Why do you want to work for a Family-Friendly Company?

Company ethos includes fulfilling duties to the country, society, and citizens. They need to be responsive to the needs of everyone and be inclusive of everybody in terms of employment, benefits, and marketing approach. Companies have to be sure that their products will cater to the most significant number of people as much as possible.

And companies must give allowance to some people who need to fulfill their duties to country and community. Aside from that, they must also make sure that they cater to the needs of people who are, one way or another, marginalized and make their opinions matter, and be part of the overall discourse of society and community.

One way to be responsive to the community’s needs is to make companies family-friendly. The concept itself encompasses almost everything, all the business practices and policies of a particular company. Therefore, a family-friendly company could impact society in a lot of ways.

Family-friendly companies could benefit society at large. They could impact communities in more ways than one and could significantly affect the economy, culture, and other institutions. But what is a family-friendly company, and what are the things you need to do to make your company responsive and make it a family-friendly company? Let us count the ways.

What is a Family Friendly Company?

A family-friendly company is a company that seeks to balance an individual’s need for employment and source of income and the need to care for his family. A family-friendly company ensures that employees have the best of both worlds and that measures are taken and policies in place to that effect.

Here are some of the things you must do to make your company indeed a family-friendly company:

Ask the support and advice of experts

Seek the guidance of people who should know best. Experts on corporate and labor laws and their relation to family, community, and society abound. They can help make yours a family-friendly company by helping you craft policies, rules, and regulations that are pro-family and promote a family-friendly workplace and environment.

Expert advice and opinion are of utmost importance because policies should be crafted carefully, should not be haphazardly made, and should be genuinely responsive to the idea of a family-friendly company. Clarity is imperative regarding policies to avoid gray areas and ambiguity, ultimately affecting your goal of being a full-fledged family-friendly company.

Experts can also advise you to create the perfect ambiance, atmosphere, and environment ideal for a family-friendly company. It can help you create departments or job positions that are best suited for individuals with families and help you hire those according to their qualifications and the demands of their family life.

Implement diligently family-friendly policies

The law explicitly mandates that companies implement specific policies, and those of being family-friendly are no exception. You must implement those policies, to the letter, to ensure that you are compliant not only to the laws but to the basic tenets governing a family-friendly company.

Rules governing hiring people who have families must be followed, and so does the laws concerning benefits and accomodations. Among these are paid leaves, such as medical leaves, incentives such as tax breaks, and other rules governing salaries and bonuses.

If possible, the company can even provide legal support to parents who might be embroiled in some cases or have legal problems involving their children and family, such as maltreatment and child custody cases.

Of course, all of the policies, rules, and regulations of workers with families should not prejudice other employees. Implementation of it must be fair and reasonable and must be in accordance with the law and the overall company policies and regulations.

Offering family-friendly jobs in your company

Having family-friendly jobs ensures that your company remains faithful to the basic principle of a family-friendly company. If possible, try to offer jobs that specifically cater to parents who need to care for their families even as they perform their jobs and duties in your companies.

One fine example would be providing work-from-home alternatives for specific individuals with families. Part-time jobs could also be offered for others who only have a particular time in the day to perform specific jobs. Such an arrangement would be a big step in helping those people and fulfilling your goal to be a family-friendly company.

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Learn from other family-friendly companies

Some companies in the country and worldwide are known for promoting family-friendly policies aside from those mandated by law. These family-friendly employers provide a basic framework for everyone else: from hiring individuals who have children, providing specific benefits for some, and creating an overall family-friendly environment.

You can emulate those companies and try to learn from them. What are they doing right, and how do they make their move in transforming their companies toward flexible, family-friendly ones. You can even improve on what they have done and carve your own niche as a flexible, family-friendly company.

So it is significant to have a model, that aside from those things mentioned, you also know how a family-friendly company looks like. Knowing their essential characteristics will make emulation, learning, and transforming your business into a flexible, family-friendly company far easier.

What is considered a family-friendly company?

Here are some essential traits and characteristics common among family-friendly companies and corporations:

They are always on guard against discrimination

A family-friendly company must ensure that the rights of everyone, especially those of the marginalized and the usually discriminated against, are protected from abuses and forms of discrimination. They promote diversity, inclusivity, and equity concerning policies and provide an inclusive environment and workplace.

Women, in particular, are susceptible to oppression, harassment, abuse, and the like. A family-friendly company ensures that various mechanisms are in place that will prevent occurrences and instances of those things. If ever, a company must ensure that those who may commit those acts will be punished according to law. They provide legal support if also needed.

Being a family-friendly company, for many, is one way for them to show their overall commitment to the fight for social justice and equality. We can expect them to be at the forefront, or vanguards and trailblazers in being family-friendly, the idea itself implicated in the overall fight against discrimination.

They provide enough, and sometimes better incentives

A family-friendly company provides incentives for parents or financial packages to families who may need their support. A family will need more than single individuals, bachelors, and the like working in the same company. Some companies have particular financial structuring that allows them to provide additional benefits for individuals with families.

Incentives could be in the form of paid leaves, additional salaries, or other perks intended for those who have a family to maintain and support. It could also be in goods or even services that employees could avail themselves of. Examples of these are providing free healthcare for employees and their families, scholarships for their children, and the like.

They have a safe and inclusive environment

Every family-friendly company should have it. By safe, we mean an environment that provides decent working conditions for all the employees, but especially to parents who have kids or need to take care of children while at work. So we mean here facilities that could cater specifically to children and kids. Some family-friendly companies have it.

A family-friendly company is parent-friendly, and it must also be kids friendly, with attractions or instructions suited explicitly for them. It could be a small playground, a mini library where children can read, write, or talk among their fellow kids. The kids there can spend their time in those facilities as their parents are engaged in their work.

Those facilities must be for kids of everyone, promoting inclusivity and having an inclusive environment. They promote the ideas of diversity, inclusion, and equity and educate the children formally and informally about the importance of those values and principles at such a young age.

They implement policies accommodating workers with families

Workers with families are so much different from others who do not regarding their time, habits, responsibilities, and duties. Family-friendly companies are responsive to those things. Most of them adjust policies and specifically tailor some rules and regulations to accommodate them.

But the most apparent instances of these policies are maternal and paternal benefits, which are mandated by law. HR accommodation and time flexibility for parents are some things those companies do for their employees. Some family-friendly companies provide transportation and housing to employees’ families, for instance, in the case of expatriates.

Other examples would be assigning employees to family-friendly jobs or assignments, those that allow them to work from home, for instance. Benefits and incentives could also be structured to accommodate further families, like giving them paid leave of absences in place of taking other benefits.

They orient the employees to be family-friendly

Having a family-friendly workplace would not be enough for a family-friendly company. They need to have family-friendly employers and family-friendly employees and co-workers. Everyone must be taught and educated on the importance of family and family values and must be responsive and sensitive to the needs of having a family-friendly environment.

They teach in the employees and staff specific values by including in policies further family-friendly rules and actively promoting them within the confines of the workplace. They conduct seminars and lecture series specifically for their employees to promote family values and make them even more family-friendly.

Being family-friendly and promoting family-friendly values in their companies allows everyone, top to bottom and rank and file, to internalize it and promote it in and out of the workplace. Consequently, they could be the prime, living example of those values and actively promote them in their respective communities and society.

They actively promote the idea of being family-friendly to community

Even as it transforms into a flexible, family-friendly company, a company is never in isolation and exists in a community and society. Being the case, those companies actively promote them in the workplace and the community. In a way, they ensure that society’s gains concerning this aspect are preserved through promotion and vigilance.

Therefore, a family-friendly company promotes policies and actively advocates them in the community. It supports moves, such as legislation supporting families, family-friendly companies, and policies. They do not have qualms in expressing their support publicly, encouraging others to do so.

Support of companies could vary, from stating publicly their support of certain measures to actively lobbying for specific measures or even helping craft policies concerning the implementation of family-friendly rules and guidelines.

Reasons why you should work in a family-friendly company

A family-friendly company is beneficial to society because they help educate employees about family values and camaraderie and promotes diversity, inclusion, equity, tolerance, and other principles of social justice. In short, having such companies is vital to the overall fight for social justice, equality, and human rights.

Those things should be enough reason for everyone to join family-friendly companies, work for them, or at least patronize them. But aside from advocating for those said principles, what are the other benefits of working in a family-friendly company?

You can avail of the benefits

For obvious reasons, if you have a family and want to spend time with them much more and at the same time earn a living, working for family-friendly companies is ideal, the best. You, your partner, and kids could avail of the benefits too, or whatever a family-friendly company has to offer.

Not every family-friendly company, of course, offers the same benefits, though it could be assumed they offer everything that is mandated by law. Things will also depend on your talent, skill, and the particular package benefit a family-friendly company offers vis-à-vis certain job positions.

It would be advisable, then, to look at the best family-friendly companies in the world if you want to maximize the benefits afforded to those with a family. Chances are, the best family-friendly companies also provide the best benefits. If you want to maximize the benefits for your kids, you can look at the best companies for families with children.

They provide the best benefits

If you’re single and do not have a family yet, it is still advisable to join one. Chances are, these companies are one of the best in giving incentives to their employees. If they can provide for others, you can expect them to provide the same for their employees, if not more.

And a survey of the family-friendly companies and corporations confirms such a view. Most are internationally known and known to provide for the welfare of their employees, aside from usual compliance with laws and standards of fairness.

But that should be expected. After all, companies who promote the general welfare, fight for social justice, and advocate it could only expect to give their employees what is due and proper, if not be more generous.

You internalize the culture

Working in a family-friendly company allows you to learn the values, ethics, and principles and dwell in a particular environment that actively promotes such a culture. It allows you to learn to live and interact with others, their partners, and kids. It also allows you to educate yourself about the laws and policies about family, employment, and business. Of course, you can guess that Family-friendly businesses also embrace different cultures and promote cultural competencies.

You become steeped in family-friendly culture, and knowledgeable too, and it enhances your understanding of the need to promote family-friendly companies in particular and general ideas of inclusion, diversity, equity, and tolerance. Working in one of these companies allows you to gain insights into the fight for social justice on the whole.

You can contribute to further promotion of family-friendly policies

 Though there are government policies about it, and there are many family-friendly companies, society still needs to be fully informed about it and the benefits it could afford to every citizen. If you happen to work in a family-friendly company, you can see for yourself how that type of company operates and how they benefit their employees.

You can help educate society about having all companies be family-friendly if possible. You can be an advocate, a resource-person, or even a simple witness to how family-friendly companies work, how they are incredibly beneficial to the family as an institution, and how they can significantly impact society in general.

Promoting family-friendly policies in companies and other institutions is still part of the bigger fight for inclusion, diversity, equity, and social justice. You contribute in no small part to that overall fight if you patronize and work for a family-friendly company and fight for and promote family-friendly policies.

Another suggestion is to leverage HR and Diversity software, or coaches to help your leaders to learn and improve.