Interesting article on the BBC today.
"Workplace policies have not kept up with the social changes in people's everyday lives," according to Maria Miller, Chair of the Commons Women and Equalities Committee.
Couldn't agree more... could you?
Interesting article on the BBC today.
"Workplace policies have not kept up with the social changes in people's everyday lives," according to Maria Miller, Chair of the Commons Women and Equalities Committee.
Couldn't agree more... could you?
Again, Meg, I'm not sure we need be that surprised. Changing legislation is one thing, changing attitudes is quite another. It is quite possible (if not almost certain) that the apparent lack of desire of male colleagues to participate in the early weeks of childhood is no more than the long-standing failure of society as a whole to assimilate men into that chaotic, emotional, life-changing, rewarding, frustrating, wonderful, and sometimes downright terrifying, time!
When a creature raised in captivity is released into the wild it often refuses to move from its cage, not from any desire to stay penned, but because it is bewildered and confused by to open field or sky before it.....
I remember well the lonely feeling of being the only man who turned up for anti-natal classes with his wife (a radical new option 39 years ago) and the thinly veiled hostility of some of the other women present (until it was mentioned that I was at the time also an Ambulanceman). Today the exception is more likely to be the partner who refuses.
Give male workers (and their employers) a while to get used to the idea of FW (four years so far) and ShPL being the norm' and we will catch up. :-)
There are also still (female) HR managers around who, in spite of FW being agreed by a company's operational managers, will block FW applications on the grounds that "the mother" should be taking time off to arrange child-care and a man being granted the right will "open the floodgates" of other applications.
So the whole issue of incorporation of both male-parental and wider FW rights remains a "work in progress" with a long way to go and a lot of learning to do!
P
Hi Julie,
A whole other thread perhaps but how do you increase the rights and flexibility of one group without affecting the work life balance of another?
This CIPD report from 2013 says...
If flexible working options are transparent and open to everyone in ways that make sense to the business, there will be less resentment about perceived favouritism for groups such as young parents with childcare responsibilities.
But yes... definitely something orgs needs to factor in... but tricky to forward plan. Particularly difficult for smaller businesses... although maybe a mindset change needed to see this issue as partly about managing flexible teams successfully?
Maybe something for the new Flexible Working Taskforce to consider (co-chaired by CIPD's Peter Cheese) which met for the first time last week.
That topic is in fact addressed by the memorandum covering the re-drafting of the legislation, as long as four years ago! Unusually, the legislators have actually included this document with the act to explain its purposes.
It's at:
www.legislation.gov.uk/.../contents
As can be seen, the recognition was that the earlier statute disproportionately "advantaged" women in their ability to apply, but in doing so created the further disadvantageous stereotype that they were disproportionately responsible for any disruption to employment caused by the needs of childcare. The new regulations intention being to remove the right to apply for FW from the "parental" (and implied sexual characteristic) forum altogether and to offer the right to anyone who wished to apply, such applications being affected by employers seeing the advantage of extending their organisational working hours, or re-focusing available productive effort onto the times when it is most needed.
(Which interfaces with the often-distorted debates regarding other forms of flexibility and the potential abuses related to them, e.g. zero-hours contracts).
The regulations thus permit an employer to effectively ignore parental status in organising the flexibility of their workforce, if other issues such as the availability of work at the newly proposed times, or skills profile of available workers, are of significance.
The suggestion that men (parents or not) choose not to take opportunities for FW on career grounds is thus invalid, should anyone have cared to read the memorandum and/or the core legislation in 2014, (good to know CIPD is about to do so) :-) since FW is not a "time out" but a "time-shift". Parental leave is of course a different matter but it must be suggested that although the argument may be true at this moment in time, it is under notice of redundancy, since if both parents could share the leave equally on equal terms (e.g. paid time off) then the career-disadvantage of the "time out" would also be equal.
The answer therefore seems to be for the legislation on FW to be accommodated as was intended (and stated as being so), without reference to sex, or parenthood, as a business advantage waiting to be taken (or debated), and for the remaining career disadvantages of taking time-out for child-rearing to be resolved.
In short: make the playing field as level on parental leave as it now is on FW.... and get the players..... ALL OF THEM..... to read the rule-book and play by it!
"...should anyone have cared to read the memorandum and/or the core legislation in 2014, (good to know CIPD is about to do so)"
Eh? I'm sure people here have read that, Peter! Please don't infer that from my comment about the Taskforce!
