Guidance

Enhance and promote flexible working and leave policies

Published 4 March 2026

Applies to England, Scotland and Wales

Purpose of this action

The aim of this action is to help your employees maintain a healthy balance between their work and family life. You should ensure they are aware of the flexible working and leave policies for important life events, such as:

• becoming a parent
• caring for a loved one
• experiencing a bereavement, including pregnancy loss

Promoting the policies is just as important as the policies themselves. It can help show people that taking time away from work won’t stop them from progressing in their career. You can use these steps as part of your efforts to help keep skilled employees, improve mental wellbeing and attract a more diverse range of people to your organisation.

You may want to choose this action if you have identified:

• low numbers of people using leave and flexible working policies
• feedback and insight from employees suggests they leave the organisation because they do not feel able to take up these entitlements

Benefits and evidence

Improving and promoting these policies can benefit your organisation and your employees.

Encourage greater take up of paternity and parental leave

Women are more likely than men to care for children and people who are ill, disabled or elderly. This can affect their future earnings and career progression.^{[footnote 1][footnote 2]} If more men take up carer’s leave, parental leave and flexible working, more women may have the opportunity to stay at work and progress their careers.^{[footnote 3]} This may help close the gender pay gap. 

Take up of paternity leave is lower than maternity leave. Research suggests that companies’ policies and practices are a factor. Men were found to be 50% more likely to take longer parental leave if their managers – and other men – support them.^{[footnote 4][footnote 5]} Mothers are also more likely to reduce their working hours compared to fathers.^{[footnote 6]}

Data from the Office for National Statistics also shows that women are more likely to be unpaid carers.^{[footnote 7]} Research shows that women who are unpaid carers are more likely than men who are unpaid carers to work part-time. Women who provide unpaid care may be more likely to leave work than people without caring responsibilities.^{[footnote 8][footnote 9]}

Reduce administrative burden for employers

Publishing and promoting your policies may make it easier for employees to understand and access them.^{[footnote 10]} This may lead to fewer enquiries from employees, and a more consistent and efficient approach for organisations.^{[footnote 11]}

Retain skills

Research suggests that unpaid carers can:^{[footnote 12][footnote 13][footnote 14]}

• find it hard to combine work with their caring responsibilities
• face barriers progressing at work
• be more likely to reduce their hours or drop out of work altogether

Similarly, in a 2024 survey, nearly one-third of carers reported that they did not tell their employers about their caring responsibilities. This was because they thought their employer would not support them. 24% of respondents said they were thinking about leaving their job because of their caring role.^{[footnote 15]}

Employers might invest time and money in people who then leave the organisation. Promoting your policies can help parents and carers understand the support they can get. It may also help you to keep employees with important skills and experience, and save time and money.^{[footnote 16]}

Improve employee wellbeing and productivity

Enabling employees to take leave may support employee wellbeing. 

For example, research shows that bereavement and intense grief can affect people’s ability to work. This increases the risk of employees either missing work due to poor mental health, or working while unwell.^{[footnote 17]} Enhancing policies to give employees time to grieve can help them return to work feeling more valued, committed and productive.^{[footnote 18][footnote 19]}

Implementing this action

You can use several methods to help employees understand the support available.

Use clear and inclusive communication

Make sure your employees know about their rights, such as their legal right to request flexible working from their first day of work. You should:

• put all resources in one place, like a specific page on your intranet
• use images and language that reflect different types of families
• hold information sessions to explain different types of leave
• discuss flexible working and leave during onboarding for new employees

Train your managers

Managers must understand the policies so they can support their teams. You should:

• provide guidance on different and lesser-known types of leave, such as neonatal care leave or time off for dependants
• train managers on how to have compassionate and flexible conversations about wellbeing and bereavement

Encourage a supportive culture

You can help make these topics an everyday part of workplace conversation. You could:

• set up employee networks for parents, carers or those who have been bereaved
• share stories in newsletters about men who have used shared parental or carer’s leave
• highlight senior leaders who work flexibly 
• support national events like Carers’ Rights Day

Offer more than the statutory requirements

You may also choose to go beyond the legal minimum. For example, you could:

• encourage applicants to discuss flexibility before they start
• support creative approaches to flexible working, encouraging managers and employees to try out new arrangements
• encourage informal and temporary flexible working, particularly for employees with a change in caring responsibilities or personal circumstances
• enable employees to work flexibility without needing to make a statutory request
• advertise types of flexible working and leave available on your job adverts

Offer better leave and pay

You can offer more than the legal minimum for leave and pay. For example, you could:

• enhance the rate of maternity, paternity or adoption pay above the statutory minimum
• offer shared parental pay at the same level as maternity pay 
• offer an extended period of paternity leave
• reduce how long employees need to have worked at your organisation before being eligible for enhanced leave and pay 
• offer paid bereavement leave

Tracking progress

You might want to consider tracking the progress of this action by:

• tracking how many people use flexible working and leave entitlements across different teams and seniority levels
• measuring the breakdown of employees using different types of leave by sex – including the combination of sex and other characteristics (such as ethnicity or disability status) to highlight specific trends for different groups of men and women
• using surveys to find out if employees understand the policies and if managers feel confident offering support
• monitoring how many people are reading your internal communications about these policies

Where possible, you should compare any data you gather with ‘baseline’ data from previous years.

Data privacy

Some or all of the equality information you collect is likely to be ‘special category personal data’, meaning it has special legal protections. 

Ensure that you are complying with the UK’s data protection legislation when you collect and analyse employees’ data.

Get advice and approval from your organisation’s privacy or data protection expert before you start.

1. The Behavioural Insights Team (2025). How to improve gender equality in the workplace: actions for employers.  ↩

2. Government Equalities Office (2018) The gender pay gap in the UK: evidence from the UKHLS ↩

3. The Behavioural Insights Team (2021) Supporting men to take longer parental leave and work flexibly ↩

4. The Behavioural Insights Team (2025). How to improve gender equality in the workplace: actions for employers.  ↩

5. The Behavioural Insights Team (2021) Supporting men to take longer parental leave and work flexibly ↩

6. Office for National Statistics (2019): Families and the labour market ↩

7. Office for National Statistics (2023): Unpaid care by age, sex and deprivation, England and Wales ↩

8. Carers UK (2023) Carers’ employment rights today, tomorrow and in the future ↩

9. Carers UK (2024) Taking the next step for working carers ↩

10. Gheyoh Ndzi, Ernestine (2021) The Devastating Impact of Gender Discrimination on Shared Parental Leave in the UK. International Journal of Law and Society, 4 (4). pp. 254-261 ↩

11. Options Assessment for New rights to unpaid bereavement leave including pregnancy loss (2025) ↩

12. Carers UK (2024) State of Caring 2024 EMPLOYMENT ↩

13. Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (2021) Supporting working carers: How employers and employees can benefit ↩

14. The Centre for Social Justice (2024) Creating a Britain that Works and Cares  ↩

15. Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (2020) Supporting working carers: How employers and employees can benefit ↩

16. Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (2024) Carer-friendly workplaces: Guide for people professionals  ↩

17. Geller, Kerns, and Klier (2004) Anxiety following miscarriage and the subsequent pregnancy: a review of the literature and future directions ↩

18. Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (2018) Parental Bereavement (Leave and Pay) Impact Assessment ↩

19. Department for Business and Trade (2024) Bereavement Leave Impact Assessment ↩