How HR Can Support Single Parents in the Workplace

Posted on 18 October 2024
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Single parents often face issues around balancing their work life and home life, in fact over 1.8 million working people in the UK are lone-parent families which make up around 25% of all families with children.

While the stigma of being a single parent is perhaps no longer so prevalent, it is important to acknowledge that these employees will often have a heavier financial burden, more stress, less respite from parenting duties, and potentially need a greater degree of support and understanding from their employers. Nurturing a fair and inclusive environment for these people will pay dividends by enhancing employee wellbeing, which can ultimately boost productivity and improve retention in the organisation.

Get flexible

The power of flexible working cannot be stressed enough. Offering flexi-time, remote or hybrid work options is one of the simplest ways HR can support single parents. Research from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) found that 87% of UK employees consider flexible working a key factor in their job satisfaction. Therefore, for many lone parents, given the opportunity, they would choose flexible hours and working from home. For many, it can be the difference between thriving at work or struggling to manage both professional and personal responsibilities.

This extends to start and finish times as well; being able to offer job sharing or compressed working weeks can mean that parents can better manage school runs, source childcare or any other type of responsibility that might otherwise cause issues at work, a loss of income due to time off or affect the scope for career advancement. Working from home also cuts the daily commute, giving even more time back to beleaguered parents.

Flexible HR technology will be crucial in building a more flexible workplace. A customisable people solution will also benefit other areas of your organisation, such as supporting business growth and adapting to workplace changes.

Nurture career progression

The question of career progression plagues many working single parents, and a study by Working Families found that 36% of this demographic in the UK think that childcare struggles and work negatively impact their opportunities for promotion. It is up to HR teams to ensure that people are not passed over for promotion and leadership roles. This might mean less conventional methods of leadership training, for example, timetables that accommodate single parents’ schedules, and making sure that any opportunities are based on merit and not on keeping regular work hours.

This also applies to performance reviews, where bias might be evident. Rather than assuming a single parent is less committed or less likely to go above and beyond for the business, they should be measured on their skills and ability to do their job. Single parents may well possess more resilience, problem-solving skills, and display greater strength and patience during difficult and challenging situations.

Supporting childcare needs

Childcare is most definitely the one area that hits hardest for single-parent families. They might need to rely on family, and friends, find it too expensive, or worse still, simply unavailable. Lack of quality childcare can often dictate an employee’s ability to work full-time or even remain in the workforce. As the Women’s Budget Group reports, 70% of single parents in the UK are in employment, but many face financial challenges with rising childcare costs with 40% of single parents reporting facing difficulties with childcare costs, compared to 26% of couple families.

How can HR help? Collaboration with employers to create practical childcare solutions is one route. This could include things like on-site childcare, subsidised childcare vouchers, or employee benefits packages that might offer emergency childcare services. Some organisations even offer parents leave-sharing schemes where single parents can swap childcare responsibilities with other family members or trusted networks. Vodaphone, for example, offers 16 weeks of fully paid maternity leave for expectant employees, and a 30-hour week at full pay for the first six months after returning to work. Creating packages which allow for parents to manage their holiday time, or leave, will help build a more psychologically safe culture that is more welcoming and inclusive.

Building a Work/Life balance culture

Everyone wants to work in a culture that ‘sees’ them yet so many workplaces still create an environment that suits a more traditional family set-up, despite non-conventional family units fast becoming the norm. A recent study showed that almost half of children in the UK are now growing up outside the traditional nuclear family. HR can shape a workplace culture that genuinely values work-life balance. An understanding and supportive professional environment can prevent single parents from feeling stigmatised and ‘difficult’ for needing flexibility or for prioritising their family commitments.

This requires open communication so challenges can be discussed without judgement, and policies that support parents and promote work-life balance put in place. HR can go a stage further and establish parenting networks to help people connect and share their experiences. Mental health and wellbeing initiatives can also be impactful. Counselling services can also be accessed through an Employee Advice Programmes (EAPs) to help parents manage the pressures they face.

Learn more about what HR can do to support work-life balance.

How can HR tech help inclusivity?

Having a finger firmly on the pulse of the organisation, HR can look at data to unearth trends that might be affecting single parents. HR reporting tools and analytics can help give insights into how well parents are supported, it can track retention rates and see if inflexible working conditions are contributing to people leaving the business. Career progression data can also show whether people are being supported in their careers and highlight any disparities between single-parent employees and their peers. Additionally, having regular conversations with single-parent employees to understand their needs and challenges can go a long way toward building loyalty and ensuring job satisfaction.

All of this can be monitored via engagement scores and feedback. Pulse surveys, workshops and exit interviews can also help paint a picture of the way the organisation treats its single-parent employees. It can also inform and develop customised benefits packages and garner insights into the type of benefits that would help single parents, such as flexible leave and childcare support options.

A workplace that is supportive of single parents is likely to retain a more diverse and talented workforce and creating policies, and a culture that tells single-parents that they are supported, their skills are valued and they are a trusted member of the workforce, will help create a diverse workforce that wants to stay in an organisation that sees, and values them.

Check out our article on How to build a more diverse and inclusive workplace.