Family Friendly Workplaces

An estimated 70% of mothers and 90% of fathers in Scotland are in paid employment. However, understanding of how to support employees through pregnancy, adoption, parenthood and caring is low - affecting businesses and families alike.

We know that if family-friendly working practices are ignored, gender inequality widens, discrimination is more likely, and skilled employees leave the workplace. So, we’ve been working since 2018 to learn from working families’ experiences, share good practice, and support employers to make simple changes.

Support to create a Family Friendly Workplace

To ensure success, staff wellbeing and retention, organisations need to understand women's, parents' and carers' experiences at work. The best way to implement Family Friendly Workplace practices is through working together with your team. Outside the Box can work with your management and staff teams to conduct a Family Friendly consultation, provide concrete next steps for implementation, and support your journey.

"Working with Outside the Box has been a positive experience. The staff teams enjoyed the workshop sessions and we got some simple but effective ideas to enhance our practices to support working parents particularly with babies and young children."

— Rachel Chambers | Women’s Forum Co-Chair Cornwall Council

Get in touch to learn how we can support you

Understanding the issue

Discrimination and negative experiences

Gender inequality

80% of women in the UK see gender discrimination as an issue in the workplace (Investors in People, 2023), and experience a widening gender pay gap upon starting a family. Gender and family-related discrimination are connected, and need a connected response.

Our approach starts with the experiences of working mums and families, whose knowledge is invaluable for helping policies align with the realities of life. It’s important to take an intersectional approach, thinking about how practices affect whole families, communities and workplaces. Employment practices which support fathers’ rights (i.e. to paternity leave) are an important part of supporting gender equality too.

A lack of understanding

Awareness of legal rights around parenthood, maternity and adoption is low across sectors. With a lack of awareness of legal rights around parenthood, maternity and adoption, businesses risk accidentally breaching the law. Some organisations follow their policies to the letter, without getting to the heart of what employees really need to feel respected and supported.

To create a positive, open culture around these topics, both employers and employees need to understand the basics, and know there’s shared commitment to continuing to learn and improve. There are many simple, win-win solutions, which can emerge when workplaces have trusting conversations.

Different experiences of family and caring

As an employer, supporting every member of the team means awareness of the diversity of employees' needs and experiences. It's important to have good policies to support employees through pregnancy and the return to work, but a fully family-friendly workplace will think wider. A family friendly work culture includes supportive practices around:

Pregnancy and the perinatal period
Fertility journeys - including fertility treatments and surrogacy
Adoption
Fostering
Caring responsibilities other than parenthood - such as for grandchildren
Caring responsibilities towards partners or family members who are Disabled or have an illness
One parent families
LGBTQ+ families, including non-birth parents
The return to work after maternity leave, parental leave, and other periods away from the workplace
Families affected by pregnancy loss, bereavement and other circumstances

This can feel complex - it interacts with different areas of law, and different communities and experiences. That's why we find it's best to start by listening to everyone - the best solutions build on the knowledge of mums, parents and carers in each workplace.

In reality, including everyone from the start means interventions can be simple and streamlined. For example - by not making LGBTQ+ families an afterthought, and using clear, inclusive language, organisational policies can be flexible to the needs of every unique family. This helps employers reduce stress and work down the line, and helps avoid discrimination.

“It's about ensuring you have the right conversations with people, being honest that you’re not always going to get it right but being open enough to shape things differently.”

— Stellar Quines

The benefits of being a Family Friendly employer

Why your business should prioritise getting it right for employees starting and raising a family.

Increased staff morale and productivity

Better employee retention

Reduction in recruitment costs

Increase in consumer awareness of you as an ethical employer

“We promote flexible recruitment to employers and raise awareness that they are potentially missing out on valuable skillsets if they should ignore this.”

— Family Friendly Working Scotland

Good practice success stories

Use these examples to inspire practical solutions for your context.

Understanding peri-natal mental health to better support staff

ACE Place and Out of School Care, situated in Rutherglen Glasgow is an equal opportunities and Living Wage employer who believe their staff are the biggest asset in promoting connections with children and their families at the heart of their service delivery.

Our work together highlighted a need for staff to better understand how to handle peri-natal mental health needs amongst the staff team as well as for families the nursery are providing a service for. We collaborated with professionals in peri-natal mental health to fill this gap. We then co-designed a pregnancy and returning to work timeline bespoke to ACE Place, which is designed to give staff and managers the confidence to check in regularly as well as embedding peri-natal mental health aware practices.

“We have reflected on how we approach and support parents coming into the setting. For example, signposting them to health visitors, often concerns are around a child’s development however there is also an underlying issue that the parent may be requiring personal support.It has also made us more considerate of how we are with staff returning and the struggles they may have. It has highlighted even more the need for us to have a procedure in place to share with staff from the moment they tell us they are pregnant right through to the first months back at work.”

— Ashleigh Anderson, Nursery and Out of School Care Manager

A social enterprise committed to nurturing the well-being of their staff

Indigo Group is a social enterprise, operating as a limited company and situated in Castlemilk, Glasgow. They are committed to nurturing the wellbeing of their staff team in order to secure the best possible outcomes for their children and young people. Indigo as a workplace is open to shaping organisational practice around the experiences and skills of their staff team and promote learning opportunities for all staff to enable this.

In collaboration with staff and managers, we identified that ‘open door’ policies were a useful space to support this, however did not work for everyone, particularly for staff returning after maternity- who often felt very distant from changes to the workplace on their return. To mitigate this, we researched alternative supports women found useful from their own workplace experiences across different sectors via an online ‘wellbeing in the workplace’ survey so that we could provide practical solutions for practice. We rated the findings and found that workplace buddy schemes were effective in linking mum returners with colleagues who have ‘been there’ as a source of peer support to help with their overall wellbeing at work.

Indigo have now embedded a ‘buddy scheme’ which links new mum returners with other mums who have had the experience of returning to work and the challenges this brings. Indigo have implemented the scheme as a group support network to improve work based social support as well as a place to manage workloads and feed into organisational practice so that wellbeing is respected and sustained in the workplace.

“We now hope that with our continued commitment to our staff, our strong belief in our organisational values and our new knowledge and understanding gained from working alongside the team at Mums Returning to Work that staff at all levels are able to support each other and potential new families that look to join our services”

— Jacqueline Lamb, Chief Executive of Indigo Childcare Group

An inclusive workplace that puts staff and their caring responsibilities first

Cadzow Nursery successfully implemented practical working solutions and flexibility for mums returning to work. In doing so, they negotiated a working culture where staff feel valued and deliver a successful service as a result.

As part of the solution, the organisation offered childcare discounts for nursery placements to mums returning from maternity leave.

This has encouraged uptake of nursery placements – allowing mums to be happy and confident at work that their children are receiving a high quality of care and learning. This system has also reduced the risk of informal arrangements falling through and causing staff absences.

In addition, managers were taught how to set a tone that respects employees as a whole person, with responsibilities and a life outside of the workplace. As a result, workers felt more invested in the business – with mum returners stating that they were now more willing to offer overtime and adapt their schedules.

This mutual respect between employers and staff balances expectations of flexibility at both ends, and results in a better working environment for each party.

— Leanne Kelly, Manager of Cadzow Nursery

Understanding the basics

What is Statutory Maternity Pay (SMP)?

What are employees' rights on Maternity Leave?

All employees have the right to 52 weeks maternity leave with the right to return to work thereafter.
They are entitled to all their contractual terms and conditions during maternity leave, apart from pay.
They have the right to be offered a suitable alternative vacancy if they are made redundant during maternity leave.
They have the right to ask for flexible work.
They are protected against unfair treatment, unfair dismissal, discrimination because of pregnancy, child birth and maternity leave.

Examples of maternity discrimination

What the law says

Legislative provisions include:

Equality Act 2010 which outlaws discrimination against employees because of the ‘protected characteristic’ of pregnancy and maternity during the ‘protected period.’
Employment Rights Act 1996 which sets out rights to health and safety, time off for ante-natal care, maternity leave and unfair dismissal.
Maternity & Parental Leave etc. Regulations 1999 which set out a woman’s entitlement to maternity leave and the notification requirements. European law including the Pregnant Workers Directive and the recast Equal Treatment Directive which provide pregnant women or women on maternity leave with protected status.

Note, legislation surrounding maternity rights is different in Scotland to the rest of the UK. Also pay attention to the Fair Work Framework, which is becoming part of the employment framework in Scotland.

Learn more about Family Friendly Workplace support

Our Family Friendly Workplaces work developed from our 2018-2020 research with workplaces and women who were returning to work, and we have since connected it with our development support practice and the wider policy context. We take an inclusive, whole-family approach, supporting employers to think about how different experiences and protected characteristics connect. There's no 'typical' family, so it's important to create practices which work for everyone by listening, expecting diversity, and being flexible.

Please don't hesitate to get in touch with us to discuss tailored support, whatever your organisation's size, budget and requirements.

Get in touch to learn how we can support you