20 cheap and easy family friendly ideas for your business

Becoming family friendly does not have to be an expensive process. Here are some ideas to implement straight away:

1. Schedule meetings within normal working hours;
2. Ensure your staff take their annual leave in the year that it is due;
3. Negotiate flexible start and finish times;
4. Allow staff to have a say in rostering arrangements;
5. Introduce make-up time so staff can make up hours if they need to attend an appointment;
6. Allow your staff to use their sick leave entitlements to care for family members;
7. Broaden the definition of 'family' (to include more distant relatives) for the purposes of bereavement leave;
8. Provide information on local contacts to help staff find child care, school holiday care and elder/respite care;
9. Provide an emergency phone for employees to contact family members (eg an older child sick at home);
10. Allow staff to take annual leave in single days;
11. Allow staff to use work mobile phones for emergency family reasons;
12. Discourage weekend work and staying back late in the office except in exceptional circumstances;
13. Introduce a 'keep in touch' plan for staff on maternity leave;
14. Hold a 'Bring your Child to Work' day or a family picnic day;
15. Allow leave without pay for cultural purposes;
16. Extend social events such as happy hours to families and partners;
17. Consider the needs of partners and families in any relocations and movements;
18.Introduce a workplace policy for breastfeeding employees;
19. Include a summary of your company's work and family policy in a letter of offer to new employees;
20. Put work and family issues on the agenda to discuss at the next round of negotiations for your workplace agreement.

(Source: DEEWR website)