Government proposals on employer-led childcare

The Government's most recent initiative to reduce the tax and national insurance contributions of childcare in the UK should lead to improvements in productivity and diversity in the labour market according to people management experts, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD). The CIPD believes that this package, combined with new Government measures to facilitate flexible working and subsidise childcare for those on lower incomes, should result in greater participation of parents in the workplace.

The CIPD's Work, Parenting and Careers survey (November 2002) shows that the lower paid are most likely to give up work completely when they become parents; with 22% earning less than 20, 000 giving up work completely, compared with an average of 14%. Meanwhile, the highest earners tend to make the fewest changes to working hours. The new measures are also likely to help women - 72% of women believe that becoming a mother has affected their career while 28% have actively downgraded their career.

Clearly the changes are beginning to filter through into the workplace. As the CIPD's Annual Reward Survey 2003 shows, around one fifth of organisations plan to introduce childcare vouchers for their staff in 2003 as part of their recruitment and retention packages.

Dianah Worman, CIPD Diversity adviser comments, This package should make combining parenthood with a successful career a more realistic expectation. For far too long, far too many of our parents have been forced to choose between family and careers owing to soaring childcare costs and inflexible working practices. Business needs to make sure that it does not miss out on the added-value they can derive from flexible working.

We are delighted that the Government has removed many of the supply and demand obstacles to combining work and early parenthood successfully - namely, to give parents a legal right to ask for flexible working, to make the childcare tax and national insurance exemptions package more comprehensive and to subsidise childcare for the lower-paid.

Worman concludes, Employee autonomy, flexibility and choice will also be improved by widening the workplace nurseries exemption to cover all forms of registered and approved home childcare. This will be enhanced by a new measure to free employers from the responsibility of managing childcare arrangements. This will allow organisations and employees to tailor their childcare arrangements to their specific needs.

Other key findings from the CIPD's Work, Parenting and Careers 2002 survey show that:

* The majority of parents (52%) believe that becoming a parent has affected their career.

* 28% of women have actively downgraded their career since having children, but only 9 % of men interviewed have done so.

* Nearly half of the 503 respondents had changed their job or role since becoming a parent. Women were twice as likely as men to cite family commitments or lack of family friendly policies as a primary reason for the change. Women are also three times more likely to have changed their working patterns than men, with only 20 % continuing to work the same hours as previously.

* Just under half of the working parents interviewed (46%) worked in organisations where some form of flexible working was available (flexi-time, job-sharing, annualised hours etc). Prevalence of flexible working policies was highest in the service industries and the public sector, whereas only 29% of parents working in the manufacturing or production industry had flexible working options open to them.

* Where flexible working was available, take-up was high - 81% on average. Men and women of all age groups, across all industry sectors and organisation sizes, are keen to take advantage of flexible working arrangements. 15% of working parents work from home more often than previously, but this option was only available to about two-thirds of the sample interviewed.