Employment Law Focus

Working parents

Episode Summary

The pandemic has required many people to balance work with heightened childcaring responsibilities. The challenges are many and varied, from changing working arrangements to managing performance issues. In this episode, we look at some of the burning questions facing employers.

Episode Notes

The pandemic has required many people to balance work with heightened childcaring responsibilities.

For employers, this means considering the needs of working parents like never before – flexing policies, considering flexible working arrangements and other solutions and supporting people with their mental health and wellbeing.

The challenges are many and varied, from changing working arrangements to managing performance issues.

At the same time, the law recognises the need to be pragmatic and protect the interests of the business.

This is a big topic, but in this episode, we seek to answer some of the burning questions, including:

• What’s a socially and politically acceptable way of managing working parents during the pandemic and moving forward?
• How far must employers go to identify those who are struggling and need more support?
• What can we learn from the historic uptake of initiatives like shared parental leave, and should childcaring be a protected characteristic under the Equality Act?
• How has the gender balance in childcaring during the pandemic affected employees and the risk of a claim for direct or indirect sex discrimination?
• Is the UK’s legal framework for family friendly policies keeping pace with societal trends?

The pre-pandemic issues surrounding working parents have not gone away, and are still very much on the agenda. We consider what changes we might see in the law moving forward.

In our news section, we cover:

• New research from TLT showing an increase in employees using interim relief applications. These can be challenging and costly for employers to deal with, and many HR teams will never have seen one before.
• A recent reminder of the need to be flexible to help parents with childcare commitments – particularly where a flexible contract has already been agreed.

Useful links:

EHRC Working Forward campaign

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