Juggling parenting and employment isn’t easy. As an employer, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that many of your workers are struggling to balance parental responsibilities with working full-time, part-time or even casually.
If you can, as a business, provide a flexible, supportive workplace for parents, you’ll find that you’re rewarded with employees who are engaged, efficient and much more productive. You’ll have a workplace culture that’s positive and inclusive, with high staff retention rates. That can only be a good thing for your business, right?
Not only is creating a supportive workplace environment a positive thing to do, it’s also something you’re obliged to do, under Fair Work rules. Parents are entitled to request leave and working arrangements that enable them to look after their families. As an employer, it’s important to be across these entitlements.
According to Fair Work, employees who are pregnant or have parental or caring responsibilities can “take leave or request to set up flexible arrangements to help balance their work and family”. Do your best as an employer to accommodate these requests, by understanding and empathising with your employees. A little bit of compassion goes a long way in the workplace.
Carer’s Leave
Employees are entitled to take sick leave when they’re sick or injured and can’t come to work. The same applies if they need to take time off work to care for a child who’s sick or injured.
As an aside, carer’s leave doesn’t just cover sick children. Employees can take carer’s leave to look after any person that lives with them or a member of their immediate family who is ill, injured, or needs help with an unexpected emergency.
Employees accumulate sick and carer’s leave as soon as they start working.
How much leave does an employee get?
Full-time and part-time employees get up to 10 days of sick and carer’s leave every year. The amount of leave depends on how many hours they usually work each week. Casuals get two days of unpaid carer’s leave each time they need it.
Flexible working
A relatively new phenomenon, flexibility in the workplace benefits everyone. It helps employees find a work-life balance that works for them, which in turns improves the productivity and efficiency of their business.
Employers and employees can negotiate ways to make their workplace more flexible, by changing their hours of work, their days of work, or the location of their work (for instance, working from home might be an easy option to maintain work-life balance for many mums).
At the end of the day, business owners and employers simply need to be compassionate and understanding. You don’t need a formal arrangement to accommodate an employee’s request to attend their son’s school assembly – you just need to show a little understanding. Employees shouldn’t need to sacrifice family time in order to perform well at work. In fact, finding the balance can result in better results at home and at work.
Need help navigating flexible working arrangements for your team? HR Dept can help. Get in touch with us to find out how.