Information and awareness
Promotion of rights
All legal measures regarding flexible work time arrangements and work-life balance should be promoted within the company. All employees should be empowered to claim their rights.
Life stage consultation
A meeting or consultation between male employees who are about to become fathers and their executives.
The purpose of the consultation is two-fold: awareness raising and information. The aim is to start reflection on how to balance work and family and to provide information about the rights and possibilities of the expectant father, with a focus on national legislation and available company measures.
Relevant topics of such life phase consultations might be:
- Discuss the employee's thoughts on how he will balance work and family life.
- Information about rights with regard to parental leave.
- Motivate the employee to use his rights.
- Information about rights as an employee with children when he returns to work after leave.
- Information about the company’s measures and initiatives in this area.
- Ask the employee about his needs regarding the work-life balance
Leader training
Executives need competence on issues related to work-life balance and information on employees’ rights in this area. These topics must be integrated into the regular leader training and also be a standard topic in meetings and seminars where executives or people working with human relations meet.
HR meetings and HR-development talks
Work-life balance and (self) care topics should be addressed in meetings and seminars where executives or human relations executives meet.
These topics should also be integrated into regular HR-development discussions, thus making it normal for employees as well as superiors to reflect on this. Some suggestions for topics: monitoring of work at home offices, upcoming fatherhood, overtime work etc.
Parental seminars
Seminars for future parents can be organized by the company's Personnel Department. Such seminars should inform employees of their legal rights with regard to balancing professional and family obligations, as well as specific practices/mechanisms operating at the company level.
Pamphlet
Another source of information on rights and opportunities is a printed pamphlet that can be handed out to all employees. The pamphlet can contain information on rights regarding parental leave and the company’s measures and initiatives in the work-life balance area.
Website
The company’s intranet or official website can be used as a source of information about employees’ rights. This goes both for public rights and the rights you have as an employee of this specific work place. The company can use the website to motivate employees to use their rights.
FOCUS
The project Fostering Caring Masculinities is an EU-sponsored project with five partners; Germany, Iceland, Norway, Slovenia and Spain. The project has aimed to examine and improve men’s opportunities for balancing work and private/family life in order to encourage the preparedness of men to take over caring tasks. To reach this goal the project has focused on companies' framework conditions to perceive and include men as actors and target groups in equality policies.
Each partner has carried out studies in two different companies, one private and one public. The guidelines presented here are based on these work place studies and examples of existing practices from other companies.
Fostering Caring Masculinities
