Carers First is proud to announce our award of the ‘Essex Family Friendly Employer’ charter-mark as part of the Essex Family Friendly Charter, developed by Essex County Council (ECC).
The charter, which sets out how employers can help parents and carers manage their work and caring commitments outlines a set of minimum principles that employers in Essex should meet to be deemed family-friendly.
As part of ECC’s Levelling Up strategy, the charter is designed to encourage local employers to contribute by adopting and promoting family friendly principles in the workplace for working families and carers.
The charter-mark identifies organisations, like Carers First, as a network partner of a group of organisations across Essex, working to share, shape, and develop good practices; leading the way in supporting carers and families in the workplace by agreeing to adopt to three main family-friendly policies.
The three policies which support the fundamental concepts of a family-friendly strategy and culture, cover flexible working, annual leave and supporting parents outside of term time, aiming to help working families to better juggle family responsibilities with work and enhance wellbeing within the workplace.
Following a recent staff survey, it was highlighted that nearly half of staff working at Carers First identified as a working carer. We understand that balancing care and or parenting with work can be tricky and so are highly motivated in talking to our staff team and other organisations about the need to support carers and families and how we can best work together to achieve that.
Alison Taylor, Chief Executive of Carers First says:
"At Carers First, we understand that balancing caring or parenting with work can be challenging, so we are committed to providing a family friendly workplace for our staff."
We hope that being awarded the Essex Family Friendly charter-mark will provide further confidence to our staff teams that we are here to support parents and carers with managing their caring commitments. We also hope the charter-mark will encourage potential employees to join our team when looking at career opportunities with us.”
At Carers First, we appreciate that to have an engaged workforce, we need to provide rewarding work in a positive environment, so that our employees want to deliver their best for carers every day.
We understand that to be truly effective, we must take into account the changing needs of our employees as they enter new stages of their life; such as parenthood in addition to or as well as taking on a caring role. These aspects often change people’s priorities, with people needing support from employers to balance their work and personal lives like never before.
To see the charter and a list of employers who have been approved, visit the ECC website. To sign up to the Essex Family-Friendly Employers Charter, contact Essex.Partners@essex.gov.uk
Online Help and Advice
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