Employers who take a proactive approach and encourage flexibility can create a culture of trust, better employee engagement, reduce absenteeism and recruitment costs. Small changes made at work can help employees with a caring role and increase staff loyalty, productivity and performance.
Many of the ideas below come from businesses which are already providing best practice in supporting working carers.
TIPS for Employers:
Identify carers:
– Establish and maintain a system to enable carers to identify themselves if they choose to.
Revisit your actions:
– Organise regular consultations with carers and review your policies and procedures.
Provide practical support:
– Introduce flexible working practices such as flexitime, home working, annualised hours, compressed hours, shift swapping, self-rostering, staggered hours, job sharing, term-time working, part time working and flexible holidays.
– Develop a specific Carers’ Policy.
– Introduce additional support for carers e.g. Carers’ Leave (extra paid or unpaid leave), access to a private telephone or use of mobile, car parking close to the workplace.
– Introduce a voluntary Carer Passport/Carer Register to make sure employees with a caring role hold a record and have automatic entitlement that stays with them regardless of whether their role changes, they move departments or have a new line manager.
– Encourage employees with a caring role to form an in-house informal peer support network.
– Introduce an employee assistance scheme e.g. access to counselling, legal advice.
Create good communication and trust within the organisation:
– Promote your existing and relevant policies to all employees.
– Give line managers autonomy on managing carers within their team.
– Make sure your line managers undertake carer awareness training or have completed an eLearning Carer Awareness course.
