The national charity for working parents and carers, Working Families, has announced that North East London NHS Foundation Trust (NELFT) has been awarded a place on its prestigious and competitive list of the top family-friendly and flexible employers in the UK.  Now in its fourteenth year, employers large and small from across the public, private, and third sectors compete annually to gain a coveted place on the charity’s list of Top Employers for Working Families. 

This year’s Top Ten Employers for Working Families – in alphabetical order – are:                

• Audit Wales
• Citigroup
• Crown Prosecution Service
• Grant Thornton
• Imperial College London
• NatWest Group
• North East London NHS Foundation Trust (NELFT)
• Pinsent Masons
• Welsh Parliament
• Yorkshire Building Society

Employers were assessed using Working Families’ Benchmark and were scored on four key areas to build a comprehensive picture of their flexible and family-friendly policies and practices that specifically support parents and carers.

Simon Hart, Executive Director of People & Culture at NELFT, said:

“I am delighted that NELFT has received this accolade and proud of all the continued work we have done to ensure that we are a flexible and family friendly employer. At NELFT we are very aware that there is a direct correlation between how well we look after our colleagues and how well they are able to look after our patients and their families. We have a responsibility to support our colleagues with families and this improves the morale of all within the NELFT team, making this is a great place to work. I am proud of how we have developed supportive initiatives for colleagues year on year, and with our partnership with Working Families, I am confident we can continue to provide the best support possible to our staff’.

Some of the supportive initiatives we have in place include:

• Supporting parents of neurodiverse children and additional needs with bespoke workshops and wellbeing support.
• Flexible log for colleagues to outline the flexibility they need to balance work with their unpaid caring responsibilities.
• Parents & Carers Staff Network, hosting regular workshops and training, providing colleagues with a safe forum to reflect and share challenges.
• Workshops for managers to help with managing their roster in a flexible way, redesigning patient facing roles to be more compatible with carer’s personal lives.

We are excited to build upon this work and our next focus is on providing fertility support to colleagues.

The Benchmark—which captured the experience of over 330,000 UK employees across the organisations that took part— highlights trends in flexible and family-friendly policies and practices. This year the key findings include:

• 86% of this year's Benchmark entrants already offer flex from day one - showing that the best employers are already well-prepared for the new legislation coming in 2024.
• 92% of employers assess some, or all, jobs to determine the potential for flexible working prior to advertising.
• 78% of organisations provide details of the options to work flexibly on their website.
• Almost half (48%) of employers are already using the ‘Happy to Talk Flexible Working’ strapline and logo on all their job adverts.

Jane van Zyl, CEO of Working Families, said:

“We are delighted with the standard of entries for this year’s Top Employers for Working Families list. These employers show they are leading the way in building family-friendly and flexible workplaces in the UK and are already ahead of the curve when it comes to implementing the changes needed to comply with the new flexible working legislation coming into practice next year. Almost nine out of ten of our Benchmark entrants are already offering flexible working as a day one right.”