10 tips for company owners to support their employee’s family life
Making sure that your employee’s home life is supported is essential as a company owner. But how can you do that? Read on to find out more…
Striking a good work/life balance isn’t always easy but, as a company owner, it’s something you should always help your employees to achieve. There are plenty of different scenarios and circumstances which might affect someone’s family life. This means it’s vital that you are clued up on some of the ways you can make things a little easier for them.
Employment law in London, and everywhere else in the UK, can be complex. This is especially the case if your employees feel as though their needs are being neglected. So, working alongside them to find practical solutions is increasingly important.
To learn more about what you can do to support your employee’s family life as a company owner, keep reading…
10 tips for supporting your employee’s family life
1. Be flexible with working hours
The standard nine till five working hours don’t work for everyone – those with children will certainly attest to that! So, if you want to support your employees with their family lives, then you’ll need to make sure that you offer flexible working hours.
This could involve allowing later starts and later finishes, longer lunch breaks, or even certain days off during the week. This will give your employees the chance to spend a little more time with their families, without necessarily reducing the number of hours they are working.
2. Avoiding Being Intrusive
If someone wants to keep their home life separate to their working life, then they should be allowed that privilege. For some, work offers a welcome distraction from their home life and a chance to focus on their passions.
That means you shouldn’t be intrusive or nosy. If your employee would rather focus on their work, then you should just leave them to it.
3. Be understanding
This should be a given – be understanding of your employee’s home situation. If their work performance has dipped because of their home life, scolding them or giving them negative feedback isn’t going to be helpful for anyone. So, what can you do?
Well, if there’s an issue in someone’s home life that is affecting their work performance, then you should work with them to find a constructive solution. For example, if someone’s finding it difficult to get to work on time because of the school run, then offer for them to start later so that they aren’t rushed off their feet. Simple solutions like that can have a number of positive impacts.
4. Allow employees to continue working remotely
By this point, we’ve all become accustomed to working remotely. But, when life goes back to normal (at this rate, who knows when that’ll be), you shouldn’t rush to bring everyone back into the office straight away.
Remote working has its pros and cons, sure, but the fact that it has helped many people with their home lives has proven to be incredibly useful. And everyone likes working in their comfies, right?
5. Set up wellbeing teams
If you want to make sure that your employee’s family lives and mental health are being well looked after, then you should look to set up a wellbeing team within your business. A wellbeing team can act as a source of contact for anyone who is finding their home life difficult to cope with, providing advice and guidance where necessary.
Employees may find it difficult to speak to more senior members of staff about personal matters. So, having the opportunity to speak to a dedicated team – anonymously if they wish – will prove to be very useful.
6. Trust your employees
As a company owner, trust is everything. You’ve either employed your staff directly or worked with your management team to arrange an appointment, which means that you should be able to trust that they will work to the best of their abilities.
If someone tells you that they need to take some time to look after their children, or a family member, then trust them to do so, and come back to work whenever they’re ready.
7. Encourage employees to use their holiday time
When work is busy, some people may feel a little guilty about taking their holiday. If you want to support your employees’ home lives, then you should encourage them to take that holiday. It’s there for a reason!
If someone works too much, everything will come round in a vicious circle. Their home life will suffer, the quality of their work will decline and so on and so forth. Make it known that making the most of holidays is vital!
8. Allow employees to bring children to work where suitable
Every parent has probably been there at one point or another. It’s the summer holidays, your childcare has fallen through and there’s no one around who can look after your little one.
As a company owner, you should be understanding of the fact that your employee might have to bring their child to work with them every once in a while. So long as it’s not every day, it shouldn’t be a problem!
9. Incorporate life updates into one-to-one meetings
If you like to have one-to-one meetings with your employees, then make sure it’s not all just work, work, work. Take ten minutes at the end of your meeting to ask some questions about their home life, just to see if everything is okay. Your employee will then have the chance to share as much or as little as they like.
People are often very good at covering up whether they are finding things difficult away from the workplace, so there’s no harm in checking in every once in a while.
10. Follow your own advice
You need to set an example as a company owner. That means, if you’re giving out advice about taking holiday and working from home, then you should do yourself!
If you’re answering emails while you’re supposed to be on holiday, that could send a message to your employees that they should be doing the same when they have time off. So, make sure that you do as you say.
Are you looking to support your employee’s home life?
So, there we have it! Those are just some of the ways you can support your employee’s home life as a company owner.
Have you got any more tips you think would be important to know? Feel free to leave a comment with your own suggestions!
