{"id":3102,"date":"2023-04-04T11:28:44","date_gmt":"2023-04-04T11:28:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/efcdigitalwales.org\/?p=3102"},"modified":"2023-09-14T14:41:24","modified_gmt":"2023-09-14T14:41:24","slug":"lets-talk-about-flexible-working","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/efcdigitalwales.org\/cy\/2023\/04\/04\/lets-talk-about-flexible-working\/","title":{"rendered":"Let&#8217;s talk about flexible working"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Madeleine Starr MBE, Director of Business Development and Innovation, and Katherine Wilson, Head of Employment, Carers UK \u2013 26\/11\/2020<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MS: In some ways we take flexible working for granted \u2013 especially after nine months in which many people have been working from home \u2013 but you and I know that it wasn\u2019t always like that!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>KW: Indeed! Really the first time we were aware of any public policy on working carers was when the then Prime Minister Tony Blair launched the first National Carers Strategy in 1999. It talked about the importance of helping carers to juggle their caring role with paid work, even though it didn\u2019t make any recommendations on this.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MS: Yes that\u2019s right, but we then had the launch of the first ever Work-Life Balance campaign, with a baseline survey of nearly 800 employers who were asked about their employees\u2019 experiences of juggling their job with their family responsibilities. Carers UK was instrumental in persuading government to include a question on caring in the survey, and it\u2019s fair to say that they were shocked by the results. The survey found that 16% of women and 12% of men were juggling work and care and often struggling to do so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>KW: That helped us ensure that carers were seen as part of the subsequent work-life balance campaign, though it was a challenge then to get some employers to see this as a real issue. Most of the attention was on women returning from maternity leave \u2013 or indeed on the need to attract new talent by offering flexibility to enable younger people to combine work with external interests. We worked hard to help employers understand the issues facing working carers and quickly gained the support of a small but influential group of employers \u2013 including HSBC, BT, Centrica, PwC and Listawood \u2013 who went on to help us launch Employers for Carers in 2009.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MS: But we had some success even before that. In 2006 the Work and Families Act extended the right to request flexible working to carers, giving a clear signal to employers that they needed to identify and support carers in their workplace. Then in 2008 we gained more employment rights for carers when the tenacious Sharon Coleman took her case for discrimination to the European Court of Justice and won, with the Equalities Act 2010 enshrining protection against unfair treatment for carers by association with age or disability.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>KW: The proof is in the pudding though! Many of our EfC members would agree that we still have a long way to go before every employer simply embeds support for carers in their flexible working and leave policies. We are lucky to have a growing forum of forward thinking organisations who are leading the way and creating good practice which can be used to help others become \u2018carer confident\u2019 employers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MS: And interestingly the coronavirus pandemic has brought the need for flexible working into even sharper focus. Our recent survey of EfC members, Supporting Working Carers in COVID-19: Responses and reflections, found that three quarters of respondents offered enhanced flexible working arrangements, with many more offering additional wellbeing support for carers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>KW: That\u2019s why it is so important to keep talking about flexible working, and why we are so excited to be launching this Carers UK guide on Carers Rights Day. With so many people struggling to juggle work and care whilst shielding loved ones and coping with reduced services, flexible working really can be, as one carer described it, \u2018a lifesaver\u2019.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Madeleine Starr MBE, Director of Business Development and Innovation, and Katherine Wilson, Head of Employment, Carers UK \u2013 26\/11\/2020 MS: In some ways we take flexible working for granted \u2013 especially after nine months in which many people have been working from home \u2013 but you and I know that it wasn\u2019t always like that! [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20857,"featured_media":8071,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/efcdigitalwales.org\/cy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/efcdigitalwales.org\/cy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/efcdigitalwales.org\/cy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/efcdigitalwales.org\/cy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20857"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/efcdigitalwales.org\/cy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/efcdigitalwales.org\/cy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3102\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/efcdigitalwales.org\/cy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/efcdigitalwales.org\/cy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/efcdigitalwales.org\/cy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/efcdigitalwales.org\/cy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}