Introducing… Championing New Dads At Work
Championing New Dads At Work (Edition 1)
This weekly newsletter saves you time and effort by providing you with a range of resources, inspiration and topics related to fatherhood and equality.
Each week I will share content around the Inspiring Dads' 5 Pillars of "Championing New Dads at Work"
These 5 pillars go to the heart of how I help HR leaders support their new dads, enhancing gender equality at home and at work, improving well-being, performance and culture.
Fathers Day
In the UK, our Fathers Day is fast approaching - Sunday 19th June. Many weeks ago, when I was buying T20 cricket tickets for us and another family to watch Middlesex v Kent at Lords I was surprised to find one of the 4 adult tickets was a fathers day freebie. Winner!
But Fathers Day isn't just about free slog fest cricket tickets, comedy socks or multi packs of craft ales. It's about talking about real dad stuff - the pressures, the emotions and fears. I have four speaking events in the week either side of Fathers Day. One's a panel event where I'm the moderator and a couple are a blend of presentation and interview style - getting real with "a real dad", not that I'm a fake dad of course, but one who doesn't talk about UK Government's Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) research...
The best thing about all of this is that in two examples I'm talking to men to set it up.
This is actually quite a big deal.
The chairs or co-chairs of the "Working Parents Crew" or the "Family and Carers Committee" are inevitably female. Meeting dads who are taking on those roles, while clearly not being ground breaking per se, is a pretty big step forward towards gender equality.
Message from Joeli Brearley, founder of Pregnant Then Screwed
Your support is needed
"DADS (and secondary caregivers), we need 10,000 of you to fill in our survey so we can make a stink about paternity leave. We have the least generous paternity pay in Europe. Paternity leave is so god-damn important but our legislation, and antiquated company policies prevent dads from taking time out to care for their child.
For every month of paternity leave taken by a dad, a mother’s wages rise by 7%. The same can be said for same sex couples, where one is the main carer. If dads spend time with their children in those early days, research shows that families have higher rates of well-being, kids do better in the education system and couples are 40% more likely to stay together.
In collaboration with the Trade Union Congress we are collecting data to better understand what is happening to new dads at work, and what changes you want to see both in terms of policy & workplace practice, so that we can lobby on your behalf.
If you are a dad please fill this in.
If you know a dad please send him the link here:"
Ever felt isolated as a dad?
It's pretty common feeling in my experience, but it doesn't have to be that way, join my friend Jago Brown to talk about fatherhood and isolation on Tuesday June 14th at 6pm UK time.
Equality Starts at Home is a movement for change and are changing outdated stereotypes and expectations about who does the work at home and why.
They want men to join them to talk about their experience of fatherhood and parenting. Help them to guide they work so they can include more men in the conversation.
Email equalitystartsathome@gmail.com to register.
The session includes a guest speaker from the inspirational Dad La Soul joining to talk about all the benefits of Dad's groups, and why and how to get involved.
The Queen of Kings
Yesterday I went live with with Fiona Ross in Episode 7 of her "No More Pea Soup" show. Fiona is "the Queen of Kings", a transformational men's coach, mentor and trusted advisor to high achieving men who, from the outside, appear to have it all; on the inside, their truth is very different.
We covered some important cultural and societal pressures that men and dads face and I talked about what I have learnt about how to support dads, both from my own experience and that of my clients.
#Flexforall
One of the key themes to building a more gender equal society is to embed flexible working opportunities for everyone. When we remove the sense that flexible, remote or part time working is a 'perk for mums', then we go a long way to supporting individual and family choices.
On Tuesday 24th June I was a guest at Parliament for the 1st Annual Working Dad Awards. As part of the event Suffolk County Council presented a case study into how they approached flexible working.
1) They identified 8 types of defined ways of working flexibly.
2) All job adverts had to list all 8 types as being available.
3) The only way to change the job ad was via formal submission
Outcome - 50% of women and 30% of men at Suffolk County Council work part time.
That is massive!
I hope you enjoyed this week's content, feel free to share with your friends and colleagues! and If you have content, an event or an article you think my audience would want to learn about, then do let me know here.
Photo Credit @wildlittlethingsphoto via Unsplash
MORE INSPIRATION
Building new foundations and thought processes are crucial to driving gender equality at work and at home.