There are around 1.8 million single parents in the UK, with women making up 90% of single parent households. The weekly cost for a child depending on a lone-parent household is on average £328 per week, which includes childcare, rent and council tax. Moreover, the United Kingdom Office for National Statistics has reported that children of single parents are more likely to suffer from mental illness. This can be linked to the single parent working long hours and spending less time with their child.
As an employer you should acknowledge and support the difficulties that your single-parent employees may be facing outside of work, because this will ultimately be affecting their performance within the work environment.
Here are a few suggestions that you can implement within your business to help your single-parent employees manage their work and personal life:
Encourage communication and educate managers
Having a work environment that encourages communication amongst employees and members of staff that are higher up will allow personal issues that are affecting work ethic to be resolved. If a manager can empathise with the issues that its single-parent staff members are facing, then they can understand why work was not completed on time. Understanding and caring about these problems educates your managers and then allows them to support and suggest avenues to resolve the issues your employees are experiencing.
Child care
Some employers provide child care support as a work benefit which can be an attractive quality for current and future employees wanting to work for your business. This can give your employees peace of mind and will show how much your business cares about its employees.
This however can be quite costly, especially if you are a small business, so it may not be feasible. Instead you can be flexible with working hours or offer a remote working option. If you are noticing that a single-parent employee has been putting in a lot of working hours recently it’s good to recognise their efforts but also the impact this could be having on their personal life. Encourage them to go home on time, take a day-off or use their annual leave so that they are making time for their family.
Categorise workload
Ranking the workload that you are giving your employees with a high importance or low importance note can help to reduce stress within the workplace. A simple message that states when the work is due, and if it is urgent e.g. ‘not urgent, due in two weeks’ time’ can give your employees more freedom to fit the tasks around their work schedule.