Does the employment law help?

You're a working mum. What would help you juggle your family and job: flexible working hours? More time off after your baby is born? A partner with time to help at home? But did you also know, that by law you should be entitled to all of the above?

Flexible working

Thanks to the employment law, parents of children under six and disabled children under 18 can ask their employer to consider flexible ways of working, and the employer is legally obliged to listen. Both men and women can apply, and to be eligible, you must have worked for your employer for six months.

There are many ways to work flexibly. You can go part-time, job share, compress your hours into a shorter week with longer days, use flexi-time, cut your hours (if you're prepared to also cut your salary), or work from home. According to the Department of Trade and Industry, nine out of ten employers agree that it doesn't cost them much, if anything, to put these practices into place.

In fact, many leading companies already offer flexible working, and say they benefit from happier, more motivated staff, who stay in their jobs longer and take less sick leave. Yet, a recent survey by the Equal Opportunities Commission found that many people are nervous about asking to change their hours: 18 per cent assumed their bosses would not respond well.

Caroline Kingdom, a mother of two from Cambridgeshire, knows this from experience. "When I went back to work after my son was born and before the employment law was passed, my hours meant I had a mad dash to collect him from day care in time, and was always the last parent to arrive. I asked my boss if I could cut my lunch hour by half and leave half an hour early, but she was reluctant, and I didn't want to cause any bad feeling." Today, Caroline and her boss would follow a formal procedure, which would allow proper discussion of the issues, and hopefully a more positive result.