Four Ways Businesses Can Become More Family Friendly

According to Bright Horizons Modern Families Index Report 2022, three quarters of respondents consider childcare before accepting a new job or promotion, with the need to fulfil childcare commitments being the most popular reason for wanting to work flexibly.

It also found that working parents with unsympathetic employers were 50% more likely to rate their stress at a level of 8-10 than the overall survey population.
These type of concerns are not just restricted to parents, with 75% of carers in employment worrying about continuing to juggle work and care and 600 carers a day leaving the workplace, according to Carers UK.

For employers of all sizes therefore, providing family-friendly and flexible working benefits is increasingly important in relation to a wide range of workplace issues, including recruitment, retention, progression and mental health and wellbeing.

This is not without its challenges however, which include the current economic climate, a lack of resource or budget to support this, or an absence of the necessary management skills.

So, what can businesses do to help overcome these challenges and respond to evolving employee expectations regarding balancing their home and workplace responsibilities? Kasia Bardyga is a People Specialist at Progeny has four ideas.


Engage with your workforce

With budgets under pressure, it’s really important that firms direct their effort to the most effective places by finding out what their people value. This can be achieved through employee surveys, one-to-one meetings, informal conversations, focus groups or team away days.

A good starting point would be to gain feedback on existing flexible and family-friendly policies, followed by questions on what people would like to see offered. Firms will then be able to identify gaps in existing practices and prioritise a plan for any enhancements in line with employee expectations.

Support flexibility

Remember that being flexible does not just apply to where (home, office or some alternative locations) and when (working days and hours) employees work, but also to how work duties can be performed (for example introducing dress code flexibility). Work is an activity, not a time or place.

With flexibility being increasingly expected as standard, roles should have options for flexibility built into them from day one and these options need to be promoted at the beginning of any recruitment process. It’s also important to link flexible and family-friendly working arrangements with the corporate equality, diversity and inclusion strategy, so that firms can understand how working patterns may impact the career progression of different demographics within their workforce.

Firms can additionally help employees to improve their work-life balance by reviewing their holiday allowance, introducing a wellbeing day or enhancing their leave of absence policy.

Family-friendly goes beyond parenthood

Families have evolved to become more varied and complex than those of previous generations, which makes it less obvious to identify who the primary caregiver is.

It’s important that employers understand that caregiving extends beyond parenthood, including an increasing number of people who are juggling work with elder care or looking after grandchildren, with one in five people aged 50 to 69 years classed as ‘informal’ carers.

Family-friendly benefits need to support this wider definition of family and offer these flexible and supportive benefits in a broader, multi-generational context, ensuring they are equally promoted to all staff.

Coach and train

Line managers need the right skills to lead flexible teams, so employers can help by ensuring they provide ongoing training and support. This can include guidance on managing different working arrangements, including part-time, flexi-time and job sharing, avoiding unconscious bias and performing job analysis to help find flexibility in every role.

Firms could also consider developing a family guide or toolkit for line managers to reference, so they are adequately equipped to support their parents and carers and help them to achieve work-life fit.

Supporting employees to balance their work and home lives can be challenging in a commercial environment. However, prioritising being a flexible and family-oriented organisation, so your employees can juggle all their responsibilities and have a good work-life balance, is increasingly key in the aim to become an employer of choice.