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Webinar insights: Making work more inclusive 

Published: 10 Oct 2023

A woman is standing in front of a whiteboard with a marker in her hand. She is listening to another person who is sat in front of the board.

Our National Work Life Week webinar on making work more inclusive was packed full of practical tips. Our fantastic panel, consisting of Jennifer Liston-Smith, Head of Thought Leadership at Bright Horizons, Max Askwith, Global Innovation Partner at dentsu and dentsu UK Parent & Carer Committee member, and Kelly Spratt, Culture and Wellbeing Specialist at Bank of Ireland shared their insights around ensuring everyone feels supported and can access the flex they need to thrive at work and at home. Here are the key takeaways from the session: 

Harness the power of storytelling  

  • Sharing real life examples can help reduce fears around judgement over taking flex and the impact on career development. 

Make wellbeing a priority 

  • Start to emphasise wellbeing as much as career development. Initiatives that promote physical, financial and mental health such as debt advice, gym memberships, and counselling signal that wellbeing is valued, and formalised check-ins provide a mechanism to ensure employees can voice what they need.  
  • Sign up to the Mindful Business Charter to commit to working in ways that reduce stress and promote better mental health.  

Help manage big life changes  

  • There are lots of reasons why people may need extended time out from work. Lifestyle breaks allow people to take time off without judgement or the fear of it affecting their career.  
  • Provide ways for new parents or returners to connect through buddy schemes or family networks.  

Show you care 

  • Help managers understand the impact of things like fertility, baby loss, and menopause on employees’ work. Emphasise that managers aren’t expected to be experts, they just need to feel comfortable having conversations about tricky topics. Even better when training is backed up by robust policy. 

Put belonging at the heart  

  • Providing on-site childcare facilities or back-up care options not only enables people to do their job but also helps them feel secure talking about family and issues, which cultivates a sense of belonging.  

Consider individual ways of working 

  • Empower employees to find the right balance for themselves by giving people autonomy in how they structure their day. 
  • Help manage expectations on both sides by agreeing ways of working that allow people to create their own rituals and routines within a structure. For example, agreeing not booking in back-to-back calls, and asking people to add their working hours to their email signatures. 

Empower managers 

  • Train managers, not just in the policies, but why they matter. Helping managers understand the ‘why’ behind flexible working enables them to see the business benefits and encourages positive attitudes to flex requests.  

Give the tools to talk   

  • Normalise what a good conversation looks like and ensure consistency across the organisation by providing resources to line managers, such as checklists, so that a structure can be followed.  

Be transparent 

  • Make family-friendly and flexible working policies visible to new hires by putting them on job adverts. It can also help to explain the ‘why’ as well as the ‘what’ so prospective applicants get a feel for your core values.  

Make recruitment bias-free 

  • Use a computer program or platform to remove bias from job adverts, and inclusive hire training will help ensure unconscious bias doesn’t come into play when interviewing.  

Pledge to end ‘salary history’  

  • Help to close the gender pay gap by abandoning salary history questions to ensure people are not pinned to their previous salaries, which holds back women and minority ethnic groups from achieving their salary potential.   

Listen to the experts  

  • If policy makers don’t have lived experience of the policies they are creating, seek out people who do. This can be through focus groups, staff surveys or talking to teams. As well as giving focus to the right areas, they can help highlight gaps and identify blockers or barriers. 

Think creatively about frontline workers 

  • Help frontline workers to access flexible working through both practical and cultural measures. For example, team rostering where the team decide together the schedule and cover to make sure everyone’s needs are taken into account. Alongside this, remind employees of their worth and introduce measures such as providing space for people to take proper breaks during shifts, and debriefing after challenging incidents.   

Get ahead of new legislation 

  • By making it possible to request flexible working from day one in a job, employers can enable more people to access work, particularly women, and get a head start on new legislation coming into effect in 2024. 

To support employers on their journey to designing more flexible jobs, we have launched a Happy to Talk Flexible Working logo and strapline.