Parents in Australia have never been more stressed – and it’s women’s health that is being impacted the most.
According to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA), women make up 70 per cent of unpaid carers in Australia. Most of the time, these women are juggling their caring responsibilities on top of their career.
In fact, a survey from this year, commissioned by Parents At Work and UNICEF Australia, found that almost three quarters (74 per cent) of women carers and mothers felt stressed balancing work and family commitments. This is compared to 57 per cent of fathers and men with caring responsibilities.
That’s why it’s imperative for employers to promote the health and wellbeing of parents and families in the workplace – and no one knows this better than CEO of Parents At Work, Emma Walsh. As a global education and policy advisor business, Walsh dedicates her life to campaigning for parental leave equality to create more family friendly workplaces.
Walsh will be speaking at the 2024 Women’s Health Summit in Sydney on September 4 about family friendly workplaces. We recently asked Walsh some questions about how employers can help parents and families at work.
1. What are some of the barriers that parents and families face in the workplace?
Overarchingly, we know that most workplaces policies and practices fall short when it comes to adequately supporting people to manage work life conflict. Particularly, when it comes to balancing care-giving responsibilities. Workplace cultural and societal norms around care-giving, access to flexibility and management role models all intersect having an impact an employee’s wellbeing, satisfaction and engagement at work and at home.
In fact, more than 1 in 4 parents and carers report they are considering leaving their job in the next 12 months due to difficulties combining work and family responsibilities.
Parents and carers told us the barriers they come up against in the 2024 National Working Families Report:
- Managing expectations at work was seen as one of the biggest challenges parents and carers face in the workplace when balancing work and family commitments with 37% indicating as such.
- Long working hours are an issue for 23% of parents and carers who cite this as their top difficulty in the workplace.
- Flexibility is seen to come at a professional cost with 50% of parents and carers believing that their commitment to their job would be questioned if they use family-friendly work arrangements
- Lack of access to childcare at work or childcare subsidies or rebates from their employer is one factor contributing to women continuing to bear most of the caring load and household duties despite working largely the same hours as men. 41% of women versus 29% of men believe it would be a useful strategy to support them with the juggle.
- Negative perceptions around family-friendly work arrangements are stopping some parents and carers from using them with 50% of parents and carers agreeing that their commitment to their job is questioned if they use family-friendly work arrangements. For example, 22% of women and 12% of men who took parental leave reported receiving negative comments from managers and supervisors as a result of taking time off.
- The most common reason for not taking longer parental leave was financial reasons which was reported by 69% of women and 38% of men. 51% of men also stated that they did not take longer parental leave as they were not eligible based on their company policy (21% for women)
- Entrenched structural barriers related to gender roles remain as a perceived obstacle for parents and carers with 48% of parents and carers agreeing that employers are less likely to support men to take time off to care for family than women and 56% agreeing that it is more acceptable for women to use family-friendly options than men.
2. What’s one thing that workplaces can do to better support women and families at work?
We know from the report that those parents and carers that work for organisations that are certified as a Family Friendly Workplace are more satisfied with their work life balance (65% versus 58% from non-certified companies), with 83% more likely not to apply for a different job that did not offer flexibilities (compared to 74% from non-certified companies)
Employees want to work for an employer who cares about their work life wellbeing.
How employers can better support ALL employees reduce their work life conflict is to is to benchmark their workplace people policies and practices to see where provisions are falling short. Address the cultural caregiving gender divide in your organisation – disrupt gender bias through encouraging and role-modelling equitable access to family-friendly workplace policies. Both women and men need to know they are equally supported to balance work and family life.
3. What’s one key thing you’re working on right now that you’re really excited about?
We’ve started rolling out our custom made ParentKIT App that delivers our Parental Leave Transition Program.
Our mission is all about making Australian workplaces more family friendly. Every day we’re busy benchmarking workplaces and helping employers to improve outcomes for their people to balance their career, family and wellbeing needs. We’re helping employers to improve their social impact footprint.
We do this via our work + family care solutions and we’ve just launched a pioneering new app for parental leavers that connects employees and managers to improve the parental leave experience. It’s a game-changer as the app allows employers to brand and add content, making it a truly customisable program to suit their workforce. It’s vital to support both employees and managers and this app serves both and can be administered by the employer. It’s an Australian first product of its kind!
There is also the free benchmarking tool we’ve created for employers to self assess their progress – the information gathered is aggregated to provide industry wide trends on which workplace sectors are underperforming and how they compare to others and that’s very useful data for industry groups so they can start addressing key areas of development needed, specific to their sector. Our data dashboards that we’re creating will provide a blueprint of Australia workplaces social impact footprint.
4. Can you share key things you regularly do (or aspire to do more) that really supports your wellbeing?
Regular breaks. It sounds simple but it’s really about getting the basics right. Regular breaks means being realistic about what you can get done in a day. Set realistic daily goals and keep moving….it’s easy to get stuck in a rut in endless online meetings all day if you’re not careful. Daily dog walks have become therapeutic moments for me to walk and think and get away from the desk. It’s also about planning bigger breaks, like your next holiday. I think of my working weeks in sprints of school terms and I make sure I take a week off at the end of each term to pause and re-energise.
Thinking about what’s the most important priority, if I do nothing else today, what needs to get done – at work and at home – is a mantra of mine. By boiling it down to the things that really matter in any given day helps me to keep things in perspective and manage the overwhelm.
5. What do you want more women to know about their health?
To remember the oxygen mask message, you can’t help others, if you can’t breathe.
1 in 2 Australians live with a chronic health condition. That’s an alarming statistic. Good health and wellbeing has got to be one of the most important things we invest in if we value our longevity.
Research tells us that they five key lifestyle factors for improving longevity: healthy diet, regular exercise, healthy weight, no smoking, and moderate alcohol intake.
Get tickets and find out more about the 2024 Women’s Health and Wellbeing Summit here.