Family friendly regulation – yes please!
In his speech on 15th August, David Cameron said he wanted a ‘family test’ applied to all domestic policy: ‘If it hurts families, if it undermines commitment, if it tramples over the values that keeps people together, or stops families from being together, then we shouldn’t do it. More than that, we’ve got to get out there and make a positive difference to the way families work, the way people bring up their children…and we’ve got to be less sensitive to the charge that this is about interfering or nannying.’ Before and after the election, Cameron also promised to make Britain the most family friendly country in Europe. Work-life balance is one area where he could usefully make a real difference to families, helping them to work and to lift their children out of poverty.
Seven in ten mothers are in paid work and more than ever fathers want to play an active role in their children’s lives. Yet our society barely acknowledges this in the way we work and organise our public services. No surprise then that hardly any fathers are able to reduce their working hours and mothers are overrepresented in low-paid, part-time jobs that epitomise the gender pay gap. Why do parents tolerate this? And how can it be that so few employers offer ‘family-shaped’ jobs or allow parents the flexibility they need to be able to engage in paid work and still have family time? Far too often it is families that must make time for the demands of employers, rather than the other way round. Six in ten poor children has a working parent and in this low-paid working environment, conditions for parents are often the worst. If your child is sick, or you cannot change shifts, or when school holidays come – parents know there will be no flexibility and they are as likely to be dismissed as to have their requests taken seriously. As many as 30,000 women each year are still sacked or forced out of their jobs when pregnant.
Yet enormous progress has been made. Statutory Maternity leave has been extended to 12 months with 9 months paid (albeit mostly at a low level) – up from 16 weeks pay back in 1997. Paternity pay and leave has been introduced and extended to two weeks. We now have unpaid parental leave and time off for family emergencies and a right to request flexible working for parents of children under 17 or for parents of disabled children up to 18. We are not world leaders, but we have made substantial progress. The Government has recently been consulting on proposals to introduce the sharing of parental leave entitlements after the birth of a child between parents; retaining unpaid parental leave beyond a child’s first year and possibly extending it to fathers attending antenatal appointments and to parents with children over five. The consultation also proposes to extend the right to request flexible working to all employees, to carry forward annual leave foregone during sickness or parental leave absences and proposes further action around equal pay, including pay audits where there has been sex discrimination. The Government should be applauded for ensuring that, even in austere times, these issues are still on the agenda.
Yet each incremental improvement has been bitterly opposed – with some notable exceptions. Employer representatives have told us that work-life balance measures would break them and destroy jobs. This never happened. We were told that this ‘red tape’ would stifle enterprise and all should be left to voluntary arrangements as rare as hens teeth (again, with some notable exceptions). The thing that worked was regulation. Once on the statute book, work on family-friendly policies became commonplace in business. It became de rigeur for large companies to have Board-level representatives on diversity and work-life balance. In part, this reflected the tight labour market and the need to recruit and retain more women. But good regulation also prevented bad employers from cashing in on their ability to exploit. And a healthy workforce is an effective one, more able to contribute to the economic recovery and less likely to make demands on the NHS, by reducing family stress. So we shouldn’t harken to the calls to back track, even now.
And it is not just the workplace that needs to change. Despite the pioneering developments of the national childcare strategy, childcare costs are still too high and quality not always good enough for all parents to have peace of mind to participate in paid work. And the least well-developed part of the strategy has been extended schools and out of school childcare provision. You have to at least ask why, in the 21st century, we still have schools operating term times and hours that more closely reflect the requirements of rural harvesting than the needs of children or modern families. With local authority cuts biting, out of school childcare and holiday play schemes have been hit, leaving parents worried about the whereabouts of their children (or forced to resign from their jobs). The extended schools idea needs to be brought back on track and delivered if parents of school-aged children are to be able properly to combine work and family life.
Of course, there is a case for more generous financial support for employers to cover leave and pay entitlements and this is long overdue. And this is most acute for those in small to medium-sized businesses. Yet, as an employer myself, I have never understood what the problem is with work-life policies in general. I am happy to have people work flexible hours, job share, term-time, compressed hours and so on – and have been lucky enough to have employers who have let me do most of these myself. It is simply a question of good organisation and task management. So long as the work is delivered on time – does it matter when it happens? Sadly, there are still too many employers who simply refuse to accept that these practices should become normal in their work place and this is largely a cultural problem based on a macho culture of full-time, presenteeism. News flash – to date - what has worked, is regulation.
