Working Better seminar 

On this page

• Session 1. Flexible working
  
• Session 2. Fathers, Well-being and Choice
  
• Session 3. Working better for all
  
• Panel Session – Developing the wider agenda – better work choices for all.
  
• Summing up
  
• Next steps
  

 

Session 1. Flexible working

The seminar was given a timely reminder of the challenging contextual considerations of the current economic crisis, with newspaper reports that Peter Mandelson, the Secretary of State at BERR had ordered a review of the extension of the Right to Request (R2R) to parents of children up to 16, promised from April 2009 and of regulation in the pipeline including proposed changes to maternity and paternity provision. 

Imelda Walsh, HR Director of Sainsbury’s and chair of the independent review for the Government on the extension of the right to request flexible working to parents of older children, provided valuable insights into the current government and employer position and the increasing challenge for the Working Better project, in her presentation: ‘Flexibility– the view from Business’. 

Imelda reported a hardening of attitudes towards flexibility, particularly from SME representatives BCC/FSB, with both strongly anti-regulation, increasingly voicing arguments about the burdens on business.

DTI had introduced the initial Right to Request Flexible Working (R2R) in 2003 and extended it in 2007. Then, economic conditions were good with a favourable climate for flexibility. The war for talent was at its highest peak with retention the overriding consideration for many employers.

The recent Review of R2R was narrowly defined by government and, while taking evidence on the wider agenda, the Review recommended an extension to parents of children up to 16 – an additional 4.5 million parents with no phased introduction. This was an important gain but even at that stage, the climate was getting colder. The Review did not comment on when the change should be introduced but it had been completed to enable implementation as early as April 2009, if desired by Government.

Why were attitudes hardening towards flexibility? Flexibility was associated with part-time work, with women and complicated caring and working patterns. This pointed to the importance of better working creating an entirely new brand for flexibility and a much broader definition.

While government has set clear social priorities, recognising that parents and carers need more help in practice, many employers choose to already offer “open to all” flexibility. But there are attitudinal issues - men are still more likely to look for flexibility for ‘me’ time not just parenting.  Eldercare is also growing as an issue.

The organisation of work to balance business and individual needs is complex. For example, in a supermarket, managers have had to become much better at organising work schedules - matching when customers want to shop with the availability of workers. Team leaders needed skills to encourage colleagues to work rotas which allowed the business to operate flexibly as trading patterns vary across a week. These skills include listening and negotiation skills as well as work scheduling.

Key discussion points

• More consistent investment in management training is key.
• The potential of elder care to re-focus the flexibility agenda.
• 30% of women now earn as much as their partners so increased economic power drives more need to share caring roles.
• Solutions created between team members with managers as catalysts/facilitators.
• New work is needed to make the productivity case. Recent Cranfield research makes good connections between flexibility and elements of productivity/engagement. 
• Employee engagement is also an area fast developing. Important to try to identify the causal links between good places to work and business performance (customer satisfaction levels and other bottom-line issues).

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Session 2. Fathers, Well-being and Choice

Professor Margaret O’Brien from the University of East Anglia opened the session with a presentation on:  Fathers and Parental Leave Policies: International Perspectives and Policy Impact.

 Download the full presentation (PPT 1.23MB)

Margaret reported a rapid expansion in fathers’ access to flexible working and parental leave since the late 1990s, with 66 countries now offering provision. There is evidence of an increase in uptake of flexitime and working from home by fathers, in particular, those having children for the first time. In addition, later in the life course, more men are spending time caring for their partners, disabled older children and their own parents - the aging demographic makes this extremely important.

While men work long hours in the UK, it is not so much the time that has high impact on family life and wellbeing but rather the perception of work intensity. Evidence suggests that parental leave for mothers and for fathers can enhance their availability to infants, boosting economic care and emotional investment in the child. 

Paternity leave was introduced in GB in 2003, and family leave provision now comprises a complicated hybrid mix. Innovations in fathers leave in Norway point to what might work for us. This comprises two weeks of initial daddy leave (paternity leave), fully paid, alongside a system of highly paid parental leave, not maternity leave, of 54 weeks, but unusually only nine weeks is reserved for the mother, not transferable to the father and six weeks is reserved for the father, non-transferable to the mother -- a use it or lose it penalty system. The year after the introduction of the father quota (in 1993, initially four weeks) there was a massive uptake by fathers of parental leave, strongly suggesting that the obligation model is working in Norway.

The German experience where, last year, because of concerns about low female economic activity and fertility, a daddy two month paid period was added to a highly paid one year leave for mothers, endorses this approach, with take up rates by fathers trebling over the last year.

International research shows that men's behaviour is very receptive to public policy innovation particularly when it becomes the norm.  The non-transferable father targeting, with an incentive (use it or lose it) approach, seems to be the model that works. Income replacement is a key prevailing factor. Also effective policy instruments have been developed as “add-ons” - additional family support - and have not involved taking leave away from mothers.

Anastasia de Waal, Civitas, gave the second presentation in this session entitled: Constraints on Choices for Working Parents.

Anastasia suggested that current government policy did not do enough to support good parenting decisions by not sufficiently examining the effects of poverty on parenting choices. She pointed to comparative instability between co-habiting and married parents – with non-marriage in the UK signifying instability (although it is the relationship and not necessarily the structure) and it is more complicated to combine child-care in unstable households.

Financial instability has an impact on relationships, and therefore family stability and parenting. This is the case both in intact families and in separated families. As such a better facilitation of dual parenting after separation is needed to foster stability. 

Rates of non-resident parent contribution are currently very low and this is a key source of instability for separated families.

Child-care for working parents is inadequate: poor quality child-care impacts on children negatively on children, whilst good quality childcare can be highly beneficial to development.  Affordability, quality and access are the key requirements.

Quality and provision are linked to availability of well-paid labour in childcare settings – but child-care is ‘feminised’ and subsequently under-valued. Questions have been asked about the introduction of the Early Years Foundation stage, with low-paid workers required to deliver challenging frameworks to address inadequacies of childcare provision, rather than addressing the lack of funding.

How do we re-value child-care and persuade more men into caring? Anastasia suggested simultaneously improving the status of child-care in the home: get men involved, recognise informal child-care and don’t simply see out-sourcing childcare into formal settings as the only option, rather shift men into informal, in-home engagement.

Change the nature of the mother-focused policy and enable mothers and fathers to have the option of care with subsidies to stay at home. With childcare being re-conceptualised and re-valued as an economic activity, this will help to facilitate choice. Re-define caring away from its female, non-economic status into a male or mixed economic status.

Key discussion points

• An analysis of fathers’ leave taking by economic status reveals that fathers in less secure jobs have less access to flexible leave. We are moving towards a gap - parental leave rich and parental leave poor families.
• The Netherlands has policies to highlight the benefits of flexible working and is most similar to UK with high levels of part-time employment.  However, evidence shows that ring-fenced, non-transferable – take it or leave it leave, as in Norway – has been the most successful in driving change in fathers behaviour. 
• There is apparently a gap in the aspirations and behaviour of fathers. Do we really know what men want and are we correct in our analysis of need to drive more engagement? What is the incentive for men to change?
• How do we change cultural expectations both around carers and workers?  There is some research on job models for white collar workers and more needs to be done on flexible job configurations in male-dominate workplaces – we are at a very early stage in cultural shifts in business. 
• The argument about quality of life for children case needs to be developed more.
• We should recommend that a different definition of investment is built into the national accounts, with spending on caring leave etc as a benefit for future generations and therefore built into the capital, not the current account.
• Women need to take some responsibility and develop greater ability to trust men to do parenting jobs properly – and to be more confident about the value of what women do.
  

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Session 3. Working better for all

Deborah Smeaton from the Policy Studies Institute provided the context for the afternoon’s discussions with her presentation: Working Better For All.

 Download the full presentation (PPT 147 KB)

Working Better embraces a broad range of social groups and individuals at different stages of their lives, with changing needs and preferences, and working terms and conditions should promote sustainability.

Demographic trends are towards more women working, an ageing workforce, a shift away from white middle class men as the employee norm and more people caring.

A range of work challenges including absenteeism, intensification of work, under-use of skills and skills shortages could be addressed by innovative ways of working, with a wide range of evidenced benefits from flexibility.

People increasingly wanted an improved balance between work, leisure and other responsibilities with evidence of declining levels of work effort. Individuals want flexible hours more so than reduced hours which are associated with reduced pay. Use of and desire for non-standard hours revealed preferences for flexitime and working from home, with part-time work at the bottom of the list.  Amongst older workers, less stressful working was the top preference.

People identified their ideal work model as: less distinction between home and work, childcare services to be integrated within the working environment or home-working to allow more effective reconciliation of work and care, flexible working hours, working around school drop off and pick up times, opportunities to work from home and a better integration between work and other aspects of life rather than having to “fit lives around work”.

Approximately half were getting what they wanted but 62% were working below their potential - 49% part-time workers because it was the only way they could combine work with caring for children or older relatives.

30% were unable to find full-time work with the flexibility they needed. 50% would have made different employment choices if better flexible working had been available and 30% of the unemployed said they would re-enter the labour market if offered flexible working arrangements.

Looking to the future, Debbie highlighted an increasing range of working arrangements and the potential to extend these to more groups, but with provision still largely discretionary and often not advertised, and occupations and industries dominated by men still lagging behind, there is still a long way to go in driving forward change. She believed that projects such as working better were vital, with a warning that, particularly in the current economic climate, there may be a danger that greater flexibility will be regarded as a concession and not a productivity and business benefit and we must challenge this.

Key Discussion points

People with disabilities and health conditions benefit enormously from flexible working, but as well as flexitime and shorter working hours flexibility in recruitment also needed to be considered with changes to recruitment procedures (eg job trials rather than long application forms).

• Flexibility:
• is not just about time but also location, hence high demand for working from home. Carers don't want to commute, and settle for under-use of their skills in part-time low paid jobs because there isn't the choice.
• actually encompasses a very wide range of work patterns but has come to be interpreted very narrowly and there is a danger of stereotyping what we think different categories of workers want. This limited ‘take’ has negative consequences amongst businesses, we need to find a positive new language linked to business solutions - stop using the 'f' word.
• Home-build developments should include work stations to support home-working.
• Extending flexibility to all improves all round work experience and engagement and enables better accommodation of different working pattern needs.
• Win-win flexibility starts with asking what is the business trying to achieve. The organisation has to be flexible enough to give the customer whatever the customer wants and because the organisation has to be flexible it needs that flexibility from its employees and in return for that can behave in flexible ways towards them – it must be give and take. 

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Panel Session – Developing the wider agenda – better work choices for all.

Catharine Pusey from Employers Forum on Age, a membership organisation of employers, described their work with employers sharing best practice and campaigning for greater flexibility across the age range. She saw this as the key for Working Better – throughout the lifecycle people need different types of flexibility – there is no-one size fits all solution. But there are key groups: generation Y wants flexibility from employers as part of their recruitment offer; generation x are today’s parents; and, the baby boomers are the sandwich generation who have responsibilities for children and parents.

There has been a growth in informal flexible working and employers are comfortable with that, but employers need to see the case for change and not feel pushed into it or they react against it – and that’s what we’re seeing. The project needs to re-visit employers to find out their perspectives.

There is an economic argument - with relatively fewer younger people, and more older people, supporting people to stay off benefits, in work longer and covering the pensions of the oldest people in the population, improves the dependency ratio and eases the financial burden on Government. On top of this, later entry into work as a result of the Government's proposals for children to stay on in education until 18, will lead to a reduction in the supply of young labour requiring more older workers. Flexibility for this group is likely to be not greatly reduced hours, but less stressful work.

Nicola Brewer, CEO of the EHRC, emphasised that the Working Better programme was about more than the parental leave agenda. She wanted to see how we can widen the definition of the ‘F’ word perhaps through re-labelling and re-defining it. We also needed to widen the number of groups that could benefit from new ways of working and deepen understanding of how it can work for business and for society in the real world, including in the current economic climate. She was interested the different kinds of flexibility attractive to different groups, in a desire for homeworking from the under 50s and a focus on less stress for older workers. She was struck by the earlier discussions about starting  from what the business is trying to achieve to develop a pattern of work that is sustainable and to operate in a give and take way.  
 
Emma Knights, Daycare Trust, a small policy and research organisation, described how the organisation had changed from supporting working women with childcare to embrace a wider agenda about working parents and better outcomes for children, based on research showing the importance of early years education on outcomes, particularly for disadvantaged children. Daycare Trust is interested in childcare up to 14 or 18 for disabled children, recognising that issues for parents change – but don’t go away. 

Despite a lot of investment, childcare isn’t sorted. There are more places, but still outstanding issues of cost, quality and locality.

In addressing the issues of choice, it is important to recognise different needs at different ages: the issues for under 1s and under 3s and preschool and older children are significantly different. The Daycare Trust supports flexibility throughout the lifecycle and identifies   grandparents as an important group of workers and carers.

On the needs of children, quality early years interventions are key, parents want local childcare and more flexible provision.

As Job-sharing CEO, Emma identified little support for managing flexible arrangements and shared the view that more training for introducing new ways of working was needed.

Stuart Fell, West Bromwich Tool & Engineering Ltd described his company as making pressed steel components for the automotive industry. Most of the processes are on the shop floor and involve one person in front of one machine, so that it is not a production line.  It is very easy for a person to vary what they do without it having a knock-on effect. The most important thing in business is keeping customers happy and that requires the flexibility to meet their requirements.

He has a manager who worked for Mc Donalds and highlighted the similarity: both are small scale manufacturing companies and have to deliver the product when the customer wants it. So they have to be flexible. This is not about a social agenda but give and take, giving flexibility to meet employee needs – and these vary considerably - because then they’ll be flexible for the company when it’s needed. One-sided flexibility is actually inflexibility.  There has to be a negotiation involved and perhaps that is something that British management could be better at.

Key Discussion points

• Working Better is a call for sustainable ways of working – recognising that current ways of working aren’t sustainable. EHRC needs to find ways of supporting employers and building their confidence in finding new ways of organising work, through consulting beyond the WB Advisory Group and directly with business and Chambers of Commerce, FSB etc.
• Need to find a new language for the 'F' word – employers resist it because it suggests it can’t be planned or controlled. Productive, smart, better?
• If you are going to introduce change, you have to demonstrate that change brings with it an added value, whether for employers or individuals.
• How sustainable are individual or jointly negotiated rights in times of recession – evidence of retrenching on retirement age, for example, to aid laying off? Indirect discrimination underpinning flexible working is established in law, and this route is open to individuals, particularly where there is evidence of refusal and drawing back on requests under R2R. Collectively negotiated rights may help – but the importance of flexible arrangements taking account of individual circumstances was highlighted as an important element of negotiations.
• Procurement requirements and decisions can provide good practice examples of contracts awarded to companies with flexible workers, challenging poor current practice where some tenders are rejected because of use of part-time workers rather than ‘real’ full-time workers.
• The importance of giving people confidence in managing greater flexibility – not adding to the fear by extending the agenda.
• EHRC should adopt a partnership approach with CBI for example, to establish business credentials and counter potential for employers dismissing any recommendations on employment from an equality organization.
• On setting the government agenda – consider tax benefit to an employer who shows creative ways of working, employs certain numbers, establishing business-friendly incentive and returns, not just family-friendly benefits.

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Summing up

The Chair, Jeannie Drake summed up some of the key points for the Working Better project from the day:

• seek government investment in management training to manage flexibility, particularly for SMEs.
• investigate the idea of getting government to change the 'golden rule' to allow this kind of investment to count as (human) capital investment.
• respond to the context, the impact of the economic downturn and give a new, compelling edge to the business case with more work on costing the benefits of flexibility:
• sustainability as a key component of successful flexible working;
• consulting with employers and identifying evidence around new drivers eg employee engagement;
• encourage employers to think more creatively about configuration of jobs, particularly in male-dominated workplaces; 
• find a new, positive language for flexibility, taking it away from the 'F' word connotations, and encompassing much more than just narrow part-time working.
• recognise that policy drivers such as non-transferable, ring-fenced leave, can and do change father’s attitudes and leave behaviors.
• integrate quality of life for children case into the project.
• women should be bolder in home and work, demanding reciprocity.
• agenda for the project needs to be broad in terms of groups covered and in what flexibility means.

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Next steps

Jeannie Drake thanked participants for their excellent input and described next steps for the project:

• to take forward the research projects on international modeling and costings, flexibility regulation, attitudinal work, and older workers. 
• completing our interactive website and innovative case studies for employers.
• drawing together a wide evidence base and producing a report in the spring of 2009 with findings and policy and practice recommendations.

Jeannie gave an assurance that the EHRC would keep everyone informed of our plans going forward and stressed the need for two-way traffic, so feeding back any ideas and further thinking after the seminar to help us to take the project forward to a successful conclusion.

You can view a full list of attendees here

 

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