Rather, she thinks about her days as having 24 hours that she can balance between her personal and work lives, and her weeks as seven days that can also be carved up. 

Working across different timezones for Microsoft, she still works more than a 40-hour week but will take time out during the day for a few hours to do something else and catch up on the weekend.

Once a quarter, she blocks out a week where she puts herself on “leave from meetings” to focus on the big picture. She uses the time to focus on strategy, as well as team development and getting across the latest trends in the industry. 

As Director, Specialty Technology Unit at Microsoft, this approach to work is one Wise shares with her team, encouraging them to find what works best for them and being honest about how it’s working out for her.  

“I’m transparent about my challenges and success, and this gives them permission to do the same,” Wise tells Women’s Agenda.  

Microsoft’s approach to hybrid work and flexibility is bucking the trend of the push to get employees back to the office Monday to Friday. Team members can choose between working remotely for less than 50 per cent of their normal work week, or they can work remotely 100 per cent of the time if they have manager approval. 

The flex work policy is centred around recognising individual needs and promoting work-life balance. It also aims to support employees to work during the hours that are best for them in delivering according to expectations. It supports wellbeing and adaptability, but also productivity in recognising that people have individual approaches to getting their best work done. 

A blog post published more than four years ago by Kathleen Hogan, Executive Vic President and Chief People Officer, outlining the approach to flexibility still stands – again bucking the trend of some other tech firms to increasingly get people back to working in more traditional ways. “Moving forward,” she wrote in October 2021, “it is our goal to offer as much flexibility as possible to support individual workstyles while balancing business needs and ensuring we live our culture,” 

Increasingly, we’re seeing how workers want the best of both worlds when it comes to remote working and time spent in the office. Microsoft describes this as the “hybrid paradox”, noting figures from its 2021 Work Trends Index, a study of more than 31,000 workers in 31 countries, finding that 70 per cent of workers wanted flexible work to stay, but more than 65 per cent craved having more face to face time with their teams. 

For Elena Wise, staying flexible on how and when she works enables her to get the most out of her time, and to be constantly thinking about the future. She’ll dedicate headspace for planning, thinking and learning, and try to block out Mondays as meeting-free days – unless she needs to travel or there’s an urgent issue. “I use this time to get on top of key actions for the week ahead, and to upskill on some of our latest AI training, which really helps given how quickly the technology is moving.” 

With a career spanning some of the world’s largest organisations and biggest markets, including AMEX, PayPal and Google and ten years spent in Japan, Wise has developed her work style to be able to respond to needs across international borders. 

Asked how she establishes herself in new cities and markets, she recalls making her first international move and being given the advice always to give such a move at least six months because wherever you go, you’ll need time to adjust culturally and there will be times when you just want to pull the pin. “Patience is key,” she says. “Building relationships and trust is crucial and learning from different perspectives enriches your experience.” 

Wise says she spends time meeting people one-on-one both in work and social contexts, joining local business chambers, clubs and expat groups, and notes the importance of staying connected with current past colleagues and contacts. 

Wise is a pioneering woman in tech, now one of Microsoft’s most senior leaders in Australia and having spent years in senior leadership positions, including as country manager and GM Japan of PayPal and Country Manager of Google Technical Services in Japan and Korea. 

Looking broadly across the tech industry, she wants to see more companies pushing the focus beyond diversity and hiring to focus on inclusion, and understand women’s needs and perspectives. 

“There is a need to provide flexibility and tools for women to work in ways that suit their personal and professional goals, and not expect them to fit into rigid or traditional, often male-dominated or male-created, models,” she says. 

Wise wants to see more male allies getting involved in women’s networks and agendas to understand the experiences women have. She highlights one particularly positive experience of this at Microsoft, where she is seeing strong interest from male employees seeking guidance or support for partners experiencing menopause, which is one of the areas their Families Employee Resource Group is currently focusing on. 

“Companies in all sectors need to support women throughout their life cycle better, not just when they are having children, but also when they are caring for elderly parents, managing illness, or experiencing menopause, for example,” she says. 

Just as there is no one working style that will work for everyone, there is no set communication style for leading a successful team. 

“As leaders, we need to adapt our language and approach for different audiences/team members to help get the best outcomes – be those different genders, cultural backgrounds, or generational adjustments.”

Women’s Agenda spoke to Elena Wise to learn more about flexible work, thanks to our partnership with Family Friendly Workplaces.

This year Microsoft will be measuring their policies against the National Work + Family Standards as part of the Family Friendly Workplace Certification, having been certified for the previous two years already. Microsoft says it’s important employers pursue family-friendly workplace accreditation to demonstrate a commitment to work-life balance, gender equality, and employee well-being, and also for attracting and retaining the best talent and enhancing a company’s reputation. 

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While Ciccone thanked his parliamentary colleagues for creating a “family-friendly environment” in the Senate and encouraged other fathers to bring their kids to work, the fact Ciccone’s proud, baby-holding moment came seven years after Senator Larissa Waters became the first federal politician to bring her baby into the senate was a subtle reminder of the lag that remains in men accessing family-friendly workplace policies. 

This issue could be addressed thanks to changes in how workplaces are required to report to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency. 

Most of us are well aware that the gender pay gaps of employers will be made public on the 27th of February when WGEA publishes such data from firms with 100 or more employees. But this is just one of several changes impacting workplaces that will ultimately affect employees with family responsibilities, thanks to the passage of the Workplace Gender Equality Amendment (Closing the Gender Pay Gap) Bill 2023, aimed at enabling more accountability and transparency on workplace gender equality. 

From April 1, employers who report to WGEA (those with 100 or more team members) will be required to answer new mandatory questions and provide CEO pay details and remuneration numbers for those in Head of Business and Casual Manager roles. These employers will also be required to report on sexual harassment, harassment on the grounds of sex or discrimination. 

Employers with more than 500 or more team members must go a step further. In addition to providing the above details, these employers must include details of their policy or strategy for each of the six gender equality indicators. 

The six Gender Equality Indicators include: 

1. Gender composition of the workforce 
2. Gender composition of governing bodies
3. Equal remuneration between women and men 
4. Availability and utility of employment terms, flexible working arrangements, & support for family & caring responsibilities
5. Consultation with employees on gender equality in the workplace 
6. Sexual harassment, including harassment on the ground of sex or discrimination. 

WGEA has long aimed to address all six of these indicators in their reporting requirements, but these new changes will mark the first time that employers are required to have policies or strategies in place that address all of them in some way. 

All six play an important part in enabling gender equality, but the fourth GEI is particularly interesting for bringing down barriers those with family and caring responsibilities continue to come up against. 

The key word in this indicator is “utility”. Making flexible working arrangements and various support for family and caring responsibilities available is always a good step, but the more difficult and important step is ensuring such support mechanisms are actually used. This means directly reporting the number of employees using such policies and breaking it down according to areas like job level, gender and other relevant metrics. 

The results of WGEA’s 2022-23 Census, launched in November 2023, highlight the opportunity for stronger progress on areas like workplace flexibility and providing greater support to families. 

One area is on paid parental leave, where employers are increasingly evolving their policies to offer better primary and secondary carer leave, as well as much stronger initiatives around removing labels altogether to offer the same amount of leave to all new parents. But the uptick in men taking leave is not moving fast enough.  There was little change in the proportion of men taking paid parental leave in WGEA’s 2022-23 Census results, rising just 0.6 per cent to 14 per cent of those taking employer-funded paid primary carer’s leave. 

And while there has been significant progress around workplace flexibility in recent years, the WGEA results show that part time work is still being penalised when it comes to promotions and opportunities. Just seven per cent of management roles are part time, indicating a “part time promotions gap” which is a problem, particularly for women, given thirty per cent of women work part time. 

While employers have been making progress against most of the six gender equality indicators since 2013-14, when WGEA reporting requirements began, the progress is too slow. The game-changer now is for employers to report on their policies and how such policies and initiatives are actually being utilised, effectively measuring their impact on closing the gap.

At Family Friendly Workplaces, we’ve seen the power of recording and tracking the effectiveness of family-inclusive policies and practices to support employees in combining work and family commitments. Collecting such evidence sees family-friendly workplace policies and practices evolving to meet an organisation’s ESG and gender equality targets. Family-friendly policies, including flexible work, modern paid parental leave, inclusive leadership, family care and wellbeing initiatives, ultimately support gender equality efforts while making the workplace better for everything. 

Senator Raff Ciccone is one of countless dads keen on taking up workplace policies to make their work more family-friendly. In Ciccone’s case, Senate rules changed in 2016 to end a ban on children entering the house during divisions. The focus then was on allowing female MPs to breastfeed in the chamber, but really it’s an opportunity for all new parents to care for their children during the long proceedings when needed, and to also nomalise the mix of family and work for everyone. 

One thing is for certain, workplaces will need to stay ahead of the curve by by embracing family-friendly policies to improve gender equality outcomes to close the gap. 

You can read Family Friendly Workplaces’ free guide on transforming family-friendly policies and practices into gender equality solutions here. 

The post Time to end the lag in men accessing family-friendly workplace policies  appeared first on Women's Agenda.

That’s according to several commentators and surveys in recent weeks, highlighting how this office return will shape workplace trends in 2024. 

But employers pulling back on remote working options is just one of the battlegrounds set to reshape workplace culture this year in Australia. 

Other defining factors will stem from how employers respond to pay transparency, with the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) publishing the gender pay gaps of employers with more than 100 team members in late February. New legislation requirements around Respect@Work and WHS psycho-social hazards have also come into effect. 

There is also greater demand and attention on employers to address domestic and family violence, rethink paid and unpaid leave options, better support the differing inter-generational employee health, care and wellbeing needs, and address the impact of the cost of living crisis on team members. 

One thing for sure is that how effectively employers choose to rise to meet these modern workplace standards and measure the impact will define their ability to future-proof their workforce.  

As such, some of the workplace trends predicted  for 2024 will present an opportunity for the most attuned employers to secure an advantage for sustaining their workforce to underpin growth and productivity. 

Here’s what the best and smartest employers will do in 2024. 

Document and demonstrate flexibility in hybrid and return-to-work mandates 

The ‘fair’ employers encouraging more employees to work from the office more in 2024 will do so by offering a compelling reason for making the trip that doesn’t rely on unfair incentives that create a growing opportunity gap between those who can and can’t easily access and afford to work from an office due to care and proximity factors. 

They will also offer clear and documented flexibility guidelines for managers to ensure their teams are not being unfairly impacted by hybrid work structures. Employees should be given long notice periods on any mandated changes with enough time to adjust their current arrangements. They should also have access to emergency care offerings to support their care responsibilities. 

Meanwhile, fair employers will also plan and get creative around how they bring their people together for in-person opportunities. They will ensure there is purpose in asking their people to commute and recognise that commuting for ‘presenteeism-sake’ is not cost or time-effective.

Publish clear budgets and targets to close gender pay gaps 

Employers are preparing for the impact of having their gender pay gaps made public, with WGEA promising to release such figures for employers with more than 100 team members in February. 

Facing internal and potential public backlash, we expect employers to move fast to mitigate and downplay the issue. 

But fair employers will respond to pay inequality in direct and straightforward ways. They will publish and acknowledge the gaps, highlight how they are introducing accountability measures to sort it out and outline a budget to be spent on closing the worst of such gaps immediately. 

Address employee mental health and loneliness 

Employers must consider the mental health of team members in ways that go beyond offering access to Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs). 

While reactive measures provided through EAPs are still important, in 2024 the best employers will issue more proactive avenues for addressing and measuring mental health. This could come through initiatives to mitigate the risk of burnout and overwork, training for managers and team members and putting greater effort into job design, limiting hours of work and ways of working smarter not harder. 

Loneliness is a related and growing concern for employers, particularly given 2023 research finding that one in six Australians feel “extremely lonely”, with those aged 18 to 24 most likely to report feeling often or always lonely, at 38 per cent.

Addressing loneliness shouldn’t be an excuse to demand team members return to the office, but it could see employers using in-person meetups and events to check in on mental health, create physical connections, and support relationship-building between team members. 

Calm Business suggests several strategies for employers to address loneliness, including specific empathy training for managers to foster an environment of psychological safety, benchmarking and tracking loneliness in the organisation, rewarding employees for supporting others and creating and supporting initiatives like social clubs, employee resource groups, and opportunities to support inclusion and belonging. 

More emphasis and clarity on the ‘S’ in ESG 

When it comes to Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) frameworks, companies have typically focused on the environmental and governance factors and an overall sustainability approach. 

In 2024, the smarter employers will put more consideration into the ‘S’ in ESG: that being the ‘Social’ aspect that runs through to the HR departments and DEI teams and sees employers striving to create a “Socially Responsible Workplace” that understands their role in supporting employees to balance their paid work with their care and family responsibilities. 

As we have found in surveying hundreds of organisations measured against the National Work + Family Standards, most employers find they have work to do to address this social aspect of ESG, in fact two-thirds fail the initial benchmarking assessment. 

Increasingly, we will see ESG frameworks incorporating the move to support team members, especially through things like elevating the importance (while improving policies) of paid parental leave, support for new parents, and supporting those with a wide range of caring responsibilities. 

In enabling flexibility, the best employers will further develop guides and training to embed flexible work practices across their full organisational hierarchy. They will further encourage more fathers to take paid parental leave after initially removing ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ and gender labels on their PPL policies. They will better formalise and communicate their care-related policies and establish clear formal family mental health and wellbeing policies. They will create opportunities to support team members with referrals and access to services that can support their families, such as aged care services, disability services and childcare services. And they will formalise and budget to provide emergency backup care options for team members. 

The ‘S’ in ESG may come into conflict with other predictions for 2024 – such as the expectation that more workplaces will demand team members return to the office more days each week. However, the best employers will see the opportunity to elevate their move to be more socially responsible. 

Opportunities to learn and play with AI 

The AI revolution took a firm hold in 2023 and the focus is set to get stronger in 2024.

Many businesses already leverage AI to improve productivity, respond to customers and produce and test products. 

The smarter employers will take active measures to allow team members to learn more about how AI can support their work, experiment with it, and offer information and knowledge on what more they can be doing to understand AI in line with their future career aspirations. 

These employers should also be able to respond to and anticipate concerns around AI-related job losses – to give team memes reassurances and otherwise the opportunity for upskilling and training in different areas where their jobs may be at risk of AI in the future. 

Training and rewarding managers on empathy 

This year’s best employers will actively support and enable leaders to develop and deploy their skills in communication, conflict resolution and empathy. 

These so-called “soft” skills complement all other trends mentioned above. They are necessary for supporting team members’ mental health and care-related responsibilities, dealing with changes around remote work, and supporting hybrid and disparate teams. These skills are also necessary for work increasingly dominated by AI. 

Empathy is especially critical for leaders to build truly collaborative, open teams that trust each other and not only respect the differences their colleagues bring but actually see such differences as critical to decision-making. 

Position leadership as critical for embedding family-friendly work practices 

Great workplace policies are only as good as the leaders who support them. 

In 2024, we will see the most family-friendly employers in Australia focusing on the role of all levels of leadership in supporting the robust policies they have been developing and evolving over the past few years. 

Leadership around workplace policies starts with supporting and actively communicating the why behind such policies and also involves leaders demonstrating how they are accessing and using workplace flexibility and paid leave options. 

Seek regular feedback from employees and act on it 

Feedback is tough to hear but necessary for an employer to respond to the changing needs of their workforce.

Regular feedback allows employers to respond to continued economic change, understand if current initiatives are delivering, and identify risks and weak spots across the organisation. That’s why one key trend we’ll see from the best employers will be robust and regular evaluation processes, like utilising the Family Friendly Workplaces benchmarking assessment and commitments to act on the findings. 

If more employers act on some or all of the trends mentioned above, we’ll have a much happier, more diverse and more productive Australian workforce. Great leadership can make it happen. 

The post 2024 Workplace Culture Trends: What the best employers will do to care for their people in 2024  appeared first on Women's Agenda.

All too often, when the topic of supporting carers in the workplace is raised, the conversation quickly starts and ends with a focus on women and babies. Wider caring responsibilities of employees often don’t get a look in sadly. Don’t get me wrong, there’s no denying investment in parental leave support is critical to improving children’s wellbeing and development, women’s health, attachment to the workforce and gender equality efforts.  But we can’t pretend or ignore that our employees don’t have wider caregiving needs. 

In reality, most of us will either need to care for someone, or be cared for by someone else, in our lifetime. With an aging workforce, aging population and 1 in 2 Australians living with a chronic health condition, caregiving is everyone’s business and workplaces need to prepare for caring needs of their workforce to rise in the coming decades steeply.

There are an estimated 2.8 million informal personal carers in Australia, with around 906,000 of those being primary carers. Projections suggest the national demand for carers will rise 23% by 2030. These carers play an essential role in society. Their role as a carer can come up suddenly and unexpectedly. The majority of carers say they didn’t have a choice about whether or not they would take on the role, according to research by Carers Australia. 

If we were to replace the informal care work these carers undertake with formal market services, the cost would be a massive $77.9 billion, according to 2020 analysis – and that’s a figure that does not even include accommodation costs. 

But often lost in this conversation is the significant impact to income and retirement savings that comes from being a carer – an impact that further contributes to the gender gap in superannuation and retirement savings.

A report by Evaluate, commissioned by Carers Australia, found that when a primary carer turns 67 their superannuation balance is reduced by around $17,700 for every year that they are a primary carer, while their lifetime income earnings is reduced by $39,600 for every such year. 

Like other aspects of care, it is women who are more likely to do this work, making up 71.8 per cent of primary carers, according to Carers Australia. The number of carers is also increasing, growing 5.5 per cent from 2018 to 2020, due to changing demographics. 

Meanwhile, carers often do this role alongside employment, with a 59.5 per cent workforce participation rate for carers, according to data from the Survey of Disability, Ageing and Carers. 

So how can we shift the conversation at work to ensure that carers are better supported?  

It starts by understanding who carers are, why support is so necessary, and then understanding their broad range of needs. 

Who are Carers? 

Carers are defined by the Commonwealth Carer Recognition Act (2010) as being individuals who provide personal care, support and other assistance to another individual who needs it because that other individual has a disability, a medical condition (including terminal or chronic illness), a mental illness, or is frail and aged. This definition does not include those who provide care as part of paid work or voluntary work, or as part of requirements for a course of education or training. 

Importantly, the Act notes that all carers should have the same rights, choices and opportunities as other Australians. In highlighting the role that children and young people have in being carers, it also declares that all children and young people should be supported to reach their full potential, and declares that “valuable social and economic contribution that carers make to society should be recognised and supported.” 

Critically, the Act states that carers “should be supported to achieve greater economic wellbeing and sustainability and, where appropriate, should have opportunities to participate in employment and education.”

Being a carer and an employee

Carers can face challenges staying in the paid workforce and re-entering the paid workforce and managing their health and wellbeing while taking on paid and unpaid roles. 

So how can employers support these carers? 

First, employers should consider the opportunity to tap into this workforce, where carers are available. Employers can also consider programs and mechanisms for carers to re-enter the workforce, especially when they are no longer classified as a carer – a point where they may have spent considerable time out of the paid workforce, but have learned significant skills regardless. 

Employers must also take stock of the fact the majority of carers are women, and that offering further support to this segment will ultimately also support them in broadening their potential talent pool and meeting any gender-based targets they have. 

As for those supporting carers already in the workforce, many employers will have policy frameworks in place to support carers, but such mechanisms may not be getting used to their full capacity, or may not be flexible enough to support the wide range of carer needs. 

Also challenging for employers in addressing carers is the fact those with such responsibilities cross into all groups, ages, levels and job types across an organisation. In many cases, individuals also don’t identify themselves as carers. In some cases again, these carers may feel their responsibilities outside of paid work are invisible and lack recognition. It may be difficult to articulate their situation to colleagues or managers who typically look to clear-cut policies designed for caring for children. They may find the flexibility they need is more ad hoc or more challenging to plan out and predict, to that of parenting responsibilities. Carers can also deal with the unknown: supporting people in ways they have little to no experience in managing previously, and venturing into administrative work for the first time. 

Carer wellbeing is also a concern, with this cohort of Australians being two and a half times more likely to have low well-being than the average Australian adult (at 55.2 per cent to 25.4 per cent), according to a survey of 5992 carers aged 13 or older by Carers Australia. They are likelier to experience significant health problems, loneliness and financial hardship than the average Australian. The 2022 Carer Wellbeing Survey found that the risks of poor well-being and health increased somewhat between 2021 and 2022 for carers in the 25 to 44-year-old age group and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander carers. 

In paid employment, the CWS identified further challenges carers face, including working fewer hours than they want, challenges with accessing flexibility (with 22.8 per cent reporting no flexibility), and just half of carers in the workforce saying they felt they could discuss their carer roles with their manager or employer at any time. Almost one in seven (15.8 per cent) say they have not disclosed their caring obligations to their supervisor, with younger carers more likely not to disclose this. 

Clearly, there are opportunities for employers to identify the needs of carers across their workforces and also to open more opportunities for team members to discuss and share such needs. 

In some cases, employers can support team members with paid services that can help carry some of the administrative and mental load of being a carer. Navigating the NDIS and the aged care system, for example, can be complex and require significant research and appointments. Employers can consider offering access to services that provide roadmaps and guides to such systems, and even care concierges who can support team members who might be going through the process for the first time. 

There are opportunities for policymakers too, to not only offer more support mechanisms to carers for addressing things like isolation and time pressures, but also for addressing the cost carers can carry into retirement – such as through the introduction of a Superannuation Guarantee Contribution for the Carer Payment, as well as an increase in the Carer Allowance, as recommended by Carers Australia. 

Overall, the 2022 Carer Wellbeing Survey found that those carers with access to support had fewer health and financial challenges and higher wellbeing – indicating the power of employers and policymakers taking up the opportunity to offer greater support. 

Developing and promoting an inclusive carer’s policy is one of the first practical things employers can do to be more carer-friendly.   

Carers are critical to society. Their work and responsibilities can often be invisible behind closed doors. But we all have a responsibility to support them better. 

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Victorian Funds Management Corporation’s investment team is edging closer to reaching gender parity, now at 43 per cent, while across the full firm it is at 50/50 gender parity. 

It’s an impressive result considering that across the industry, women make up just 27 per cent of investment teams, according to the Financial Services Council. 

CEO Kate Galvin credits their numbers as being driven from women in leadership at the firm, including former CEO Lisa Gray, as well as the firm’s head of people and culture, Johanna Neilsen.

But attracting more women is also necessary, given the competition for great talent in Melbourne, as well as the need for diversity in their team to support the best possible decision-making. 

VFMC manages around $80 billion for 30 Victorian public authorities and related organisations. It is tasked with investing for the benefit of all Victorians, and wants to reflect a broad range of viewpoints in their decision making. 

Galvin spoke to Women’s Agenda for our series on leaders in family-friendly certified workplaces, as part of our partnership with Family Friendly Workplaces, a joint initiative between Parents At Work and UNICEF Australia. 

Galvin was appointed CEO of VFMC in October 2021, having developed her leadership career at a time when women were pioneering flexible and part time working opportunities in big firms. She worked in private practice for eight years, before going on to work at NAB and JBWere, where she put her hand up to run one of their key businesses. 

Galvin was pregnant with her first son when she was offered her first leadership job, a fact she told her boss at the time, who she now credits with sharing an initial reaction that the pending baby was irrelevant to her being the right person for the role. She continued to build her career through a decade of working part time, including for a period at Goldman Sachs. 

“I think parents make great leaders because if you can manage little children, you can manage anything. I actually started and developed my leadership career as I also started my family.”

Like so many other women building their careers in the 1990s and early 2000s, Galvin had to fight to keep working and to keep moving through different positions. Critically, she had to fight to show they could work part time – in a way that made them equivalent to those working full time. “So I always expected to get the same opportunities.” 

Galvin today worries about working parents being connected all the time to work through their devices, but actually recalls getting her first Blackberry and the difference it made to her being able to check in with her team on her days off. “That was actually a really massive game changer. It meant that you didn’t have to be at work all the time,” she says. 

Now with VFMC, she is witnessing further shifts again in how technology is impacting the barriers between work and home. At the same time, she is also experiencing the juggle of different care responsibilities — caring for two aging parents. 

“That care is having a different kind of impact on my career. So it shows why it’s important to lean into this idea that having family responsibilities and working in a family friendly workplace can be about so much more than parental responsibilities. It can be your responsibility as a caregiver for anyone in your family.” 

Galvin says a key aspect of their Family Inclusive Workplace certification involved addressing their policies to be inclusive of all forms of caregiving and all family types – especially around widening the definition of family. 

The process has seen VFMC bringing together more experiences, lessons and storytelling around balancing work and life. Galvin recently ran a lunch with team members who had taken parental leave over the past 12 months to get feedback about the experience. “I had six people in the room that had taken parental leave in the past 12 months, and five of them were men – which was really different to what I would have previously expected,” she says. 

On paid parental leave, the firm now offers 16 weeks paid leave for primary carers on either the birth, placement (adoption or foster care) of a child, as well as four weeks of parental leave for partners. With up to 36 further weeks of unpaid leave also on offer, the firm also pays up to 26 weeks of superannuation during both paid and unpaid leave. Recognising the adjusting needs of team members, VFMC now also offers one week of grandparents’ leave for newly born or adopted grandchildren. 

VFMC also partners with Mercer to provide team members the Care & Living program (CaLM), offering families independent guidance, support and advice around planning for aged care.  They have also evolved their personal leave policies to cover a much broader range of leave requirements, including caring for kids during school holidays when you can’t access support. And they have expanded their view and definition of “family” to include “chosen family” and to be as inclusive as possible. 

Working in finance in the heart of Melbourne, at a time when many big firms are putting clear requirements on team members to return to work, Galvin said VFMC is encouraging people to have some time in the office but is taking a much less rigid approach to issuing return to work mandates. 

“The last thing we want is to lose all of the awesome gains we’ve made around trust and flexibility through COVID. I want my team to want to come into the office, rather than being forced to come in. We are calling the next iteration of hybrid working ‘balanced lives’, because one of the core pillars of our employee value proposition is that we lead balanced lives,” she says. 

“It means that every team has a hybrid working balanced life agreement, where everyone says, ‘this is how I want to work’. There are expectations, there are face-to-face components, but every team gets to work it out.” 

All these policies ultimately support VFMC with their mission to ensure they are removing as many limitations as possible on the type of talent they attract. That then means bringing in more diversity, and diversity of thought. 

“When you’re investing large amounts of money in complex markets, which are only becoming more complex and are moving even quicker nowadays, you want to make sure that you make smart decisions,” Galvin says “You particularly want to ensure you are not falling into a kind of chasm of groupthink or where everyone thinks the same.” 

Check out more from our series profiling family-friendly certified employers here.

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As employers look to invest in greater diversity, equity and inclusion policies, the phrase ‘bring your whole self to work’ is often promoted as central to the workplace culture the organisation is trying to foster. 

But without an inclusive leadership culture, these policies will fall well short of their potential. 

And you don’t have to look far to see the result of employers failing on inclusive leadership, even from those with generous policies and the best intentions of being socially progressive.  

Take parental leave policies for instance. Twenty years since being outlawed in Australia, pregnancy and caring discrimination continues to linger (both out in the open and behind closed doors) across employers large and small, and it is acutely felt by new parents pre, during and post parental leave, especially when returning to work. Likewise, for those caring for loved ones with a disability, long term illness and aging relatives.

New data from the University of South Australia, released in August, found that 60 per cent of mothers returning to work after parental leave believe their opinions are often ignored, that they feel excluded, and are given unmanageable workloads. Incredibly, many workplaces still lack basic facilities to support new mothers, with a quarter of those surveyed saying their workplace does not provide appropriate breastfeeding facilities. 

Further, the UniSA researchers found that one in five new mothers were refused their requests to work flexible hours or from home. Thirty per cent of pregnant women surveyed said they received no information about their leave entitlements. 

Almost a quarter (23 per cent) of women said they felt they needed to hide their pregnant belly at work, and 13 per cent of respondents said they were treated so badly during their pregnancy, leave, or after returning to work, that they had no option but to resign. 

Similarly, mothers are not alone, other studies show fathers also report feeling a lack of access and empowerment to be involved in caring duties including utilising flexible work, parental leave and caring policies to contribute to their caring responsibilities because it isn’t culturally acceptable, or safe to do so, in their workplace.

The above results are often symptomatic of a failure of inclusive leadership, not necessarily the policy itself.

It’s fair to say that even those employers who offer great parental leave policies aren’t immune from instances of overt and covert caring discrimination.  Employees often report that it’s their relationship with their manager, how understanding and inclusive they are, that makes or breaks the policy intentions.

Whilst workplaces often focus on policy inclusions when designing them, employees are often being left short-changed and let down by leaders ill-equipped and trained to manage the diverse and inclusive needs of their people.

Who are the inclusive leaders? 

Inclusive leadership is the foundation of underpinning a workplace culture that cares for its people, its customers and its community.

Inclusive leaders recognise the need for policies, and embrace practices that ensure those announcing a pregnancy, taking leave or returning from leave have the options in place to provide the best possible transition to becoming a working parent. 

Inclusive leaders support and enable a workplace culture that encourages all team members to navigate work and life commitments effectively. Inclusive leaders create workplaces where it’s widely understood that there is a zero-tolerance policy to harassment and discrimination of all forms, including against pregnant women, new parents, and anyone with caring responsibilities. 

Inclusive leaders will proactively recognise the challenging periods and moments that matter to an employee and pre-empt where and how they may need extra support. These leaders will listen to the needs of employees, and will actively engage to determine what, if any, issues are cropping up that may be creating barriers and address them.

Inclusive leadership is an emerging area, but one that’s essential for meeting the modern demands of the workplace. 

But few leaders have these skills. Just five per cent of the 24,000 leadership assessments by consulting firm Korn Ferry resulted in leaders classified as “inclusive” – meaning barely one in 20 leaders have this skill.

This is despite separate research by Harvard Business Review finding that the number one determinant of an “inclusive workplace” is leadership, ahead of an employer’s mission, policies, practices and co-worker behaviours. March 2020 research found that what leaders “say and do” makes up to a 70 per cent difference as to whether an individual reports feeling included or not. 

Proactive over reactive 

Other recent studies highlight the importance of inclusive leadership for enabling diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) generally across an organisation. Elizabeth Broderick’s recent review of the culture at EY, called following the tragic death of Aishwarya Venkat, highlighted how even in big firms with competitive employee benefit policies and HR resources, people can feel excluded. 

One key finding from Broderick’s report into EY was on just how variable leadership was across the firm, with some employees experiencing “exceptional leadership” and others experiencing “sub-optimal leadership”, resulting in each person’s experience being shaped by the “leadership lottery”. 

Broderick’s review surveyed 4,500 current and former EY employees across Australia and New Zealand, finding that one in four do, at times, feel excluded. It found that 15 per cent of employees have experienced bullying in the past five years, while ten per cent had experienced bullying, and eight per cent had experienced racism. 

Among Broderick’s 27 recommendations is to review key performance indicators to include expectations that all leaders achieve a certain level of people leadership capability, including in leading diverse teams, in order to be eligible for progression. 

Broderick also suggests introducing further measures for accountability on staff retention, such as by sharing the cost of excessive turnover back to the service line. Additional recommendations include developing the firm’s approach to leadership through training, coaching and mentoring on people leadership, including ensuring that leaders gain awareness of the impact of their style on those they work with. 

As Broderick notes in the EY report, “Leaders at all levels of an organisation establish and influence the culture, but committed and courageous leadership at the top, where power is concentrated, is particularly critical for driving any cultural transformation process.”

We’ve seen at Family Friendly Workplaces how leaders who embrace inclusion become champions for change. They inspire others to follow, and they create workplaces that support the mental health, safety and wellbeing of employees and their families. 

Too often, we see employers relying on Employee Assistance Programs to address issues that emerge in the workplace, alongside office perks like free lunches, gym memberships, yoga rooms or one-off office days and initiatives, like the upcoming (and still very valuable) ‘R U OK Day’. While these initiatives do have a place, they often sit on the side of reactionary approaches, and/or put too much onus on the individual to try and sort themselves out. 

Employers need to be proactive and see the responsibility they have for their own workplace cultures. They need to focus on ‘prevention’ rather than attempting to cure issues that occur, and that’s where inclusive leadership is so important. 

Teaching inclusive leadership

So can inclusive leadership be taught? We believe it can, especially with so much research and analysis now available on how to promote these skills, and given the analysis now available on leaders who have successfully led with this approach. 

According to Dr Juliet Bourke from the University of NSW Business School, there are six core pillars of inclusive leadership. Leaders who embody these principles can drive cultural change. They can improve employee engagement and also achieve better business outcomes. Helpfully, these pillars all begin with the letter ‘C’, and include curiosity, cultural intelligence, collaboration, commitment, courage, and cognisance.

This form of leadership intentionally seeks out, listens to, and acts on diverse perspectives. Under this approach, leaders will make equity a workplace priority, challenge bias and behaviour (including language) that lacks inclusivity. They will understand the need to accommodate different needs and communication styles. They will recognise that every individual has varying priorities and responsibilities. They will be aware of the need for workplace flexibility and will actively demonstrate working flexibly themselves.  

Achieving all of the above obviously takes a huge effort, an open mind and a continual appetite for learning and self-discovery. But the benefits are enormous for what an inclusive leader can personally achieve, as well as the value they bring to others and their organisations.

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One of the first things team members see on The a2 Milk Company (a2MC) CEO David Bortolussi’s desk is a black and white photo of his family.

As Chief People and Culture Office Amanda Hart says, the photograph is symbolic and sets the tone of the organisation from the very top.

Family-friendly policies start with family- friendly leadership, Hart says.

“It’s primarily about igniting the conversation with your most senior leaders first and foremost, to establish the acknowledgement of need, and from there it supports the influence that needs to be done to get decisions made,” she says.

The a2 Milk Company’s NZ beginnings 

The a2 Milk Company was founded in New Zealand in the year 2000 on the recognition that not all milk is the same. Today a2MC produces a portfolio of products made with milk from specially selected cows that naturally produce milk containing only A2-type beta-casein protein and no A1, allowing more consumers to enjoy its unique digestive and other potential health benefits.

Twenty three years later, the company has expanded to four countries around the world, with around 470 workers in Australia, New Zealand, China and the US.

One of their largest customer bases is under 12 months old, with a2 Platinum® infant milk formula providing a core revenue stream. 

But even as a business serving families worldwide, when Amanda Hart commenced her role as Chief People and Culture Officer at the company in September 2021, there was an opportunity to enhance the family-oriented benefits and policies for team members. 

“It was evident that we had a real part to play in supporting our people and promoting a family-friendly workplace globally,” she says.

With the support of the leadership team at a2MC, Hart helped develop family-friendly policies that go beyond the stereotypical nuclear family.

“A family-friendly workplace is one in which any person in our team – irrespective of their family profile or where they’re at in their life journey – feels the environment that they work in is aware of what some of their needs or limitations may be,” Hart says.

“For us, a family-friendly workplace is being attuned to each of our team members as individuals.

“They have their own challenges and narratives and we need to ensure that we’re acknowledging that through working rhythms, how we do our work, the benefits that we offer, the flexibility that’s needed to ensure that everyone can be their authentic selves.

“It may well be that (family- friendly) doesn’t involve a child necessarily, or a parent, it’s whatever you translate family to meaning for you.”

Policies

Among their primary and secondary paid parental leave policies – 18 weeks for the ‘primary’ carer and four weeks for the ‘secondary’ carer – a2MC introduced further support for all family types in 2021 and 2022.

They introduced early pregnancy loss leave, offering up to ten days of paid leave, as well as late-stage pregnancy loss leave that matches the parental leave policy.

a2MC has also introduced neonatal leave, giving an additional four weeks to new parents prior to the paid parental leave.

After establishing these policies, it was time to expand.

“This year, we’ve really looked at what needs to be done to support other team members who are at a different stage in their journey, and it doesn’t just pertain to people that are in that childbearing stage,” Hart explained.

In March 2023, a2MC introduced women’s health leave for supporting people experiencing symptoms of perimenopause, menopause and severe endometriosis, as well as people going through fertility and IVF treatments.

“That was to continue to evolve where we’re placing our focus from a more traditional paid leave perspective, but equally raises awareness,” Hart says.

“Thirty per cent of our workforce is aged between 40 and 65. So we knew that was a huge area for our people and that needed to be addressed through the programs and the initiatives that we offer.”

Feedback

The a2 Milk Company measures the success of their policies based on how the leave is used, as well as surveys of team members. 

And so far, the results have been positive.

“When women’s health leave was launched, I got inundated with emails from men and women across the business saying how proud they were, how relevant and how transformational this offering was,” Hart said.

But there have been some areas of their family-friendly workplace policies that Hart and some of her colleagues believe need improvement.

With a workforce at near gender parity, where 53 per cent of team members are women, Hart aspires to remove the ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ labels from paid parental leave and instead grant the same amount of leave to all parents.

“In a perfect world, I would want to have paid parental leave as being a generic term where we have equal opportunity for the utilisation of leave, irrespective of how you gender identify.

“We’re not there yet…I’d really like to turn the dial on that, but it may take some time.”

And in the process of implementing the family-friendly policies, the a2MC leadership team faced a small amount of pushback, largely from the leaders of the a2MC team in the US who were concerned about the financial viability of offering this leave.

“Initially, when we launched paid parental leave, the US team was resistant,” Hart said.

“It was very different for them. (Most companies) don’t offer paid parental leave in the US.

“But ultimately we got where we needed to, which is global consistency.”

Now, the whole global a2MC team have consistent, family-friendly workplace policies, and even for places like the US, where these policies seem somewhat unfamiliar, Hart said it’s becoming increasingly normalised within the company.

“I think it’s actually just part of our DNA, to be honest,” she says.

Check out more from our series profiling family-friendly certified employers here.

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“There are moments that matter in our life where we have to really sit down and think about what we really want,” Emma Walsh, founder of Parent’s at Work, tells Tarla Lambert on our podcast series ‘Fertility Unfiltered’, in partnership with Genea Fertility. 

“Sometimes we can find ourselves – at a point where you know we’re just so busy on the hamster wheel – just you know going through the motions that we’re not taking stock of actually where we’ve got to in our work or our personal goals.” 

A mum of three, Walsh’s service- Parents at Work- is Australia’s first dedicated return-to-work service for parents and has now helped thousands of working mums and dads juggle work and family life.

Walsh says that if you’re planning to have a baby, there are some important conversations to have.

“My view always is if we can have upfront conversations first of all with ourselves and our partners about what we really want, then those conversations can be really rich,” she says. 

“They lead to really great input from others and you get to talk out loud about what really matters to you, and in doing so, they almost unlock the next conversation that is really important to have – whether it’s your leader or your broader workplace or your HR team.”

While it may feel uncomfortable to open up to an employer about wanting to try to get pregnant or asking for support in your job with kids in the picture, Walsh says it’s worth it to find someone to talk to. 

“I’m always blown away by how sometimes the most amazing – changes are made to an organisation’s policies – because one person – in the beginning spoke up and said something,” she says. 

“So don’t underestimate your voice – your ability to impact change.”

Many workplaces around the country are realising that staff need to feel empowered both at home and work. Family-friendly and inclusive policies allow employees to be happier and more productive. 

One employer leading the dial with a family friendly workplace is QBE Insurance, which not only works directly with its own employees to develop supportive policies and culture but has also partnered with organisations like Parents at Work on projects like Family Friendly Workplaces. 

QBE’s head of diversity and inclusion Catherine McNair tells the ‘Fertility Unfiltered’ podcast that the insurer has seen a lot of positive impact from supporting staff who are coping with serious life changes as well, such as pregnancy loss. 

To do this, QBE works closely with non-profit The Pink Elephants Support Network, which is built on the idea of creating a circle of safety and protection around people who are going through pregnancy loss. 

McNair says the insurance company “introduced additional leave a couple of years ago for people who were experiencing pregnancy loss.”

“What we aimed to do was ensure that our people and their partners felt supported during that time so we actually extended our full paid parental leave policy to all employees which is twelve weeks over twenty four months, acknowledging that the experience, as I already said, is diverse, but that loss is not a moment in time,” she says.

“That it takes time to heal emotionally and mentally and physically and that there can be a number of events – that occur in the future where people need that ongoing support.”

For employers out there looking to support their staff through big life events, McNair says that partnering with nonprofits and other specialist advocacy groups can help develop more sophisticated insight into best practices.

“The more courageous you are as a workplace to have those challenging conversations – the more it normalises the conversation for people,” says McNair, adding that “it supports people leaders to understand what that experience is and what the resources are that we can offer our people, and the more that you will have people who will come forward and seek out those resources.”

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Claire McCaffery is Chief Human Resources Officer at Accenture who has been with the employer for 20 years – working flexibly and mostly from home during her entire career with the firm. 

She started with Accenture when she already had two young kids and before going on to have a third baby, and she continued with the firm when she later became a single parent. 

“It would have been impossible without flexibility,” McCaffery tells Women’s Agenda. “We worked at home with Accenture before most people ever had those opportunities.” 

With her youngest child now 20, McCaffery still works remotely and says things are a little easier on the home side. When they were young, she says it was a juggle. She had support from neighbours, friends, colleagues, and work circle that she cites as significant. McCaffery had a nanny at different points; she juggled different childcare arrangements. But overall she speaks positively about having the opportunity to be with her kids, while continuing her career. She got to school performances, could support with homework, and do pick-ups and drop-offs. 

“It was all I could do. I was focused on being the best I could be at work and managing my children as best as a mother,” McCaffery says. 

Now, McCaffery is supporting more parents and carers at the firm to access the support and opportunities they need to build satisfying careers while engaging in family life. 

Accenture became a certified Family Inclusive Workplace in late 2021, an initiative of Family Friendly Workplaces and UNICEF Australia. 

A crucial part of this agenda is enabling – and encouraging – men to take paid parental leave, which McCaffery says her ex-husband, who was also with Accenture, could do twenty years ago, enabling him to three months to spend at home. Dads taking such stints of parental leave is increasingly becoming the norm at family-friendly employers, but it was unusual in the early 2020s. 

Accenture developed a two-year action plan for further developing a family-friendly workplace culture once they were certified in 2022, mainly on exploring the most inclusive approach to various leave offerings that covered everything from paid parental leave to miscarriage leave and leave to support those caring for a sick family member or someone with a disability. 

The firm now offers 18 weeks of paid parental leave for new parents of all gender identities and is intentionally pushing to normalise men taking leave, working flexibly and becoming active carers. 

The strategy is working. The firm has experienced an impressive uptick in fathers taking leave. Of the roughly 24 per cent of employees in Australia and New Zealand who have used their parental leave policy in the three years since it was introduced in 2018 – around 58 per cent (or almost 700) of the parents taking up such options were men. 

In addition to the parental leave policy, Accenture also offers Assisted Reproductive Treatment leave, with 37.5 hours of paid leave per year for employees trying to conceive via ART, including IVF. They offer flexible work options for those experiencing pregnancy-related illness and leave provisions to those who experience miscarriage or stillbirth. 

To support families, Accenture offers a family group, the Accent on Families program, focused on supporting parents and carers before, during and after parental leave. The goal is to provide a consistent and supportive experience that starts with pre-leave workshops and continues into support mechanisms to transition back into work. 

Accenture says its paid parental leave policies, family-friendly focus, and “storytelling” around flexibility have ultimately helped increase women’s workforce participation and caring responsibilities for men. Also important are several programs supporting female talent, including their ‘Return to Work’ and ‘Career Reboot’ programs, which aim to identify talent that doesn’t have traditional educational qualifications to take alternative reskilling pathways into new positions. McCaffery points to the experience of Rabia Zafar, a Digital Tech Developer Analyst who recently joined the firm. Zafar shares a testimonial on the experience: “As a Pakistani woman with no Australian experience, and as a mum returning from a career break, Accenture made it clear that these points were no barrier.” 

Accenture’s goal of having 30 per cent of their managing director roles internationally filled by women by 2025 has already been surpassed in ANZ, where women hold 32.8 per cent of such positions. Meanwhile, with 39.2 per cent of the workforce being women, Accenture ANZ say they are also well on their way to reaching their stated goal of gender parity by 2025. 

At a time when many large employers are pushing for employees to return to the office, McCaffery’s story of building a leadership career while working remotely and raising young children well before the pandemic pushed such leaders to work from home is a powerful one that demonstrates just what’s possible with flexibility and autonomy. 

McCaffery has accessed numerous opportunities – including promotions, that have ultimately led her to lead human resources. 

And while it takes workplace flexibility to make it happen, McCaffery also notes the work she puts in to ensure she stays connected. 

“I did have an ‘ah ha’ moment at one point, where I realised I need to intentionally expand my networking to make up for what you lose when you’re not building relationships in person. 

“That network is so important. Every job I’ve done, it’s from somebody in my network who has said, ‘Would you be interested in this?” 

Check out more from our series profiling family-friendly certified employers here.

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Despite this, there is a belief it’s time to expand Australia’s definition of progress beyond economic means. When it comes to managing our economy, there’s a view that it needs to be about numbers, but it also needs to be about people’s wellbeing.

It needs to look at whether funding into healthcare and education, for instance, are helping people as intended and boosting quality of life.

Earlier this month, Treasurer Jim Chalmers announced that Australia is developing a national framework for wellbeing with direct links to the Budget. It’s something advocates have been calling for, for some time – a new way to balance the books, using a mix of indicators which aim to improve the standard of living for all Australians.

The ‘Measuring What Matters’ framework will cover five broad themes – health, security, sustainability, cohesiveness, and prosperity. It has 50 indicators, which Treasury “will track.” Three of these indicators relate to children and focus on childhood development, literacy and numeracy skills at school and experiences of abuse. 

They’re broad but important indicators. So, why do they matter?

At UNICEF Australia, we want all children and young people to feel provided for and have an economy where wealth is distributed so that no child or person is left behind. 

We want families to have better access to quality and affordable early childhood education and care. We want children to be safe in the community and in the online world. There needs to be a greater investment in mental health support for children in school. These are just a few areas, where it’s possible to make meaningful changes to the wellbeing of children, young people and their families.

Children and young people make up about 30 per cent of Australia’s population – we should be taking their needs and wellbeing into account and measuring it. Three indicators for children and young people are a good starting point but we need to see a bigger emphasis on improving their wellbeing.

UNICEF Australia and ARACY’s Children’s Wellbeing Index uses data to tell the story of Australian children. That story tells us that while most children are doing well, this is not the case for all. 

Many children in Australia are happy, healthy, learning and thriving. But poverty, increasing mental health concerns, and disparities for First Nations children are very real issues. 

One in six children are living below the poverty line. Seven out of 125 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are in out of home care.

While the government’s Wellness Framework is a great first step, we’d encourage Treasury to use our Wellbeing Index to understand and improve the lives of children and young people across the nation.

Progress with children is something UNICEF Australia will continue to measure – looking at how we’re doing and ensuring Australia continues to be a great place to grow up.

Children also offer a unique return on investment for the government. We know that for every $1 spent on early childhood development, the return on investment can be as high as $13.  

A child who experiences quality childcare may see their employment chances increase by up to 19 per cent and future income lift by up to $30,000 by the time they start working. Failing to act can reduce a child’s future earnings by up to 25 per cent. 

Childhood sets the foundation for adult life, and when we set children and young people up for the chance to thrive, they, as individuals, benefit, and so does society.

By measuring their needs is to set Australia up for future success. 

One day, like their parents, they will pay taxes and invest in much-needed economic growth. They will run Australia and they will raise the next generation of children equipped with the skills and tools we give them now. Their wellbeing forecasts the nation’s future wellbeing. 

Some people will ask what measuring wellbeing will achieve. Right now, we know the process for monitoring and measuring budget investments can improve. 

JobSeeker payments went up to try and help people meet basic needs such as housing, put food on the table and cover the costs of medical treatment.

But short of looking at employment rates, what was the impact of that investment? Did it achieve the desired outcomes? Capturing current accurate data and having pulse check indicators to measure wellbeing, should mean the government can more accurately measure the impact of its budget spend.

And with the surplus announced in the last Budget, now is the time to think about our priorities and where we can make future investments.

We’re told this new approach to wellbeing will evolve and time will tell if these ambitions can be realised, let’s hope not just in the realms of wishful thinking.

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For a child born or adopted from July 1 2023, the Commonwealth-funded Paid Parental Leave is up to 20 weeks (or 100 payable days). The payment is flexible, meaning eligible families can claim it in multiple blocks until the child turns two. There is no longer a requirement to return to work to be eligible for the entitlement. Changes expand eligibility and purportedly give families more choice in how they share the leave. Notably, references to defining parents as a ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ carer have been removed.

But many experts agree, the much-needed PPL changes do not go far enough and argue that they won’t deliver the transformation required to encourage men to take up the leave. To achieve paid-parental leave equality and see the benefits of parents better sharing care loads, it will take both the government, and employers, to seriously invest in funding, advocacy and education to shift the current status-quo.

What do we mean by shared care in this context? It means establishing a foundation supporting fathers to take extended periods of paid parental leave where they can bond with their child, take part in their early care, and then continue to play a strong role in the unpaid work at home. 

Achieving better balance in care helps everyone. Fathers get more valuable time with their children, mothers have better opportunities to pursue paid work and their careers, children benefit from stronger connections with their parents, and the country sees an uptick in GDP thanks to greater women’s workforce participation. The business case is powerful for the nation, just as it is powerful for employers to promote policies that can promote shared care to assist in attracting and retaining the best possible talent.

Australia has a long way to go in achieving this balance. Just 12 per cent of those taking employer-paid ‘primary’ carer’s leave are men, according to the latest data from the 2022 data from the Workplace Gender Equality Agency, despite more than half of employers now offering it to men and women. The ABS previously reported that dads account for just 5 per cent of those taking the government-funded PPL on offer for primary carers. Seventy percent of women, compared with 42.4 per cent of men, are participating in housework, and women are spending three hours and 34 minutes a day in childcare-related activities, compared to 2 hours and 19 minutes for men. 

Meanwhile, fathers continue to face stigma and barriers around taking on this care. Last week, new research from the Gidget Foundation found that only one in three new fathers felt well supported by their workplace after having a child, with only one in five feeling supported during their partner’s pregnancy. 

Shared parental leave policies can help to narrow these gaps, foster an equal division of unpaid care and paid work, and improve the work-life balance of families. 

The minimal increase to the number of weeks available under the Commonwealth-funded paid parental leave scheme from 1 July is to be followed by further incremental increases to reach 26 weeks by the year 2026. This leave continues to be paid at the minimum wage. There is no requirement for employers to top up.  

Unfortunately, even when elevated to 26 weeks, Australia still falls well behind the world leading nations on paid parental leave – who also happen to be world leaders on gender equality, according to the latest Gender Gap Index, from the World Economic Forum. Iceland, Norway and Finland took the top three spaces on this Index, with all three boasting PPL schemes that pay new parents more than a year of PPL, at around 80 per cent of a parent’s wage. These countries also boast strong ‘use it or lose it’ provisions to encourage Dads to take leave by making it financially viable to do so. 

Back in Australia, the childcare reform package introduced this month is another small step towards enabling more parents to share the care, in that it should make additional days of care more affordable for families.  

Too often, we hear of mothers in dual-parent, heterosexual households cutting back on work days or deciding not to return to work due to childcare costs making it “not worth it”. While such costs should always be considered shared in such a household, a number of factors lead many mothers to see this as their cost to weigh up, when determining whether additional paid work makes financial sense. Those factors include mothers earning less than fathers, and mothers being more likely to already work part time or be returning to work following a career break. 

The childcare reform package with the changes to the subsidy that will appear in payments from 10 July will make a real impact on making it easier for mothers to pick up additional days of work, or perhaps pursue early childhood education opportunities for their child for the first time. The result? The opportunity to better share in paid work and ultimately better share the care. 

So what next for promoting shared care in Australia? It’s unlikely we’re going to have further significant government-backed reform to paid parental leave in the near future. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has previously acknowledged that his government’s legislated changes are a “national minimum standard” and a foundation for a wider system, with “enlightened employers” competing to offer working parents the best possible deal. 

It’s clear, the government is expecting employers to step in, and we need them to.

Employers funding PPL is on the rise.  Many are adjusting their policies to meet the expectations of modern families and to attract and retain talent. This includes removing ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ carer labels, eliminating previous tenure requirements to ensure such leave is offered from day one on the job, and paying superannuation during periods of parental leave.  But it’s not just funding and flexibility that’s needed, we need employers to double down on pregnancy and carer discrimination that persists in workplaces.  Gender bias around caring responsibilities is not only harmful to women’s workforce participation, pay and leadership representation, it hurts men too when they are excluded from care-giving.  Men will not take parental leave if they do not feel it is ‘safe’ or affordable to do so.

Now is the time for more employers to recognise the business case for PPL and to do a health check on what they are currently offering to see how they can complement the government’s paid scheme. 

We must also continue to advocate for greater commitment from government to increase PPL funding beyond 2026 to be more in line with the OECD average of 53 weeks and to pursue a universal early childhood education system that delivers for Australian families and educators, not only for the sake of our future generation, but also for our economic growth.

Parents At Work have today released the Whitepaper Advancing Shared Care in Australia through Paid Parental Leave: The business case for employers to take action. The Whitepaper helps employers to understand the current state of play and what they can change to evolve policies that support their people but also their business.

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Angela Wilcox remembers the “treadmill” of school and childcare drop-offs well, and personally knows the value of anything that can ease the pressure of balancing a leadership career with family life. 

She also knows parents have different levels of support available to them, whether that be through a partner, grandparents, friends or childcare. The necessary “village” it takes to raise a child does not look the same for everyone. 

Now raising teenagers – which brings other challenges – Wilcox is the Chief Officer of People and Culture at HCF, a Family Friendly Workplaces certified workplace. It’s a position that has shown her how many opportunities exist for employers to play a part in supporting more parents to access their own village. 

One big opportunity is in removing barriers to paid parental leave access. HCF has just updated their paid parental leave policy to offer 18 weeks to all new parents, regardless of whether they are “primary” or “secondary” carers.

Rising from a previous policy of 15 weeks for primary carers, this latest change makes the expanded benefit available to all employees who bring a new child into their lives; through birth, adoption, surrogacy, or permanent kinship or foster care. 

It’s available from day one on the job and superannuation contributions are also importantly made on both paid and unpaid leave for up to 52 weeks for all new parents. 

Wilcox says these shifts are a huge win for the employee experience, particularly in ensuring a fairer and more flexible approach is offered, and they ultimately support the business in attracting and retaining talent. 

“Changing that eligibility period particularly was huge,” she tells Women’s Agenda. 

“We were seeing really great talent coming in but then not being able to access that leave simply because they hadn’t been here long enough, even though it would ultimately make them more productive and happier at work.”

Also game-changing in this latest shift is the introduction of grandparents’ leave, giving grandparents up to five days of leave to help care for their new grandchildren. 

And HCF has introduced up to five days of paid leave for pregnancy loss, acknowledging the challenges and difficult period those families who experience this loss face. 

Meanwhile, the health insurer continues to offer the popular KidsCo program, first launched in partnership with Parents At Work during the pandemic to provide safe, virtual social activities for children aged five to 12. The program, provided by qualified educators now continues during the school holidays giving parents additional support to help juggle their work and family priorities. 

HCF has also made a digital Work and Family Hub available, provided by Parents at Work, with access to their Care Services Marketplace. This provides their employees with access to source a range of care solutions including babysitters, nannies, tutors, and NDIS care workers.

With flexibility in sharp focus, and HCF currently considering how they can offer further opportunities, particularly for their frontline workers, the evolved family-friendly initiatives help to foster the “village” required to support families.

As a member organisation, Wilcox says HCF sees this change as an opportunity to take a leading stance on promoting a family-friendly Australia, and again promote the necessity of the village everywhere. 

“When we had the discussion with our senior leadership team, we talked about employee impact, member and community impact. Only when we get a critical mass of employers pushing the boundaries do you get that societal change. It’s important we’re demonstrating that as an employer,” Wilcox said. 

HCF became a family inclusive certified employer in 2021. It was through the certification process that Wilcox says they were able to undertake a comprehensive review to see what they were doing well and address opportunities for improvement.. One such improvement was the opportunity to promote shared care at home. 

“This is about making it fair. Normalising it for both men and women to take parental leave, to work flexibly, to have those opportunities to be home with their families. And to better share the care and the mental load.”

Being supported by a “village” – be it friends, other family members, grandparents or your local community – makes a real difference to parents and carers, and consequently to those they care for. Also, this village ultimately enables more workplace gender equality and women’s workforce participation. 

From Wilcox’s own experience in raising young children, she notes the support she had from her partner who took time off from his career during that period, as well as support from her own parents.

“It meant less emphasis on the traditional dynamic, we set the foundations early on that made our lives easier. And it did enable me to pursue my career in ways I may not have otherwise been able to do,” she said. 

“I’m aware I’ve been lucky to have those direct supports. But I’m always mindful that there are women who don’t have that. Single parents, immigrants, women facing financial hardship and other challenging situations. It can be so hard for them to get help and support, that’s where these sorts of employer policies can help make a very practical difference.” 

Check out more from our series profiling family-friendly certified employers here.

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