How to become a family-friendly employer in 5 simple steps

A large number of the UK workforce are working parents. In fact, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS) 75% of mothers and 92% of fathers in the UK are employed.

Being a working parent presents multiple challenges. As well as childcare, looking after the household, managing finances, and helping with schoolwork, there’s precious little time for parents to focus on their own needs.

You may already provide benefits to encourage working parents to join your company, especially since doing so can be good for business.

Research suggests that family-friendly policies are linked to enhanced workforce productivity. One survey, carried out by Great Place to Work, found that companies investing in employees and their families “experience higher levels of innovation and reap significant competitive advantages in employer branding, retention and productivity”.

Read on for five steps you could take to reduce the burden on working parents and help them feel supported and valued.

1. Understand your legal responsibilities

Employers have a range of legal responsibilities to their staff. Knowing what these are is important, as is making sure that all staff who are eligible can benefit.

Legal responsibilities include:

• Maternity rights
• Paternity leave and pay
• Shared parental leave
• Adoption leave and pay
• Unpaid time off to look after your child
• Time off to attend antenatal appointments with your partner.

Of course, these rights apply in same-sex relationships as well as in opposite-sex relationships.

Also, once an employee has worked for you for 26 weeks or more, they have the right to request flexible working.

2. Increase flexibility

Covid and the ensuing restrictions turned many people’s working lives upside down and we’ve all learned lessons from the shift in working patterns. And, as an employer, you can support parents and benefit from changing with the times.

For example, by increasing flexibility of working hours, you could help parents better fit their work around the school run or retain or re-introduce an element of remote working to help parents juggle their commitments.

This could include offering to support working parents with split shift arrangements so they can finish early to collect their children and then log back on in the evening to complete their hours.

With the soaring cost of childcare, employers face a fierce battle for talent. So, it’s good business to make it as easy as possible for parents to continue working – whether that’s supporting part-time hours or adjusting the working day to help reduce childcare issues.

Another thing that’s proving popular with employees is the four-day working week, which can also help to increase quality family time for working parents.

3. Support childcare

With childcare often being one of the most significant expenses for working parents, offering support, or providing childcare for employees can significantly reduce the financial burden.

There are multiple ways you could do this, including:

• A workplace creche
• Childcare vouchers and/or subsidies
• Providing access to on-demand support.

Alternatively, you could partner with local nurseries, providing childcare close to an employee’s home or near to the workplace.

Discount portals can also help employees take advantage of reduced-price family outings to entertain children in the holidays or at weekends and ease financial pressures.

4. Provide perks that offer additional financial assistance

Remember to also flag perks that parents could be benefiting from. Making working parents aware of child tax credits and incorporating these incentives into your wider corporate benefits programme can make a significant difference to a family's financial situation.

Providing financial and mental wellness initiatives that help parents manage the additional demands on their time are also vital.

Offering private healthcare insurance can also provide peace of mind by helping families reduce time spent waiting for NHS treatment.

5. Extend healthcare provisions

You may already offer private medical insurance (PMI) to your employees, but you could consider making this benefit more family-friendly by extending it to include employees’ partners and children.

Private medical insurance can cover appointments, diagnostics and testing, treatment, dental care, eye care and more. Knowing that they can access high-quality care without having to wait to be seen by the NHS can provide your employees with peace of mind.

It also benefits businesses: providing PMI as a work perk can improve employee health and reduce time off.

The government is stepping up, slowly

In his spring Budget in March 2023, chancellor Jeremy Hunt promised childcare reforms that he hoped would "increase the availability of childcare, reduce costs and increase the number of parents able to use it”.

He announced that working families will have access to 30 hours of free childcare each week for children aged between nine months and four years.

Support will be phased in until every single eligible working parent of an under-five gets this support by September 2025. This is to be introduced in two phases:

• April 2024: 15 hours of free childcare for working parents of two-year-olds
• September 2024: 15 hours of free childcare for working parents of children aged nine months to three years.

Schools and local authorities will also be funded to increase wraparound care and so “tackle the barriers” caused by the current limited availability for parents of school-age children.

This is obviously good news for working parents but with full support not available until September 2025, you may want to take steps to ensure that your business is supporting parents with family-friendly benefits sooner!

Get in touch

If you’d like to consider the family-friendly work perks you could provide to working parents, please get in touch.

Email info@aspirafp.co.uk or call us on 0800 048 0150.

Please note

The information contained in this article is based on the opinion of Aspira and does not constitute financial advice or a recommendation to any investment or retirement strategy.

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