The results are in. We know what it takes to manage work and caring responsibilities in Australia.  

 

More than 6000 parents and carers responded to our 2024 National Working Families Survey in partnership with UNICEF Australia.  

 

They highlighted the challenges of balancing these loads in 2024 and the consequences for their physical and mental health, with 74% of women and 57% of men reporting feeling stress, among many other worrying trends. 

 

These results, while stark and disappointing, serve as a powerful catalyst for change. They outline the case for advocating and creating a more family-friendly Australia, a future that is within our reach. 

 

At the official launch of the National Working Families Report at Deloitte Australia on May 30, we heard from several advocates on the role workplaces, policymakers, and ultimately everyone can help in making this happen. 

 

Grainne O’Loughlin, CEO of Karitane, stressed the importance of the first 2000 days of a child’s life, from maternity to age five, as being when their brains form attachment, love, and nurturing from a caregiver. 

 

“If that experience for a young child gets off to a bumpy start, they experience anxiety, stress, and mental health issues, which can become intergenerational issues,” she said. 

 

“So we’re growing our children of the workforce of the future to grow up with their own mental health, stress and anxiety. Early intervention prevention and getting it right in the workplace to support children as a beneficiary is just so important.”

 

Georgie Dent, CEO Of Parenthood, said the evidence shows how difficult it is for people to combine their caring responsibilities with their paid work. 

 

But she also asked why we couldn’t be bold in working to make Australia the best place in the world to raise a child. 

 

“Australia has been a world leader in things before. Why not try to be a world leader here? If we were to become the best place in the world to be a parent and raise a child, we would transform our future prosperity. We would reduce inequity.” 

 

Such an ambition would require ambitious policy changes, added Georgie. She said workplaces would need to do the work to support caregivers, while the government would need to address its still limited paid parental leave scheme. The average length of paid parental leave for families across OECD countries is 53 weeks, exceeding Australia’s recent legislative changes that expanded our government-paid scheme from 20 weeks at minimum wage to 26 weeks by 2026. 

 

While 60 per cent of the largest employers in Australia do offer paid parental leave – which helps workers get closer to this full year – that leaves a massive gap in those parents who can’t access this leave. 

 

She emphasises the importance of quality, affordable and accessible early childhood education. 

 

“If we don’t have the infrastructure around this care, we are making the battle for parents so much harder, almost impossible. If you don’t have access to care that is quality and suitable and works for your schedule and that is actually in your neighbourhood, it is almost impossible to combine work and family. So getting that piece of infrastructure right is critical.” 

 

Dr David Cooke, CEO of ESG Advisory, shared his decades of experience as an executive leader, including as managing director of Konica Minolta. He particularly noted personal stories of encounters with workers who expressed how much they appreciated the company’s progressive policies for employers and the work it was doing to support women internationally. 

 

He said the latest survey results should remind employers that people have a life outside of the workplace.

 

“A person’s job is not the most important thing in life. In most cases, the most important thing in their life is their family. It’s important to remember that, and as such, it just makes sense for companies to develop family-friendly policies,” he said. 

 

“We have expressions like, ‘bring your whole self to work’. The problem with an expression like that is that it focuses on the workplace. Most policies kick in when you walk through the front door, and they drop off when you walk out. 

 

“More enlightened leaders create workplaces when they have that breadth of awareness to extend the care they have for people to include the people’s families within the ecosystem of the company. They don’t have a hard stop at the front door. 

 

“When companies do that, they reap the rewards. The appreciation people feel for being supported as people with families is enormous”

 

The rewards extend to the bottom line, he said. 

 

“I hate to apply the ROI business case spreadsheet to it when we are talking about caring for people,” he said. “But the ROI is massive, and I don’t think there is anything more transformative for a company’s culture than when you really care for all aspects of a person’s life.”

 

Indeed, employers should consider just what they’re missing out on. For example, the survey found that 60 per cent of women would not apply for jobs that don’t offer flexibility, compared with 32 per cent of men. 

 

Pip Dexter, Chief People and Purpose Officer with Deloitte Australia emphasised the importance of ensuring things like flexible work and hybrid work policies work for everyone and the need to adapt and evolve policies. With 13,000 employees in Australia, she said you can’t just set and forget policies. 

 

“We are constantly learning and looking at how we can improve things,” she said.  

 

“This is a long-term challenge and we’re going to continue to work on it. But we all have a role to play as leaders, as carers, as businesses and governments.”

 

Overall, during this launch session, it became clear that in addition to policy adjustments and a shift in understanding the flow-on impacts of supporting carers, we must also address the cultural shift needed. 

 

The survey results emphasise the need to de-stigmatise caregiving, particularly the idea of men accessing policies to support them in caring. 

 

Fifty-six per cent of respondents believe it is more acceptable for women to choose family-friendly options, which is just an eight per cent improvement in five years. 

 

Men are still not supported enough with the efforts to take on more care, with one in two men taking less than one month’s leave. When do they want to take on leave, almost half (48 per cent) say they feel supported to do so. 

 

It’s not enough to have the gender piece covered in gender-neutral policies if we don’t destigmatise the idea of men accessing such policies. 

 

Change comes from those enlightened leaders who see the benefits of a family-friendly Australia and are committed to making the decisions needed to make it happen. 

 

Download the 2024 National Working Families report here. 

 

 

By Emma Walsh

First published by Women’s Agenda