American Express Named Among Top Family Friendly Employers

Parents and carers helpline Working Families has announced its twelfth annual list of the top flexible and family-friendly employers in the UK.

This year’s top 10 are American Express, Citigroup, Crown Prosecution Service, Grant Thornton, Independent Living Fund Scotland, Welsh Parliament, North East London NHS Foundation Trust, Pinsent Masons, Natwest Group and Yorkshire Building Society.

Employers were assessed using the helpline’s benchmark, which captured the experience of nearly 500,000 UK employees, and were scored on four areas regarding their flexible and family-friendly policies and practices that support mothers, fathers, and carers. These were integration to organisational strategy and culture, policy, consistent practice, and evidence and statistics.

Additionally, insight from the Employer benchmark report found that 42% of organisations said a lack of line manager knowledge or skill was a barrier to creating a family-friendly, flexible workplace and 86% of employers feel that line managers have shifted to focus more on outputs as a result of changing working patterns in the Covid-19 (Coronavirus) pandemic.

Furthermore, 60% of employers reported that they still had more than 75% of their employees working flexibly. Only 7% of senior leaders were working part-time or flexibly, with 5% being women.

Jane van Zyl, CEO of Working Families, explained that the top employers are “leading the way” in creating workplaces that support the whole person, encouraging and enabling their staff team to get the best possible balance between home and work life.

“As we finally move out of the reactive state the pandemic has put us all in, we know that more and more people will be prioritising wellbeing and flexible working when choosing their next employer. In fact, 69% of parents told us they would apply for a job advertised as flexible over one that is not. It has never been clearer that for a business to attract the brightest and best talent, visibly championing flexible and family-friendly practices is absolutely key,” she said.