A family friendly workplace is one that supports employees with families. This can include offering flexible work hours, telecommuting options, and paid leave for parents. It can also mean providing on-site daycare, as well as resources and support for working parents. In this blog post, we will discuss six ways that you can support your employees in a family friendly workplace.
Don't Forget About Dads And Fathers When Thinking About Family Friendly Workspaces
When we talk about family friendly workplaces, the conversation is generally biased towards supporting working women. Dads however are just as important.
While many workplaces are starting to offer more flexible work hours and telecommuting options, fathers are often left out of the conversation. This is because many fathers are the primary breadwinners for their families. As a result, they often have inflexible work hours and are unable to take advantage of these family friendly policies.
This can be frustrating for fathers who want to be more involved in their children's lives. If you want to support your employees who are fathers, try to create a more flexible workplace that accommodates their needs. You could also provide resources and support specifically for working dads.
Make Your Workplace Accessible For Parents With Young Children
Parents with young children often have a hard time balancing work and family life. This is because they need to find childcare that is both affordable and convenient. Additionally, parents with young children often have to take time off from work for doctor's appointments and school events.
If you want to support your employees who are parents of young children, you should try to make your workplace more accessible. This could include offering on-site daycare or providing resources and support for working parents. You should also consider implementing flexible work hours and telecommuting options.
Provide Resources And Support For Working Parents
Working parents often feel like they have to choose between their job and their family. This is because they need to find childcare that is both affordable and convenient. Additionally, working parents often have to take time off from work for doctor's appointments and school events.
If you want to support your employees who are working parents, you should try to provide resources and support. This could include offering on-site daycare or providing resources and support for working parents. You should also consider implementing flexible work hours and telecommuting options.
Offer Flexible Work Hours To Allow Employees To Balance Work And Family
A flexible workplace is one that is able to accommodate the needs of its employees. This can include offering flexible work hours, telecommuting options, and paid leave for parents. It can also mean providing on-site daycare, as well as resources and support for working parents.
If you want to support your employees in a family friendly workplace, you should consider offering flexible work hours. This will allow them to balance work and family life. You should also consider implementing telecommuting options and paid leave for parents.
Telecommuting Is Important To Allowing Parents The Flexibility To Take Care Of Families At Home While Working
Telecommuting became essential during the pandemic but many workspaces are now wanting to pull people back into the office. The flexibility of working from home though is a great way to allow parents to spend more time with their families and raise children more responsibly. This isn't about dividing time during the day between work and taking care of kids but instead, telecommuting allows people to reduce stress from commuting as well as recovering hours that would otherwise be lost and can now be spent with their family and being a great dad.
Allow Employees With Children To Bring Them Into The Workplace
Some workplaces are now starting to allow employees to bring their children into the workplace. This is a great way to support working parents, as it allows them to spend more time with their families. It also reduces stress from commuting and childcare.
If you want to support your employees in a family friendly workplace, you should consider allowing them to bring their children into the workplace. This will allow them to spend more time with their families and reduce stress from commuting and childcare. You should also consider implementing telecommuting options and paid leave for parents.
Catch Up Regularly
Now, I'm not for a minute suggesting that you should micromanage your team, as it will not result in any benefits at all and is likely to create much stress and resentment. However, completely leaving your team adrift without any catch-ups or support isn't a good idea either.
Instead, it is all about creating a balance and making sure that each employee feels supported not only with their work tasks but also their personal development and progress as well. Of course, the best way to do this is face to face, even if you usually work with productivity software or over zoom. Indeed, the personal touch can help ensure employees feel cared for and listened to, as long as it's not overused.
Set Achievable Goals
There is nothing more unsupportive in the workplace than asking your employees to do impossible things. That is why any goals you ask them to complete must follow the SMART pattern.
Of course, goals need to not only be achievable in a reasonable amount of time and with a reasonable amount of effort but also meaningful and relevant. With that in mind, where possible, automate dull and relative tasks and ask your workers to do more involved and complex work. Where this is not possible, contextualizing the task they have to do concerning their importance in the project as a whole can be helpful.
Promote Wellbeing
Employees are not robots, and shouldn’t be treated as such. This means that you need to make provision for their physical and mental well being while working for you. The good news is that there are many things you can do to achieve this, from encouraging a better work-life balance, to using health initiatives to get people moving more during the day.
You may even wish to send someone on a counselling or chaplain program so they can minister to the emotional and spiritual needs of their colleagues in the workplace. Thereby ensuring that your whole workforce has someone to turn to when things are tough for them.
Encourage Teamwork
Finally, to effectively support your employees in the workplace it makes sense to do everything you can to encourage team building and teamwork. After all, very few people work in isolation so the better they can relate to and get on with the other people in their teams the happier and more productive they will be.
Happily, there are several tactics you can use to promote better teamwork in the workplace. One of these is to run team building activities where people get to do fun cooperative tasks, and get to know each other better outside of the work environment.
Another is to ensure that team members have a nice space in which to spend their beaks together. Then they will be more likely to take these and this will lead to better bonding of their team.
