MNHQ here: do well paid people get offered more family friendly working conditions than low paid people?

[RowanMumsnet]

...do those in senior roles get offered more flexibility than those in more junior jobs?

Do people working in the public sector get a better or worse family-friendly deal than people working in law and professional services?

'Why are you asking us, Rowan' I hear you cry

Well we DID ask you and today we're announcing the results.

We found that junior staff and those on low wages are offered less flexibility and fewer family-friendly benefits than well-paid staff in senior positions. However, in a surprising twist, CEOs, MDs, founders and other senior leaders fare worst of all when it comes to family-friendly working.

Here are some of the top lines...

CEOs, founders, MDs, chairpeople and senior leaders have the least family-friendly working conditions of all the job roles studied. (However, it's important to bear in mind that this category will include people running very tiny start-ups, as well as people running huge organisations.)

There’s a huge gulf between the quality of family-friendly conditions available to staff paid more than £25,000pa full-time equivalent (who tend do much better than average) and those available for staff paid less than £25,000pa FTE (who tend to do much worse than average).

The public sector offers the best overall family-friendly package to its staff – but employees in this sector are the most likely to report experiencing negative attitudes from colleagues over different working practices.

The ‘law and professional services’ category offers a package that’s considerably less family-friendly than the average.

Large companies and large corporations tend to offer the best family-friendly conditions, but small-to-medium sized enterprises (50-250 employees) offer a worse overall package than smaller companies (10-50 staff).

Staff working in customer-facing roles (retail, catering etc) tend to have the worst family-friendly offers of any job role aside from CEOs, founders and senior leaders - but junior and clerical workers also do quite badly compared with the average.

73% of respondents (of whom 99% are women) say having children has made it harder to progress in their career, and 64% say they feel less employable since having children.

You can read more about it (and also download a copy of the full report) here.

What do you think? Do the results accord with your experience?

Thanks
MNHQ

"The fact remains that those in the lower tiers of employment (and this is about promotion, not human-worth) have less autonomy and it's this autonomy which leads to family-friendly working conditions"

Agreed. You only have to read the threads on Christmas working which will start to appear on this board very soon.

And i think working carers who care for elderly relatives have it worse. You see it on threads here all the time.

The moral as ever is do as well as you can at school and encouraeg teenage girls into high paid work.

couldn't agree more

@RobotGoat yes it can be very flexible but it can also be very "cancel everything".

So for sure I can email my team and say I'm WFH because the boiler is broken, or I need a day at home as i've been traveling a lot, or whatever - but if I plan a WFH or I'm on holiday and something comes in that needs to be dealt with I have to put that ahead of my annual leave (to a certain degree)

Could it be that many badly paid jobs are also those which require shift work and sometimes 24/7 cover - where allowing A to choose which shifts to work will mean someone else has to take the other and probably unpopular shifts?

@Oldie2017

Why the need to say 'girls'?

Women (I assume that's what you meant) out earn men at every turn (except for child-bearing years). Teenage girls have out-performed teenage boys in every significant test in recent years.

Why turn this into a sex-vs-sex arguement when most feminists argue that those in the top roles are men.

""CEOs, founders, MDs, chairpeople and senior leaders have the least family-friendly working conditions of all the job roles studied."

Are you going to attempt to use a threadbare and illogical argument that toxic masculinity with men at the top, having family-unfriendly conditions, is keeping women down?

In my experience women returning from mat leave who move to full time roles that offer work from home 1-2 days a week see no pay or ‘promotion prospect’ differential compared to men. I don’t see why non-emergency services workplaces need everyone to be at the workplace 100 per cent of the time.

Being realistic, those at the top are going to get better perks because they are paid more and are therefore deemed more important to a company.

This at the bottom of the ladder will not be afforded flexibility because they are deemed disposable . If they don't like the working conditions, there will be plenty of others to fill their position.

That's just the way the cookie crumbles.

I thought this was fairly standard practise.

At the upper end of the job scale where you're trying to keep people because they have expertise/skill/clout/experience, you have flexibility. Also, the job generally involves people with expertise/skill/clout/experience so the environment involves treating people like adults who won't slack off if they're working from home (although this can obviously be abused.)

At the other end of the scale, with unskilled work, management know you are unskilled and replaceable, so they don't care how they treat you because if you walk, twenty other unskilled people will apply for the job and start the following day. They don't have to give you anything at all, and often, won't even give you the bare legal minimum.

Conclusion: unskilled work in this country sucks. Without any stability, any protection, a living wage or maybe even enough hours to earn something respectable, it is increasingly becoming impossible to live a functional adult life in unskilled work. While this is entirely fine for those able to become well-educated and/or skilled, and thus highly employable and desired by companies, it is bad news for everyone who cannot do this. And not everyone can.

What Cobweb said. Life is very hard if you are unskilled nowadays.

I wouldn't worry about the CEOs, I expect they have a choice. Money buys lots of flexibility!

Backoff, I was referring to teenagers as I hoped I made clear, making wise career choices. I would never call adult women "girls", not in a month of Sundays. So we are as one with that.

You just get so many people even now saying - ah the girl loves her art or fashion and their sons miraculously are picking careers which are really well paid. it's all about conditioning and sexism in the home at times, not all families of course.

Cobweb there was a story in the press back in Feb about a single parent who won the lottery.

Apparently she put some money in her mums bank account Her mum worked in a supermarket. Her mum went up to her supervisor and apparently said "im going to finish my shift but after that im done"

Oldie SOMEONE will always have to do the care work jobs. If not CEOS will have to quit work to care for Granny.

"You just get so many people even now saying - ah the girl loves her art or fashion and their sons miraculously are picking careers which are really well paid."

Except that you don't and this is nonsense.

Other than that, a fine point well made.

Great research, Rowan.

I'm not surprised. People at the very top tend to be very driven and workaholic and not that interested in working part time or flexibly or have to cover certain hours as otherwise the stuff doesn't get done.
People in low paid jobs can be seen as easily replaceable and so get offered less desirable and flexible hours unless zero hours contracts. They are also often in jobs where evenings and night times need covered like care home work.
One reason we struggle to find and retain care workers is that we don't pay and value people doing those jobs sufficiently.
Stuff like catering is never going to be family friendly if that means 9.30-4 as restaurants and hotels need folk on evenings and weekends. Jobs that can be done 9.30-4 are a small subsection of jobs.

Could it be that many badly paid jobs are also those which require shift work and sometimes 24/7 cover - where allowing A to choose which shifts to work will mean someone else has to take the other and probably unpopular shifts?

The hours are only one part of family friendly working conditions though. There's also the question of regularity and of warning in advance. There are jobs where unpopular shifts have to be covered, but that doesn't mean they have to be assigned irregularly and with little notice. Yet that is often what happens, and is one of the issues being raised here. It's one thing to have to do 6-2, quite another to only be told about this a couple of days in advance too late to sort childcare. A lot of shift conurbations, especially if you're in a city, can still be covered by childcare if you get enough warning.

I work in the management end of retail. I do earn under 25k but I am edging nearer to it. I'm trying very hard to get a good administrative skill set together now, in my mid 20s, so I can jump careers to something with slightly less life squashing hours, else I'll be very limited post mat-leave should I have children; either never see home or go back to the bottom on part hrs. This thread has just confirmed my hunches.
Also, FWIW I did well at school and worked exceptionally hard; I still do. Dyspraxia really took a toll on my performance and my confidence at uni, although I got an okay degree in a real subject from a respected university.

Dshathaway stick to your plan. I don't work in your sector but I know people who do and all that last minute changes in shifts, working unsociable hours and hardly having any time off together with their family makes me sad. Think of your transferable skills, you are young enough to jump now. Also look into civil service apprenticeships!

Jumping in.
backoffsunshine great name, but not going to heed your advice: it is the case that the CEO, COO, anything beginning with Chief- will be perceived as super flexible, as they are rarely seen, swan in at 10am when everyone else has punched in at 9 on the dot, and don't look like they are working very hard.
It used to bother me.
But your 9am punchers have the great luxury of punching out at 5. And not having to worry about work at all until 9am. And that's the marvellous thing about being what they now call an 'individual contributor' - you go home, and have your life to yourself.
Your CEO goes home. But then they have conference calls with Americans, who started work at 5pm UK time and don't finish until 1am. So there's your evening gone.
I don't fancy that much.

@FastWidow

I think you misunderstood my position.

Whilst I think there's flexitime built in to senior roles, I don't think the hours are reduced.

I'd say I'm a case in point. I don't directly report to anyone; I could work whatever hours I choose but I could be dropped with little notice if not performing my duties to some imaginary target.

Must go. I have to fly half way around the world. Most of the time will be taken up replying to emails.

It's window husband seemingly alive, if snoring contendedly. :)

Then we concur. If high flyers like yourself seem to have more flexible hours, it's a myth. They are much more accountable and accessible.

Apologies if I took your point sideways.

And turn the laptop off. Grab a break where you can. Not easy :(

Helena, I am more thna happy to let the care worker jobs be 100% be done by men actually. Perhaps we should ban all women from those roles just to start to get a nice bit of sexual equality going.

I'm not surprised by these findings at all (but as a pp said, sometimes it's good to have data rather than anecdote)

Many lower paid roles will be customer facing, which offers less potential for WFH / flexi / short notice leave etc, as there is a business operation that needs to be staffed. Managers generally have more flexibility because they don't have the same ties to being at their desk (or wherever)

I work in the public sector and at the time I had DS 16 years ago I was lucky to have the opportunity to have many family friendly benefits - working school hours with school holidays for example- although of course my pay was only pro rata for had hours I worked. If I was requesting the same changes in hours today though I wouldn't be so lucky as they are far less flexible now.

I've actually got far more flexibility now in the private sector than I ever did in the public sector. Far better pay too.

I worked for the NHS for 8 years - they were completely inflexible about start & finish times, you couldn't start & finish an hour early for appts/kids etc, annual leave had to be booked at least a month in advance etc. I worked in a lab btw, so clinic times etc were irrelevant.

I left last year, and now work in a materials lab for a global engineering company. I now earn 40% more than I did, can pick my start & finish times, compress hours if I want (I do a 4.5 day week now), can start & finish early if needed, can even build up time all week to take a whole afternoon off etc. I'm also treated like an adult, respected and listened to. Unsurprisingly, morale here is far, far better than in the NHS, & people are far more productive and loyal as a result.