What Makes a Workplace Truly Family-Friendly?

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20 August 2025

The UK’s national charity for working parents and carers is developing a Family-Friendly Workplaces certification — the first of its kind in the UK.

The Family-Friendly Workplaces Certification programme originated in Australia in 2021, launched by Parents At Work and UNICEF.

The certification is now expanding across the UK through a collaboration with Working Families, a not-for-profit organisation that advocates for working parents and carers. It will allow businesses to follow a framework to measure how family-friendly their operations are, alongside an action plan to continue developing as a certified Family Inclusive Workplace.  

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Redesigning the Workplace for Inclusivity 

The programme’s core message is that family-friendly practices are not just a question of ethics, but a question of tangible business benefits. Working Families reference a 2022 Institute for Employment Studies trial where it was found that offering flexibility for frontline staff resulted in a positive return on investment within three years, primarily due to reduced absence rates & staff turnover.

Flexible working also has an effect on sickness absence rates. A study by Unison found that sickness rates reduced from 12 per cent to 2 per cent when employees started working flexibly.

Creating a supportive workplace encompasses several areas. The certification uses a framework of Global Work + Family Standards which aligns with the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals. The framework involves: flexible work, parental leave, leadership culture, family care, family wellbeing & measurement.

A family-friendly workplace could look like:

• Providing the right technology so employees can work flexibly
• Having a formalised paid parental leave possibly that’s accessible to all genders
• Providing paid breaks with access to an appropriate, comfortable, private space for breastfeeding and expressing breast milk and storage.
• Putting support in place instances of pregnancy loss including stillbirth, miscarriage and early pregnancy loss, perinatal and post-natal anxiety and depression
• Support for fertility and pre-natal care
• Policies and support for employees who may be experiencing family and domestic abuse or violence

Jane van Zyl, CEO at Working Families said: “For too long, businesses have lacked a clear, evidence-based framework for what truly makes a workplace family-friendly. This certification changes that. By giving employers the tools to assess, improve and embed family-friendly policies, we’re helping to create workplaces where parents and carers can thrive at work whilst fulfilling their caring responsibilities. In turn, businesses will see higher retention, engagement and productivity, and create a culture where employees feel valued and supported.”

The certification has already received backing from founding partners Deloitte UK and TLT LLP, and UK organisations can carry out a self-assessment to evaluate how they perform against the Global Work + Family Standards and to check if they are eligible to be certified as a Family-Inclusive Workplace here.

Picture: a photograph showing a person sitting at a laptop with a small child on their lap. Image Credit: Pixabay

Article written by Ella Tansley | Published 20 August 2025

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