Today is Family-friendly Workplace Day. To mark the occasion employees of various organisations around the State are being urged to go home on time.
Family Friendly Workplace Day is a joint initiative by employers' organisation IBEC, the Irish Congress of Trade Unions and the Equality Authority.
The term "family-friendly" covers alternative work arrangements such as job-sharing, teleworking, flexitime, part-time work, term-time work, paternity leave and employment breaks.
According to the Equality Authority family-friendly and work-life balance policies benefit businesses as much as individuals where such policies are in place.
SIPTU is celebrating the day by allowing its employees to finish early on the day, and announcing a new pilot project specifically designed to improve the work-life balance of trade union employees.
SIPTU General President, Mr Des Geraghty, said a pilot project is being implemented to improve the working lives and ‘work/life balance’ of SIPTU employees.
The project will be a combination of teleworking and term-time working. It will enable a number of SIPTU employees from different grades in the organisation to help make work more family-friendly in future, by allowing them to work more flexibly, partly from home and partly from the office.
"I believe that flexible working enhances workers’ lives and improves the extent to which they can engage successfully - and less stressfully - in the other ‘non-work’ dimensions of their lives," Mr Geraghty said.