Fri, 15 Jun 2012

While nearly one in two fathers (49%) say they do the majority or an equal share of the childcare, two thirds (67%) don’t think their employers have sufficient family friendly policies.

This is according to a study of 1,500 fathers across the UK carried out by BT and the Employers Network for Equality & Inclusion (enei), showed that despite fathers having a greater role in raising their children, many employers fall short of offering them the support they need.

Among the measures that the 87% of fathers surveyed said they would benefit from were the ability to work flexibly (49%), paternity leave (21%) and support with child care (38%).

Caroline Waters, director of people and policy at BT and xhair of Employers for Fathers, says: “Too often the parenting debate gets focused solely on women as the traditional primary provider of childcare. This is a real wake-up call for employers.”

Enei chief executive Denise Keating says: “If employers do not move with the times and proactively enable this, there is a risk of disengagement, loss of performance, or even worse, a perception of discrimination against the male workforce.”

• A separate piece of workplace equality research, carried out by the Royal Association for Deaf People (RAD) showed that the number of discrimination claims bought by deaf people rose by 37.5% in the last quarter.