6 Ways You Can Take Park in National Work Life Week

National Work Life Week is the annual campaign designed to highlight the value of flexible and family-friendly practices in the workplace. As an employer, you can use the week to showcase how your workplace is enabling everyone to thrive both at work and at home.

Here are 6 ways you can start promoting a better work-life balance for your team, starting today!

Lead from the front

One thing we know is that for culture change to work, it needs to be led by action and role modelling from the top. Involve senior leaders and your CEO in National Work Life Week from the start (get it in their diaries now!) and make sure they are a visible part of your activities.

Do any of your senior team work flexibly? Part-time or flexed hours? Job share? Different locations? Ask them to write a blog to mark the week and share their experiences of flexible working.

Would your CEO be willing to lead a webinar? This could be alongside team members with different experiences (parents, carers, people with other commitments outside work) to highlight the benefits diversity, flexibility, and family-friendly working brings to the organisation.

Get the conversation going

Use this week as a chance to put flexible working and worklife fit at the top of the agenda by starting a conversation about different ways of working with a staff webinar, a roundtable, or a lunch and learn.

Topics could include top tips for flexible working, returning to work after family leave, and best-practice policies for parents and carers.

One size doesn’t fit all

Although there has been a lot of emphasis on home-working and hybrid working recently, there are so many other ways in which people work flexibly; for example, job sharing, annualised hours, term-time working, shift swapping, and compressed hours. Take the opportunity to broaden the understanding of flexible working in your organisation by showcasing different working patterns.

Support your managers

Good line manager support is vital to the success of flexible working. Set your managers up for success by giving them the skills and resources they need to manage flexible or hybrid workers. Encourage managers to speak to and support each other - discussing what works and doesn’t work in one team might help someone in another area.

Communication is key

Use this week as a chance to put the spotlight on your own family-friendly policies and employee benefits. Run seminars, use your intranet to highlight a different policy each day, or do an all-staff Q&A to help promote what you are already doing and to ensure you reach the widest audience possible. If you have a parent and carer or family network, you could also emphasise the vital role they play in supporting parents and carers within the organisation.

Shout about switching off

Use this week to ensure that your staff team is finding time to disconnect, and check that line managers feel they have the skills and messages to encourage their teams to switch off on time. Encourage senior leaders to ’leave loudly’ and message their teams when they stop working, sharing what they are going to do in their free time. Use it as an opportunity to show that productivity doesn’t decrease when people finish on time; it often increases!