Business, Innovation and Skills CommitteeWritten evidence submitted by Gingerbread

Introduction

1. Gingerbread is the national charity working for and with single parent families. Welfare benefits and employment issues form an important part of our policy and advice work. Queries relating to welfare benefits consistently make up around half of all calls to our Single Parent Helpline. We provide information and campaign on key aspects of the welfare system as they affect single parents. It has been a longstanding goal of the organisation to ensure single parents get the help and support they need in order to move into employment.

2. Gingerbread’s response covers the following question only:

What more should be done to promote part-time work at all levels of the workplace and to ensure that both women and men have opportunities to gain senior positions within an organisation while working part time?

3. One in four UK families with dependent children is headed by a single parent. They account for just under two million families, raising three million children, but are twice as likely to live in poverty as couple families. The single parent employment rate has increased substantially over the last decade and a half—by 2012 the single parent employment rate had increased by 14 percentage points from the mid-1990s, to 59%. Part-time work is a particularly important source of employment for single parents, with three quarters of single parents entering work on a part-time basis. However, though the availability and take up of flexible working practices is increasing, some forms of flexible working—especially part-time work—are still concentrated in low paid and low skilled jobs, where opportunities for progression may be limited.

4. The overwhelming need for flexibility means that single parents are more reluctant about engaging in higher paid or higher level work, as they feel that they would have to make too many compromises and sacrifices. Single parents often think—or indeed have experienced—that “high level” jobs involve longer hours and more responsibility, and some have actually lowered the level of their work since becoming a single parent. In some cases this is a conscious choice to take a job with less responsibility and stress, whereas for others it is the result of a trade-off in order to get reduced hours which fit better around their childcare.

5. For many single parents, jobs at higher levels are—or are perceived to be—incompatible with being a single parent. A lack of ambition isn’t the issue: rather that many single parents are unwilling to trade off time with their children for the longer hours and higher stress that are seen to go hand-in-hand with higher status work. However, examples from single parents—as well as from employers themselves—show that it is perfectly feasible for organisations to offer flexible ways of working in jobs at all levels, bringing benefits for both businesses and parents. While it is often offered as a retention tool for existing staff, flexible working is most successful when employers embed it at the heart of an organisation—designed for everyone, central to the way that they operate, and with managers leading the cultural shift needed to make it work. Where this is in place, employers point to impressive business benefits—a positive impact to the bottom line, as well as delivering a virtuous circle of higher employee morale, leading to increased staff engagement, retention and productivity.

6. Our research with employers shows that it is perfectly feasible to organise a business to allow for flexible ways of working, which in turn give the best chance of supporting single parents in work. This is most successfully achieved as part of a whole-business approach, rather than as a marginal concession for single parents (or all parents). Indeed, employers highlight the need to embed such an approach at the heart of their business–designed for everyone (not just parents); central to the way that they operate; and with the necessary effort put in to embedding the cultural shift needed to make it work. Employers are also quick to point out the business benefits of changing the way they work––with not only a beneficial impact to the bottom line, but also to deliver a virtuous circle of higher employee morale, leading to increased staff engagement, retention, and productivity.

7. Our recommendations for recruitment providers/welfare-to-work providers are:

There is a need for tailored support to cater for the particular needs of single parents.

All front-line advisers need to offer consistently high quality advice and support, and be able to build relationships of trust with single parents.

Providers must work with employers to encourage an attitudinal shift towards offering more flexible roles.

A holistic approach is very important, to take into account the need for additional support such as financial advice or help finding childcare, as well as back-to-work support.

Providers should put more emphasis on sustainability rather than job first when job matching or assessing whether to support a single parent to skill up.

Providers need to understand in more detail which employers already have the capacity to offer the jobs that single parents want and need.

Over the longer term, providers need to shift to a model of working with employers to encourage them to rethink job design and their whole approach to staff.

8. Our recommendations for employers are:

Flexibility is most successful when it is embedded at the heart of the business, available to all staff—including from the point of recruitment, not just as a retention tool for existing staff—and modelled by senior staff across a range of roles.

Employers should look at what flexibility they offer at all levels of their organisation.

Employers need to commit time and resources to supporting managers to deliver flexibility and embedding culture change, as well as implementing specific flexibilities.

Lessons should be learnt from other sectors/employers about how to offer a full package of support to staff.

Employers need a strategy to deal with employees’ requests for emergency time off.

In the longer term, it is important that employers take the time to review their whole approach to staffing, flexibility, and the structure and framework of how they work.

9. Our recommendations for government are:

It is vital that government delivers on its commitment to make work pay as Universal Credit is rolled out.

Government must ensure it genuinely delivers on its commitment to provide tailored support for all jobseekers.

Further attention must be urgently directed at delivering universally affordable and available childcare for all working parents. Specifically this should include further financial support towards childcare costs, increased provision for school age children (including wraparound and school holiday provision) and more widely available, tailored support for children with disabilities.

There is a need to build on the ongoing shift towards sustainability (through outcome-based payments) in welfare-to-work provision, and deliver more opportunities for skilling up to support entry into sustainable jobs with opportunities for progression.

Government is well-placed to play a key role in championing enhanced flexible working practices, for example through senior public sector role models and offering flexibility at all levels across government departments.

10. For more detail on these areas please download Gingerbread’s full research report, The only way is up? The employment aspirations of single parents at http://www.gingerbread.org.uk/content/667/Policy-work---employment

5 October 2012