In last week’s Spring Budget, Jeremy Hunt announced that children as young as nine months will be offered up to 30 hours a week of free childcare.
Great news for many future parents, but for lots of working parents and carers, the proposed full implementation date of September 2025 is just too late!
And as hiring managers up and down the country know, we’re in the midst of a hiring crisis, so losing great accountants because they can’t afford or find reasonable childcare seems like a great shame and an unnecessary loss of talent.
Jeremy Hunt said in his budget speech ‘For many women, a career break becomes a career end. Our female participation rate is higher than average for OECD economies, but we trail top performers like Denmark and the Netherlands. If we matched Dutch levels of participation, there would be more than one million more women who want to work, in the labour force.’ And just imagine how many of them might be talented accountants – a good chunk, we’re certain.
So what is it that Denmark and other Scandinavian countries get so right?
A 2022 Global Survey identified Denmark as the top country to raise a family and the reasons for this were a mix of state support and family friendly cultures. You may not be able to influence levels of state support as a hiring manager in public practice, but you can certainly champion a family friendly culture.
Here’s our Top 3 Tips on how you can support parents in your workforce and experience better recruitment outcomes as a result.
1. Look at your flexible working policy and consider the talent that you are losing from your firm’s pool if you decide to drive away great staff who can’t find the right balance between their responsibilities at home and work.
Systems that have made a real difference to the lives of working parents include flexibility over core working hours, hybrid or remote working, a four-day working week , job shares and part-time working.
And be sure to take advantage of the tax savings on offer for firms who adopt a salary sacrifice childcare voucher scheme.
Look at your leave procedures. Do you offer more than statutory pay when staff take time away for maternity, paternity or caring leave? Enhanced statutory pay is a reward we’re seeing more often from our best performing firms. We’ve seen firsthand that it makes a positive difference to staff attraction and retention.
And as an example of best practice in the best place in the world to raise a family, in Denmark, parental leave takes the form of full pay for the first 44 weeks or at 80% if parents opt to take 54 weeks. What’s more fathers MUST take a minimum of six weeks off work to allow for time to bond with their child and play an active role in caring for it.
Some firms in the UK have already adopted similar policies. New Dads at Aviva Insurance currently benefit from exactly the same leave entitlement on the birth of a child as their female counterparts! Now that’s a perk worth staying loyal for, don’t you think?
2. Lead by example.
On a call with a client recently, the team at Public Practice Recruitment Ltd were delighted to speak to a CEO working from home with a poorly child watching a film just off camera.
Employees feel alone at sea when they are managing a childcare blip or a logistics challenge, despite the fact that it’s almost inevitable that colleagues up and down the organisational hierarchy will have experienced similar situations.
Obviously it’s not appropriate to work alongside your children as standard, but if leaders can showcase that sometimes it’s the best option, junior staff will feel less desperate and therefore will be less likely to leave when these situations arise.
3. Really focus on your Diversity and Inclusion.
D&I makes a big difference when it comes to gender bias and the gender pay gap in the workplace. A lack of women in the talent pool is what drives the disparity and the lack of women in the workplace is partly caused by a lack of great and affordable childcare.
Embedding workplace values that champion diversity and showcasing a commitment to making the world of public practice a welcoming one for everyone, does make a difference.
We’ve created some helpful resources on how you can nurture D&I in your firm at the following links. We hope they are a help.
Your Inclusive Recruitment Strategy
Eliminate Unconscious Bias in Recruitment
Diversity and Inclusion as a Management Priority
To work with a recruitment partner who can support you to retain a loyal workforce with strategies that focus on inclusion and practical solutions for working parents, carers, those with additional needs and much, much more, reach out to the team at Public Practice Recruitment Ltd today.
