How To Support Parents and Carers In The Workplace
School holidays can often pose additional challenges to parents and carers in the workplace that employers may overlook or not know how to best support.
We asked a range of working parents and carers to share their experiences, and advice on how to make workplaces more supportive and inclusive to employees with children.
Millions of children across the world are counting down to the school holidays, looking forward to the chance to escape the boredom of the classroom for several weeks. But for parents and carers, as fun as the concept of spending vacation time with their little ones can be, it can also be a taxing time in the workplace: if the pressures of jobs weren’t enough, juggling childcare with projects can be an additional layer of challenges that isn’t always adequately recognised by employers.
To get to understand more about how support parents and carers in the workplace, we turned to the people with the most expertise to help us: working parents and carers themselves!
Please note: These are the opinions of the people we spoke to, all of whom are working parents and shared their opinions with us. You may agree (or disagree) with some or all of this advice to employers - feel free to share in the comment section if your experience is different!
Be Flexible
An overwhelming theme that came across in our feedback was to promote flexible working. “Organisations should be built around good practice in flexible working” where possible in order to support all kinds of employees, but it is particularly important to parents, and especially during school holidays. Whether it is allowing parents to work flexible schedules, or work from home, providing as much flexibility as you can is particularly important for working parents and carers.
Our parents said:
“Track people's goals/output rather than time spent in an office. You'll get the best out of people when they have ownership about managing their time and calendar.”
“Be flexible but ambitious for your parent employees - flexible working doesn’t mean lack of ambition or contribution, just that child care priorities need to be considered alongside work.”
“Employers should ask employees what adaptations and flexible working will best support them to return to work in a way which is healthy for them and their family after each child and at regular intervals.”
“Be flexible and supportive with emergency or special events - whatever time is allowed will be returned multiple times over in gratitude and effort.”
Encourage Equality For All Parents
Working to support parents and carers is also a great opportunity to encourage equality and inclusion in other areas of your organisation. Often there is a compounding issue of supporting parents in the workplace and forms of discrimination such as gender inequality and LGBTQ+ discrimination. Being a supportive, inclusive workplace that offers supports parental leave and flexibility for families of all kinds, irrespective of gender or sexual orientation, will help your employees to feel fully supported in their roles and their personal lives.
Our parents said:
“Encourage men as much as women to take time off or adjust their working schedule to accommodate childcare.“
“Having to submit a formal request for flexible working or reduced hours feels like an adversarial process but it should be standard practice for both parents.”
Prevent Burnout
Being a parent can be tiring and difficult at the best of times, but balancing work alongside parenting responsibilities can be an extraordinary juggling act. Acknowledging that burnout is a potential problem, and doing what you can to help parents mitigate against that, a great way to be supportive as an employer. Given estimates in many countries across the world suggest near half of working-age adults have children*, it is also a recipe for a healthy, efficient workforce. Ensuring that you do your best to take the pressure off, and look out for working parents and carers who may be pushing themselves too hard, is a great way to protect your employees against burnout.
Our parents said:
“Making everyone work the exact same hours is a recipe for burnout and parents quitting the workplace to safeguard their mental health, but when they can work flexibly they can retain their careers.”
”I sometimes feel guilty when, for instance, I may have to leave early to pick my children up or bring an illness into the office I have caught from one of my children. But I always try and make the time back up.”
*calculated according to the US Census Bureau, Eurostat Fertility Statistics, Japan National Institute of Population and Social Security Research and National Bureau of Statistics of China
Think Like A Parent
For those of you who are parents or carers, this final point should be straightforward. But for those of you who aren’t, considering how it would feel to be a parent. Nearly everyone has had times in their life when they’ve had to juggle multiple personal and professional responsibilities - but parents are doing this every single day, and even more so during the school holidays!
One of our respondents said: “I've never felt any stigma for being a working parent. My boss and colleagues are empathetic due to a lot of them being parents themselves.” Anything you can do to be more understanding of and empathetic towards working parents and carers will help to foster a more inclusive workplace environment.
Our parents said:
“Employers and line managers who are parents already know this, but those who aren't should know that being a parent is the job, and the paid work is a side hustle. The children and childcare and logistics and medical/dental stuff is always always going to be the number one priority.”
“Parents know the paid job still has to be done, but any recognition at all from an employer that family is always going to come first will be repaid with more loyalty and bout yourself, and the employer is honest about the job, then you can see whether support is needed and how good of a fit you would be.”
Because many of these accounts were given anonymously, instead of paying for contributions, we donated £3 for each contribution to the The Race Equality Foundation and Working Families on behalf of the contributors. Please go and check out their websites for more information about the fabulous work they are doing.
Want to dive into some ideas on how to make your workplace more inclusive for everyone? Why not get in touch with us for a free consultation? We specialise in tailoring learning programmes to be practical, inclusive and unique, to really suit as many individuals as possible.
