Flexible Working For Parents
Flexi-Time Roles
Parents are often looking for ways to balance their career and family life. This may be due to the demands of raising children or because they want to spend more time with their children before they grow up. Flexible working arrangements can help them achieve this goal by allowing them to choose when they start and end their work day. These options include staggered shift patterns, working from home, compressed work weeks, and telecommuting.
Annualised Hours
An annualised hours contract allows you to choose when to work over a year, with the flexibility of working different days and weeks. This can be more suitable for parents than a fixed term contract. It is worth noting that it can be difficult to balance these hours with childcare or other family commitments.
Job Sharing
Working parents often feel that they’re constantly juggling their career and home life. This can result in burnout and a loss of work-life balance, and even lead to health problems like depression and anxiety. However, implementing flexible working options can help solve these issues.
For many parents, job sharing is the perfect solution to these challenges. This arrangement allows parents to choose their own shifts but is based on set core hours. Other variations include flexible time, annualised hours, and compressed hours.
Working From Home
Parents in flexi-time roles can often work from home, as long as they meet their agreed hours. This is a good way to boost productivity and help employees manage the balancing act. In fact, research shows that flexible working results in lower absenteeism rates and higher employee retention rates. One example is Mercy Health, a not-for-profit aged and healthcare provider that saves $23 million a year thanks to its flexibility policies.