Tag: family leave

Creating a family friendly culture in the workplace

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How important are family friendly policies and benefits in organisational culture?

Is there a correlation between a high performing organisation and a family friendly workplace?

It seems obvious that the answer is yes…and yet, there are many organisations who put family friendly policies and benefits at the bottom of the pile.  Family friendly policies and benefits are known to increase retention, recruitment, morale and productivity.  Arguably, these policies and benefits come at a cost to the organisation, so do the benefits outweigh the costs?  It can be difficult to put a figure on this type of benefit and return on investment.

There is also the unseen or lesser known part of family friendly policies and benefits that organisations can adopt; these are related to family building options such as infertility treatment insurance coverage, adoption grants, sick leave (for miscarriage or medical treatments), flexible working and egg freezing.

Simply having these policies and benefits will certainly contribute to a family friendly culture…but there is something deeper than these – a family friendly organizational culture that builds on the policies nd benefits.

You may have heard the saying – “Culture eats strategy for breakfast”. This simply means that no matter how good the policies are they need to be supported by the organisation’s culture.

Going beyond the policies and benefits, leaders and staff need to develop the values and behaviours that make up the family-friendly culture:

Open Communication – on both work/life needs and institutional priorities.  Staff need to be able to freely communicate to their leaders and vice versa without incrimination or judgement. The ability to give 360 degree feedback freely about what works and what doesn’t contributes to this open communication environment.

Flexibility – at all levels of the organisation.  Creating an environment that makes it OK to ask for flexible working or time off by creating space to.  Believing that employees are less loyal or productive for asking for these creates will creates negative culture.

Commitment – recognition that a good work/life culture benefits everyone.

Fairness – fair doesn’t mean equal; leaders need to understand that one size doesn’t fit all, applying family friendly policies consistently is important.

These values can’t be written down in policy or given away as a benefit…they have to be enacted out by the people we work with every day and inspired by our leaders in our day to day lives.

What other values and behaviours do you think make up a family friendly culture that we can live by in our workplaces, including family building?

Do your leaders say they are family friendly but don’t live by the values they preach?

Maternity Pay (Or Lack Thereof) in the USA

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This morning I read an article by the Huffington Post that reported on a recent visit to the USA by a UN delegation of 3 female human rights experts.  Their purpose? To assess gender equality in the USA.  The three women visited Alabama, Texas and Oregon to evaluate a wide range of US policies and attitudes as well as school, health and prison systems.  Apparently, the delegates were “appalled by the lack of gender equality in America”.  Well, the UN didn’t really need to send a delegation to come to that conclusion.  Amongst many areas of inequality, lagging behind world-wide standards, the one area that shocks me the most is paid maternity leave (or lack thereof).  The US is one of three countries in the world that does not guarantee women paid maternity leave.  Yes my non-American friends, this is quite unbelievable.

I cannot imagine for you, after all the added stresses and financial burdens of infertility to then be forced to make a decision about whether or not you can afford to take the time off work or how long you can take off without your job being threatened.   Now, there are some great companies in the US who do pay a reasonable amount of paid maternity leave…but they are also probably the same companies who have great infertility insurance coverage.  The financial battle doesn’t end for the family once the baby is born!  Oh no….

By the way, I haven’t even got onto the subject of paternity leave either.

Here is a wonderful 15 minute TED talk  about how the US needs paid family leave.  It brought me to the brink of tears (but that is quite easy to do for me ;-)) and is quite compelling.

https://embed-ssl.ted.com/talks/jessica_shortall_how_america_fails_new_parents_and_their_babies.html

I myself am lucky that although I live and work in the US, my employer is international so it takes the ‘average’ of all the different countries’ maternity leave policies and agrees a reasonable amount of full time paid leave.  Although I am British, unfortunately I won’t be able to take advantage of our government’s new scheme that allows the parents to decide which parent will take the maternity leave, the mother or the father – it can also be shared if so desired!  So Chris will get his 3 days of paternity leave or whatever it is not even worth writing about, but that is all.  Guess it’s all down to me then (for a few months at least to begin with)!

 

But not all hope is lost for my future American parents of newborns, things are moving forward today, there is a push by Obama to create a federal law for a minimum of 6 weeks paid maternity leave.  If I ever get a chance to have a say or participate in any kind of advocacy for US maternity pay I will jump at the chance.  I hope you will too!