9-5 mon to fri would work well for a lot of our clients; they don't neccessarily want to take an afternoon away from their businesses and would prefer early morning, evening or weekend meetings.

As a non-parent, I would love compressed working - doing five days over four. We do have it unofficially as you can work extra hours to build up toil.

The problem we have is that everyone wants Fridays off.

Expat how do they check if you are BFing on your return to work? Seems pretty unfair on those Mums who cant get to grips with BFing.

Oh gosh id happily work a Friday if it meant a quiet office.

I'd rather work on Friday and have Monday off.

Friday working is pretty useful if you're client facing. I always found it was a popular day for mine to request appointments, I think because it's the commonest day to have off for part timers. And even if you're full time, if you have to take time off to see a solicitor it kind of makes more sense for it to be Friday afternoon rather than, say, Wednesday morning.

I am also wondering how they police the breastfeeding thing. Sounds wide open to abuse. Speaking as a formula feeder, I'd probably lie so I could avail myself of it.

Onsite care for ill dependents complete with beds and nurse thereby enabling parents to come to work when chilren are sick and bring them with them knowing they'll be well looked after

Actually I wonder whether that sort of investment would balance out in terms of hours not lost to parents having to stay at home at short notice