Featured Article
Every month we will feature an article in this section. This month our article is chosen from the Edge publication.
July 2007
UK BUSINESSES COMMIT ‘FLEXICRIME’
Dads put kids before career
Millions of men are willing to sacrifice their career in order to spend more time with their children, according to a new survey.
The study of fathers across the UK has discovered that 43% of dads have decided to curtail their earning capacity to spend more time at home. Over two million men who currently share childcare with their partner have changed jobs to allow a reduction in their working hours, while one in 20 UK dads has refused a pay rise in order to be able to spend more time with their offspring.
Employers may need some time to catch up with the trend, however, as the research found that fathers consider managers to be generally unsupportive of their intentions to strike a better work life balance.
Financial instituition ING Direct, which conducted the survey, calculated that men are forfeiting an average of £2,800 a year by spending more time away from work.
Lindsay Sinclair, Chief Executive of ING Direct, said: ‘Modern men are choosing to put their careers on hold in order to balance work with bringing up their children. For many this means reducing working hours and taking and average salary cut of around £2,800, in order to spend more time ‘holding the baby’.
UK REMAINS INFLEXIBLE COMPARED TO EUROPE
UK firms are lagging behind their European counterparts when it comes to flexible working with only one in five Brits given the chance to work away from the office.
A study by the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC) found that only 20% of UK companies offer teleworking, one of the most popular forms of flexible working, well below the 40% that do so in Germany, Sweden and Denmark. The survey of 8,000 firms also discovered that only half the companies in the UK run a flexitime system, compared to a whopping 90% of organisations in mainland Europe.
Jenny Watson, chair of the EOC, praised those UK employers who are already offering a wide range of work options in return for what she believes is ‘increased productivity and improved staff engagement’.
‘Extending the right to request flexible working to everyone is a crucial step towards making a new culture at work a reality. The time has now come for this innovation to spread across the workforce to reach the UK’s 29 million workers,’ she added.
The campaign to extend flexible working rights has been supported by MP’s on both sides of the political spectrum. Launching the report, Tory leader David Cameron said all parents should have the right to request flexible working. At present, only parents of children under six have the right to do so.
Labour deputy leader Harriet Harman said the report highlighted the need for tougher laws on flexible working. ‘It’s not good enough just to ask employers to "consider" a request. The burden of proof should be on the employer to show why flexible working is not practical,’ she said.
