This week is National Work Life Week, and we thought we’d share some resources that can help both employees and employers work out ways to increase well-being at work and work-life balance.
Having caring responsibilities while working can really impact your experience and subsequent engagement at work so we thought we’d focus here. The charity, Working Families, has been working on their mission to remove the barriers that people with caring responsibilities face in the workplace. They provide free legal advice to parents and carers on their rights at work.
But they also help organisations to create flexible, high-performing workplaces. From an inclusion perspective, creating work life balance in the form of flexible working policies and practices can make a big difference. For example, do you have a manager that schedules weekly meetings at 8am, just around the time when you have to drop off your child at school? Something as small as the timing of a meeting can make or break the employee experience at work for those with caring responsibilities. By being mindful and accommodating with people’s need for flexibility to enable people to work effectively with their time, we can find ways to engage people and increase their well-being.
Working Families take a research-led approach, which means that organisations can get the very best advice based firmly on evidence-based methods. Did you know their research shows that over half of working parents agree that their organisation supports parents and people with caring responsibilities effectively (54%). Many working parents believe the pandemic has been beneficial to their organisation, with two fifths (41%) agreeing that the pandemic has had a positive impact on workplace culture at their organisation, and half (50%) saying open conversations about wellbeing and mental health are now more accepted.
However, others aren’t so lucky – almost two fifths (38%) report that those at their organisation who work the longest hours are most respected by senior leaders, more than one in five (22%) admit to hiding time off for childcare from their manager. And around a third (35%) agree that being a parent and having caring responsibilities holds them back from promotion at work, rising to 41% of women.
Here is a list of ideas of what organisations can do to improve their flexible working culture:
– Highlight some great examples of people working flexibly in your work place
– Put on a special event for staff like a workshop or webinar on topics around work life balance; or train line managers on how to manage flexible staff. Ask a senior manager to share their insights on how they balance their time.
– Offer some guidance to your employees about how to use digital devices to support flexibility over when and where they work, rather than as a way to work ‘around the clock’.
– Showcase your family friendly working policies and practices in staff newsletters and on your intranet and on the careers pages of your website, but also when you recruit new staff.
If you are an employee and you would like to get a better idea of what you are legally entitled to and what you can do to encourage your employer to offer flexible working policies, you can find a whole host of articles and links to more resources on this link
Changing a company culture to allow people to work flexibly to allow them to perform at their best is not easy, but hopefully the pandemic has made organisations more aware of the possibilities of change and ready to embrace it.
We always love a conversation around the topic of flexible working, how to best design hybrid working experiences and everything employee experience related! We would love to hear your thoughts on this topic!
#WorkLifeWeek
@Elin
