Now, more than ever before, the working parent faces challenges. Not only are children presenting parents with more worries socially, a recent survey suggests that 1 in 5 people also worry about redundancy in the next 12 months.¹

Support for working parents has increased in recent years with government reinforcement of child care centres and tax credits. Whilst this is positive and means that many parents have the structures in place to return to work, the actual pressure caused by splitting one’s time between a professional life and the family means that individuals are experiencing increased strain on their relationships.

Whilst there are courses that parents can go on outside of work to help develop their skills, these often focus solely on light touch parenting skills. Likewise, courses held at work are often tailored to the work environment. Even generic training, such as stress and time management courses are kept specific to productivity within the office setting.

There is evidence to show that committed parents make phenomenal managers because of the skills they develop. Ruderman, a research director at the Centre for Creative Leadership claims that “Raising a family helps develop skills such as negotiating, compromising, conflict resolution and multitasking”.² In the same study it was shown that parents who can manage their home life effectively actually cope better with the stresses of work.

So we know that productive parents can make incredible employees, but what happens when the individual is struggling to cope with the pressures of home life or they are suffering with work related stress and this has a negative impact on their home life?

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development³, in an article entitled “Stress at work CIPD; Health, safety and well-being” state that “Three quarters of executives say that stress adversely affects their health, happiness and home life as well as their performance at work.” In the same article, there is reference to The Health and Safety Executive claiming that;

Stress is likely to become the most dangerous risk to business in the early part of the 21st century.

One in five workers reports feeling extremely stressed at work. This equates to 5 million in the UK.

Self reported work-related stress, depression or anxiety account for an estimated 10.5 million reported lost working days per year in Britain.

Parents’ main concerns are the length of hours they work and work intensity. With mounting pressure to work harder in order to cover the jobs of people who have been made redundant, or just trying to ensure that they are not made redundant themselves, parents are spending less time at home. It is therefore more important to ensure that any family time is quality time.

Not only this, but with the advancement of technology , many employees take work home and so juggle their work/home balance even more. One third of partners of people who work more than 48 hours per week say that this has caused a negative effect on personal relationships.

Are organisations dealing with this problem? Apparently not. The CIPD claim that;

“...only 33% of workers say that their employer has any family-friendly practices or personal support services in place”.

The CIPD encourages employers to help prevent work related stress. They include the following ideas; undertaking audits to identify troubled employees and provide them with support, identifying the main causes of stress and tackling them, maximising employee well-being to create a healthy workforce and finally, the provision of education to deal with stress via coaching and training.
Business in the Community⁴, Employee Support for Parenting Project revealed some key findings including:

The majority of working parents (87.9%) would like to access a programme targeting work-family balance if it were available.

Approximately 90% of respondents believed that balancing work and family is stressful and can impact on job performance and satisfaction.

There is obviously a cost associated with rectifying this situation but it is far outweighed by the business benefits and bottom line returns, for example; reduced absenteeism, raised morale and productivity.

We look forward to speaking to you soon about how to identify the needs of your working parents and how we can co-create a programme towards sustainable solutions.

¹ The CV Store. http\://www.thecvstore.net/blog/fear-redundancy/
² CCH® HR MANAGEMENT — 04/20/07. http\://hr.cch.com/news/hrm/042007a.asp
³ http\://www.cipd.co.uk/subjects/health/stress/stress.htm?IsSrchRes=1

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