21st April 2009
This month the Equality and Human Rights Commission launched its first report on the way we work today, and what needs to change to create more equal working lives in the future. John Sharman discusses what they found.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission established the Working Better project to find solutions that will improve the outlook for the economy and society – for employers, individuals and families - over the long-term. 'Working Better' brings together various ideas about how work could be organised, people employed and business structured for Britain to meet the challenges of the 21st Century and at the same time improve equality and human rights.
The Working Better project published its first ground breaking report on March 30. The report contains new research on how people combine work and family life today and what they want in the future. It calls for a radical overhaul of the maternity and paternity leave system, to create a gender neutral family leave system by 2020, and the extension of flexible working to all.
The Commission has identified the need for an approach to flexibility that encompasses everyone, whether they have caring responsibilities as a parent, are disabled, are older or newly entering or re-entering the workplace. Flexibility has business value way beyond its benefit for employers and parents.
At the campaign’s launch last July, Nicola Brewer, the Commission’s Chief Executive, set out the key questions to be addressed in this report:
- What affects the choices parents make in balancing paid work and care?
- What would enable fathers to play a bigger role in parenting?
- Should the ‘right to request’ flexibility become the ‘right to have’ flexibility?
- How do we fundamentally change our approach to work to benefit all?
Britain must find ways to include more people in the workplace in order to meet the long term demand for skilled workers, and flexible working could be part of the solution. Despite the recession, employment is forecast to continue to rise over the coming decade as a whole. There will be 2 million new jobs and a need to replace 11.5 million existing workers, the UK Commission for Employment and Skills forecasts.
Employers are still reporting shortages of key skills, and long-term demand for skills will increase. Britain will need to bring new people into the workforce, improve training, and make better use of skills that are already available. More than half of part-time workers, most of whom are women, are in jobs below their potential, often because it is the only way they can combine work and caring. As many as 6.5 million people could be using their abilities more fully if they had greater flexibility at work.
This article outlines some of the main findings of the research on how people work today and what they want. It includes some of the recommendations made by the Commission of the practical changes we can make to improve working lives.
Reforming parental leave
Today’s parents defy stereotypes and want to share work and family care more equally. But their choices are constrained by inflexible and low paid family leave provisions based on a traditional division of paid work and care.
Britain stands out internationally for its long leave reserved for mothers, mostly at a low rate of pay, and its relatively weak parental leave. It also has very short paternity leave, which is low paid and has a relatively low take up. Whereas other countries offer flexible parental leave alongside flexible work, Britain does not.
Our research found there is extensive unmet demand from fathers for more leave with their children. Parents primarily want a wider range of flexible job opportunities in all types of jobs. They also want more financial support from the Government for paternity and parental leave and more affordable childcare.
Recommendations
So what would most help parents achieve a better balance? What would enable men to play a greater role in parenting? Is long maternity leave best for parents, or is it entrenching the assumption that women do the caring and pay the career penalty?
The report sets out a new approach that would give Britain a world-class policy of parental leave by 2020. This would enable families to exercise real choice in the first year of their child’s life, and to have the option of paid parental leave up to the age of five.
This approach involves a series of incremental changes to increase men’s take up of family leave and make it longer, better paid and more flexible:
Stage 1
Small scale changes now, to increase take-up by low earners through expanding eligibility; improving levels of payment; introducing Paternity Allowance by 2010.
Stage 2
A move to ‘parental’ rather than ‘maternity’ leave when a baby reaches six
months, and the introduction of dedicated, non-transferable periods of leave for mothers and for fathers by 2012.
Stage 3
The introduction of gender-neutral parental leave, with equal access for both
parents to paid parental leave by 2020.
The Commission also recommends greater flexibility in how paternity and parental leave can be taken including paternity, maternity and parental leave that can be taken as days, weeks or longer blocks of time. Temporary part-time work should be a standard option during parental leave to provide one avenue for challenging
perceptions of what can or cannot be done on a reduced hours basis.
Extending flexibility
Our research found there is extensive evidence of the business benefits of flexible and alternative working arrangements, including innovative approaches to managing people, time and rewards in the recession.
For many people currently working flexibly, their flexibility arrangements were a feature of the job when they started. Informal requests were the next most common source, and interestingly, the new right to request flexible working was the least reported means of achieving flexibility. We found that the gap is widening between workplaces where flexibility is ‘business-as-usual’ and those which have seen little change to traditional patterns.
Britain’s right to request legislation allows a wider range of alternative working arrangements than flexibility regulation elsewhere. But in some other countries regulations on flexible working address a wider range of policy objectives, including unemployment, and go hand-in-hand with more generous parental leave arrangements.
The British right to request legislation offers greater individual flexible work options than elsewhere, making it attractive to men as well as women. It is important to support employees who might otherwise be afraid to ask for flexibility, and those in workplaces with no examples of the benefits of flexible working. We found that a majority of parents do not know about their right to request flexibility.
Finally, although flexibility offers benefits to business as well as workers, it does present new challenges for line managers. We found that more and better training is needed for managers who are responsible for flexible workers.
Recommendations
The Commission’s view is that flexibility should be extended to all employees throughout working life. This would reduce the risk that certain groups - such as parents of young children - pay a career penalty for working flexibly. The report also recommends the introduction of a formal right to request a return to full-time work, after a previous change in working hours, to be negotiated subject to business needs
In addition the Commission recommends removing the requirement that an employee can request flexible work only after 26 weeks in the job, in order to open flexible options to job applicants.
Other recommendations include:
- Investment in training managers to introduce flexibility and manage a flexible workforce – through current skills programmes for managers for example, IIP and the new skills funding package for smaller businesses
- A publicity drive to raise awareness of the right to request, particularly targeting fathers, and campaigns at sectors and workplaces with little flexibility, to open up opportunities, particularly for men.
- More flexible, affordable childcare.
- Local authorities to provide independent advice on flexible work opportunities to parents and to carers, as in Sweden and Germany where chambers of commerce and local government jointly provide advice centres on flexible working in several cities.
- Employers to provide information on flexible working options that meet business and employee need, encouraging discussions and team negotiations to match flexibility and business need.
- Include flexible work options in job ads.
- Make clear that employees taking reduced hours have options to request more hours or return to full-time hours.
Conclusion
The report argues that there is a strong case for re-configuring maternity, paternity and parental leave and extending flexible working. These measures would respond to high demand from parents and the wider working population, achieve greater equality, fairness and choice, improve the quality of life and of childhood, and provide benefits for employers and the economy.
The main recommendation is for a radical change of policy to create a ‘gender-neutral’ system of family leave. This would make leave more equally available to fathers and mothers, giving working parents wider choices about how they organise their work and their family responsibilities.
Legislation on the right to request flexible working is currently driven by the policy imperative of helping families to manage work and care. The changes we propose to family leave would answer that imperative. This would allow the right to request to be made available to everyone, since there would no longer be a reason to prioritise parents. Family leave and flexible working policies would run in parallel and complement each other, as they do in other countries.
Next Steps
This Phase 1 Working Better report focuses on ways of improving choices for working parents. Work is already underway on Phase 2 ‘Working
Better for All’ with new research on disabled workers, carers and older workers to be
completed during 2009.
The report can be downloaded at:
http://
www.equalityhumanrights.com/en/publicationsandresources/Documents/Equalities/Working%20Better.pdf
John Sharman
Working Better Project Team
For more information on the Equalities and Human Rights Commission visit
www.equalityhumanrights.com
