Family Friendly Workplace Day organisers stress that flexible working is for men too. Laura Slattery reports.

If you're in the habit of clocking in at 9 a.m. and clocking off at 9 p.m., dragging yourself into the office on weekends and building up a backlog of annual leave days, then today is the day to go home on time, switch your mobile phone off and celebrate the fact that it's Family Friendly Workplace Day.

The day is an annual event organised by the Equality Authority to promote flexible work patterns and alternatives to an increasingly widespread long-hours' culture.

Suggested activities for employers include holding family open days at work, organising art competitions for employees' children and exploring the www.family-friendly.ie website, but top of the list is actually doing something that has the lasting effect of giving employees a better shot at achieving a work-life balance.

This means introducing family-friendly work arrangements such as job-sharing, job-splitting, e-working and flexi-time.

According to the Equality Authority, family-friendly policies are those that help workers combine employment with family life, caring responsibilities, and personal and social life outside the workplace. They include statutory entitlements such as maternity leave, parental leave, force majeure and carer's leave.

But there's little point running out the door at a convenient time today or any other day if you have an unsympathetic employer.

The Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) has conducted a survey on the issue as part of its role on the National Framework Committee for the Development of Family Friendly Policies, which was set up under the Programme for Prosperity and Fairness.

"In the private sector, we found people didn't have much opportunity to access family-friendly work arrangements," says Ms Joan Carmichael, assistant general secretary of ICTU.

More disturbingly, legal rights for maternity leave and parental leave are not being respected, she says, citing the significant number of complaints to the Equality Authority relating to pregnancy.

"Most people are driven by a need to have some balance in their work and home life. It's not usually to study Greek mythology or go bird-watching," says Ms Carmichael.

Availing of family-friendly work arrangements can be the only way some parents and carers can remain in the workplace and keep the family income afloat.

The fact that people now tend to work further away from where they live is also tipping the work-life balance in favour of the former. "That can add two hours, maybe four, to their working day," she says.

Even when employers do offer or agree to family-friendly work practices, the question most people will want to ask is "can I afford to take them up?"

Part-time workers and job-sharers are paid on a pro-rata basis, so will be earning considerably less than full-time employees. With job-sharing, two people usually share the responsibilities and pay of one full-time job on a 50: 50 basis. Work-sharing is a term used to describe similar schemes that might not necessarily be divided straight down the line.

"In many cases, people may opt for a three-day week rather than five days. It's still quite a drop, but you keep just over 50 per cent of your salary," says Ms Marguerite Briggs, founder of Jobshare Recruitment Services, an agency specialising in flexible job placements. "When you juggle that with tax and maybe save on one or two days' childcare, it can work out quite well," she says.

Tax-juggling comes into play when employees move to a lower tax rate by opting for a reduced number of hours but keep the same personal allowances and PAYE tax credits. Their tax liability as a percentage of income decreases.

For example, when a person chooses to work a three-day week, they may move from a five-day salary of €35,000 to a pro-rata salary of €21,000 for the three days.

In this case, he or she would have been paying tax at a rate of 42 per cent on income above the standard rate cut-off point of €28,000. After allowances, but before PRSI, the tax liability will be €6,220. On a salary of €21,000, the tax liability drops to €1,180.

In gross terms, the person may be earning €14,000 less by opting for a three-day week, but their net income will only be €9,660 less.

"In reality, we place more people in jobs with flexible working hours than we do in job-shares," explains Ms Briggs.

"The work is their total responsibility, but they do it in a three-day week rather than a five-day week," she adds.

Accounting, administration and customer services are fields where flexible working is particularly suitable, according to Ms Briggs.

The Government has also led the way on family-friendly work arrangements such as term-time working, which is available throughout most civil service organisations. Term-time working enables staff with young children to take either 10 or 13 weeks' leave during the school summer holiday period, the time when childcare costs for school-aged children are at their peak.

There are in-built budget planning measures included in term-time working arrangements, as participants can choose to have their salary spread in equal amounts over a 12-month period, so they do not suffer from a sudden absence of income during the summer months.

In some organisations, people who can't afford or don't want to reduce their overall hours and take a cut in salary can still avail of family-friendly work practices such as flexi-time. This works by nominating certain time periods when employees must be at their desks, such as 10 am to 12 pm and 2 pm to 4 pm each day, then allowing employees to make up the rest of their working week however they choose.

"There might be a core time when you have to be present but you can build up a reserve of paid leave. Sometimes even that helps," says Ms Carmichael.

Start and finish times are flexible, so employees can come in early one morning or stay late another day. "If there's two parents, one can drop the children off at school and the other can pick them up," she says.

Annualised hours is a scheme where employees are contracted to work a defined number of hours per year rather than per week or month. Working time can be scheduled to deal with the company's seasonal peaks and valleys. This can work to the advantage of some parents, says Ms Carmichael.

"In some cases, it might not suit. If the peak is in summer time, it wouldn't, because children would be off school."

Flexible working arrangements provide more options to parents and carers. In some circumstances, their existence prevents the need to take a forced career break, which can have long-term implications for the pension entitlements of people who are members of occupational schemes.

"The ideal thing if you have a career break is that it would be short and that you would keep as much of a connection with the workplace as you can," Ms Carmichael says.

Flexible work arrangements ensure greater potential for equal opportunities between men and women by reducing career interruptions, most often women's, due to caring responsibilities.

Crucially, family-friendly work arrangements increase the possibility of a more equal sharing of these caring responsibilities between women and men.

"The whole question of equality will never be solved if men don't take up more caring responsibilities," says Ms Carmichael.

At the moment, take-up of family-friendly work arrangements is overwhelmingly female, but organisers of Family Friendly Workplace Day are keen to point out that these arrangements are for men, too.

Promoting these work patterns as being great solely for women could send the message that women with children should automatically be looking for ways to minimise their hours.

"That might actually contribute to discrimination," Ms Carmichael adds. If it emerges that 98 per cent of the people availing of family-friendly work practices are women, moves toward closing the pay gap between men and women will stall.