What Does an Employer Need to Know About Workplace Family-Friendly Policies in England?

Many family-friendly employment policies are in place to help your employees manage their work and home life, such as childcare. Such policies can alleviate your employees’ stress about balancing the two, improving employee morale. Most significantly, the law requires businesses to have family-friendly policies. Hence, you must be aware of the policies and enforce them. Otherwise, you could face an employment claim in an employment tribunal. This article will explain to you, as an employer, some of the points you need to know about family-friendly policies in England. 

Maternity, Paternity and Adoption Policies

As an employer, you should have family-friendly policies covering maternity, paternity and adoption rights for your employees. The law provides relevant employees with:

• 52 weeks of maternity leave;
• Statutory Maternity Pay (SMP);
• paid time off for antenatal appointments;
• one or two weeks of paternity leave when employees are bringing up a baby; 
• Statutory Adoption Leave; and
• Statutory Adoption Pay. 

As an employer, you can offer more than your employee’s minimum entitlements, such as a higher rate of maternity pay.

Flexible Working

As an employer, you should consider offering flexible working arrangements to your employees. Flexible working includes:

• part-time working;
• staggered work hours;
• compressed work hours or ‘squeezing’ regular work hours into fewer days;
• flexible start and finish work times;
• job-sharing;
• home-working; and 
• hybrid working, which is a mixture of office work and homework.

If your employee has worked for you for at least 26 continuous weeks, they may be legally entitled to request a form of flexible working. You have a legal obligation to consider a flexible work request within three months of receiving the request. 

Time Off Work

The law might also entitle your staff to time off work as part of your family-friendly policies. 

Emergencies 

For example, your staff can take a reasonable amount of time away from their job if they need to take care of an emergency concerning their dependant. A dependant includes an employee’s:

• spouse;
• child; 
• partner; 
• grandchild; or
• anyone else who depends on them for care.

An employee’s time away from work for an emergency does not have to be paid. Additionally, the time they take on leave should accommodate their circumstances.

Compassionate Leave

The law does not oblige you to give your employees compassionate leave. However, you may decide to offer compassionate leave as part of your family-friendly policies. Compassionate leave is where you allow your employees paid or unpaid leave for an emergency.

Parental Bereavement Leave

Regardless of how long you have employed your employee, they are entitled to take parental bereavement leave should they lose a child under 18. Statutory Parental Bereavement Pay is another entitlement for these staff.

The amount of time off your employee can take for parental bereavement leave is two weeks which can be taken any time immediately after or up to 56 weeks following a death. 

Key Takeaways

Family-friendly policies in your workplace are essential since these policies cover rights that your employees are legally entitled to. Your policies should include:

• maternity, paternity and adoption-related requirements;
• flexible working arrangements; and
• time off work for emergencies, compassionate leave and parental bereavement leave. 

If you need help understanding family-friendly policies in employment in England, our experienced employment lawyers can assist as part of our LegalVision membership. For a low monthly fee, you will have unlimited access to lawyers to answer your questions and draft and review your documents for a low monthly fee. So call us today on 0808 196 8584 or visit our membership page.

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