Fathers at work

Fathers at home, fathers and children, fathers at work: fathers are at the top of lots of ‘to-do’ lists amongst policy makers and campaigners right now, and while this has not been an overnight development there is a real sense that fathers could soon be about to acquire some new rights which could be game-changers. Coupled with a wider evolution in attitudes amongst men about what it means to be a ‘good’ father, there is a shift underway which will affect the way men who are fathers want to integrate the family and work parts of their lives. This has potentially far-reaching consequences for employers as the UK workforce still (broadly) relies on the full-time male work model, underpinned as it is by long-established cultural and economic beliefs.

So what do employers need to know to help them understand and plan policies and practices in the future which will ensure they are making the most of the fathers in their workforce? This briefing will look at some of the current research on fathers at work, the implications for employers, and how fathers’ contributions and effectiveness at work can be positively affected by their employer.

What does current research tell us about fathers at work?

The issue of work-life balance for fathers is of major social significance in the UK, for three reasons. Firstly, family policy emphasises the need for fathers to be more involved with children, in the pre-school and infant years which are crucial in relation to later child development, and especially in relation to families with limited incomes. Secondly, the economic situation has changed, and labour market participation in the UK among women with pre-school and infant children has risen sharply over the past 30 years since the advent of equal pay acts and anti-discrimination policies. Thirdly, divorce rates and rates of family breakdown have also risen, meaning that fathers may be less able to rely on mothers to manage the father/child relationship on men’s behalf but must work to establish meaningful father/child relationships on their own behalf. This affects not only divorced and separated fathers, but also men within intact relationships. 

To the above can be added a new attitude towards family involvement for men. Fathers are spending more time caring for children now than in previous decades. But it seems this isn’t enough. Research also  shows many fathers are dissatisfied with the amount of time they spend at work and the amount of time they spend with their children. Some 54% of fathers with children under one feel they are not devoting enough time to them, while 42% of fathers feel they are not able to spend enough time with their children. Additionally, 62% of fathers think that, in general, fathers should spend more time caring for their children: fathers are working long hours, too, with six out of 10 working more than 40 hours a week.[1]

How does this desire for better work-life balance play out in the workplace? The fact is that men are less likely to access work-life balance policies than women. This may be because full-time employment continues to be associated with masculinity. Thus, the small number of men who do downshift paid work so as to spend time their children may find themselves the target of criticism and mockery, especially in the UK and the USA.[2]  

In a study of dual earner couples in America, it was found that, even in late modernity, a ‘good’ family man appears still to be regarded as one whose main focus is paid work. Researchers have found that even where supposedly gender neutral work-life balance policies exist, employed fathers in Britain and America are discouraged, by employers and colleagues, from seeking ‘flexible’ part-time work.

Tellingly, research from the US has found that more fathers are experiencing work-life conflict than mothers, particularly in families where both parents work. ^[3]  As Alison Maitland, visiting fellow at Cass Business School points out: “Companies that base their talent management or marketing strategies on the assumption that women do all the child care are out of date. Also, organizations that want to promote gender diversity in their top ranks need to understand what’s happening to a growing proportion of men in their workforce. Instead of continuing to focus all their gender-diversity efforts on women, companies would do better to take account of the other side of the coin. Enabling men to play their full role as fathers is good not only for children and families but also for women’s progress in the workplace and for developing more rounded leaders of both genders.”

This tension between fathers’ stated desire to have more flexibility, and the cultural norms which pull them in the direction of work does not appear to be relieved by the development or availability of flexible working policies. Research has shown that men’s experience of the Right to Request flexible working has not been as positive as it is for women: more men than women have their requests turned down[4]. Other research by Working Families found that when men do work flexibly, they often tend to do it informally and below the radar, fearing that if their arrangement was widely known it would negatively affect the way they were perceived at work[5]. This is, of course, not an unfounded suspicion on the part of men. They will have seen for themselves the ‘mummy track’ in operation, and the career experiences of women who choose to work in a flexible way post-maternity will not assuage their fears.  It seems, then, that although men may want to work more flexibly, they feel inhibited from doing so as a result of organisational and societal bias.

Other factors

It is hard to talk about work-life balance within families and between parents without factoring in the pay gap. When parents sit down to do the sums about how work and care is divided up, all too often the choices are made for them when payslips are compared. The better pay men receive (the full time pay gap is estimated currently at 17% and the part time one at 39%), combined with the cultural expectations noted above, together form a powerful bond which attaches men to work not just in the short term, when their children are young, but throughout both parents’ employment journeys as the gap widens between them and their careers take different trajectories.

But if men do want to work flexibly, they start with a built-in disadvantage. The Right to Request flexible working offers the same legal support to men and women. But the limited compensation available under the Right probably acts as a disincentive to potential appeals by employees – why bother to pursue a grievance if even a positive outcome is not likely to adequately compensate you? Employees may, instead of relying on the Right to Request, decide to turn to sex discrimination legislation instead. However, sex discrimination law does not support men in the same way that it does women. Whereas women can argue indirect sex discrimination to take a case to an Employment Tribunal, men cannot. (Men can, of course, use the sex discrimination legislation – if they are directly discriminated against because an employer offers flexible working to women but not men). This is a problem for men. The Right to Request does not have enough teeth if they think they are being unfairly treated, and they cannot fall back on indirect sex discrimination legislation either. This sends a subtle signal that men’s rights around flexible working in the workplace are not considered as important as those of women.

Men’s stress and engagement at work – new findings[i]

Working Families and Lancaster University Management School are currently researching men’s levels of stress and engagement at work, with a particular interest in men’s participation in family life, and how their working life affects (and is affected by) their efforts to reconcile work and home life. Early data from the first phase of the research indicates that for the fathers surveyed engagement with work is low, and lower than that of other groups of employees than is generally found. It is accompanied by high levels of stress and self-reported physical and mental ill-health. In particular, motivation amongst these fathers is low. Why is this? Lack of control over work is identified as a contributing factor by them, and they have also identified work interfering with home life as a problem. Fathers questioned so far also seem less committed to their jobs than would be expected, which is interesting in light of many of the perceptions about workers’ commitment levels and what constitutes an ideal worker (especially in relation to working patterns) which are often dominant in organisations. One issue that will be probed more fully in this research project is a key one: why, when flexible working and work-life balance options are available to men, and men are not unusually dissatisfied with their work-life balance arrangements, does it seem that some fathers are still more unengaged and less motivated than other employees? What’s not working for fathers? The next stages of the research will compare organisations by sector and against an established baseline to determine to what extent these factors may affect the stress and engagement of fathers at work.

What is going to change now, and in the future?

The big gain that is coming for fathers, at least on paper, is the extension of paternity leave. All three main political parties are promising some flavour of this, with Labour committing to having it on the statute book by April 2010 (before the General Election) for implementation in April 2011 if they have been re-elected. Employers will need to plan for this, and align and develop policies in accordance with the new legislation. However, it is by no means clear how many men will exercise this new right, (although the Government estimates 10,000 to 20,000 men  - only 4-8 % of those eligible) and if experiences in Scandinavian countries are studied, where men enjoy well-paid entitlements to longer periods of paternity leave than in the UK, employers will probably not have to brace themselves for a huge rush. Likewise, extensions to parental leave as proposed by the EU will, on paper, increase fathers’ entitlements to take time off work; whether men actually use this is far from clear. Parental leave is not much used, and while it remains unpaid will probably continue in the same pattern.

The campaign to increase paternity pay to match maternity pay (90% of full salary) could find resonance with policy makers, and may, in the short term, be the issue which most affects the way fathers flex their work-life balance muscles. A significant proportion of men (40%)[6] don’t take paternity leave, the overwhelming majority because they can’t afford to. By increasing the rate at which paternity leave is paid, more men would take leave around the time of their child’s birth, and for the full period. Of course, for employers who already top up to normal salary levels this will have minimal impact, but for others the change could be significant. It would also develop the acclimatisation to a place where men taking extended periods of time off work for family reasons is more and more usual.  Working Families’ Take up Top up campaign calls for more men to be eligible for paternity leave via less onerous qualification criteria, and for employers to top up paternity pay to normal salary levels.  Whilst the idea of increasing statutory paternity pay is less likely, there are reasons to be hopeful that policy makers will take the necessary steps to increase the length of paternity leave in the future.

Business arguments

Are there sound business reasons for encouraging men to work in a way which allows them to balance work and home better? After all, won’t this mean that you will lose some of the valuable hours that men are currently putting in at work? Considered from a straightforward position where a workforce is comprised of some idealised employees –always available, never unwell, untroubled by a life outside of the workplace, immune to stress, then perhaps there would be a case. But that isn’t the real world. As we know, men increasingly feel that they want to be more able to have a better balance; if they can’t get it then the risks increase of disengagement and performance drift. Denying them the opportunity to be more flexible, either through overt or subconscious cultural mechanisms, might be a losing strategy; you might keep them at work for a longer time, but the quality of that time will be negatively affected. And old employer of choice arguments may gain new currency if men start to compare workplaces on the availability and acceptability of work-life balance arrangements.

From a business perspective, what we have now is a victory of short-term economic interest over long-term economic interest.  The costs of this arrangement are the pushing of skilled and knowledgeable women in droves out of suitably skilled jobs. More employers need to realise this, and tap the pool of talented women who are qualified and skilled, while freeing their organisations to be able to accommodate more men working flexibly. Employers who manage to become gender-blind in their work-life balance implementation and culture (not just in policy) will develop a business advantage over those who seek to recruit from a dwindling pool of men who neither want nor are able to forego a better work-life balance. This will mean a lot of work for organisations. Gender bias can be very deep, even in the most well-intentioned workplaces, and HR and diversity leaders will need to examine how organisational goals are being supported by current structures and procedures. However, the gains should be large; the demand for better flexibility for men will not only come from them but from employed women too. If flexible working and work-life balance is, at the moment, at a stage in its development where individual arrangements are accommodated by the system, a tipping point where the system itself changes to work with employees’ lives is likely to come when enough men begin in earnest to demand flexibility. Men hold the key to greater flexibility for all, and through this, to better business performance.