Sign up to be an Essex Family-Friendly Employers Charter

The Essex Family-Friendly Employers Charter is a set of minimum principles that employers in Essex should meet to be deemed family-friendly.

Not all employers can offer flexible working. However, family-friendly policies are about more than being able to work from home.

The charter sets out how employers can help parents and carers manage their work and caring commitments.

By signing up to the charter, employers agree to adopt family-friendly policies.

Family-friendly strategy and culture

To foster a family-friendly strategy and culture, employers should:

• promote a positive culture and attitude to different ways of working
• support managers and employees to talk about different working arrangements
• during induction, provide information about the opportunities and process to make a flexible working request
• make information around family-friendly practices and workplace benefits for families easy to access
• make roles open to part-time and flexi-time where possible, including senior positions
• where possible, provide support for employees such as mentoring, resilience and aspiration building and peer support networks
• provide part-time staff with equal access to training, development and opportunities to progress

Flexible working

In line with the employers’ needs, employers should aim to:

• offer a range of flexible working options such as flexible working hours, working from outside the main office, condensed hours, extended lunch breaks and acceptable breaks for family commitments
• advertise jobs as flexible (where flexible working options are possible)
• start from a position of “yes” when it comes to flexible working requests
• provide advance notice of shift patterns

Annual leave and supporting parents outside of term time

To help employees manage work and caring commitments, employers should:

• provide a range of leave options to support parents such as dependent leave, unpaid leave, emergency care leave and options to buy extra leave
• ensure information about leave options to meet family commitments is easy to access
• consider who may need leave, flexible hours or flexible workplaces during holidays for childcare purposes

Download the charter as an accessible PDF: Essex Employers Family-Friendly Charter (PDF, 190KB)