How Barclays is creating a family-friendly, flexible working day

Barclays’ Working Families Network has been praised by the work-life balance charity Working Families, winning awards in two consecutive years. Co-Chair Jonathan Steer explains how becoming a father inspired him to improve life for other working parents and how he’s balancing work and parenting during the coronavirus crisis. 

In his day job, Jonathan Steer is Head of Barclays Private Bank UK and Global Growth Markets Cash and Liquidity Distribution. But the birth of his two sons made him want to improve life at the bank for other working parents.

It was this drive that led him to become Co-Chair of the Working Families Network – a volunteer-led initiative with around 6,000 members that has helped Barclays be recognised as one of the best employers for working parents by work-life balance charity Working Families UK.

“Our high-level strategy is that we want Barclays to be a great employer for working parents and carers,” says Steer. “How we do that is through impacting colleagues themselves, but also impacting colleagues through their children.”

As well as promoting family-friendly and flexible working, the group serves as an information and support network around issues as varied as shared parental leave, exam tactics and life as a carer. It hosts events, shares colleague stories through regular newsletters and offers coaching.

“We look at a huge range of topics based on membership feedback,” says Steer. “We’re always grappling with how we get to every parent in Barclays.

“As a relationship person and someone who likes getting stuff fixed, I wanted to become more involved. Even though this is voluntary, we run it as a professional project and effectively always have a recruitment campaign going on. Over the years the network has evolved significantly. There are so many dedicated colleagues working behind the scenes.”

Looking to the future, Steer – who was a finalist at last year’s internal Barclays Diversity and Inclusion Awards – hopes to strengthen the network.

“We can lay out a methodology and tell people how to do it, but it’s always going to be people doing it in their spare time. The key is getting volunteers engaged to do that, and that’s why we’re always recruiting.”

Working for everyone

“I think Barclays genuinely cares about how to make things better for colleagues,” says Steer. “I’ve seen that through my work with the Working Families Network: there is a real focus on the wider impact we as colleagues can have beyond our day jobs.”

Before the coronavirus crisis made remote working a part of many colleagues’ daily life, his job included some flexibility with working hours under Barclays’ Dynamic Working scheme – which itself started as a Working Families Network initiative before being taken up at a strategic level for all colleagues.

“It means we were able to arrange things in a way that suited us, for example enabling my wife to go to college and for me to be around for the kids’ drop-off,” he explains. “It’s the modern way of working. To get a legacy company to adapt to that had its challenges, but it’s essential if we want to retain talent at all levels.”

With many colleagues working remotely during the coronavirus pandemic, having ‘family friendly policies’ is more important than ever, he says. “Colleagues need to look after their families first of all and keep them safe, so knowing that Barclays supports that is vital. It drives a lot of engagement from colleagues for the future.

“For those who haven’t worked from home before, I think this situation has opened their eyes to the benefits of flexible working – especially less commuting and more time with your family.”

The Working Families Network has also continued to support its members through a variety of webinars, which have received significant attention from viewers, Jonathan explains. “One of our coronavirus webinars received over 5,000 registrations and the colleague feedback has been overwhelmingly positive.”

Communication is key

Network events led to colleagues forming or joining new support groups – both formal and informal – to help each other through particular family-related challenges.

Steer recalls a recent month focused on caring for elderly relatives: “Nobody knows when they’re going to become a carer but most of us are going to be in that situation at some point. Off the back of our Working Families Network events, we’ve seen some informal networks grow up to provide support, which is great to see. We do that naturally in our friendship groups on the outside, but it can be different at work. Through our network, people from different areas of the business, who didn’t know each other, have joined our events, worked together and ended up forming these positive, supportive relationships.”

And supporting parents and carers is even more crucial in the current situation. Jonathan says his wife was unwell for a week with symptoms of coronavirus, and although she has recovered, they are now busy juggling home-schooling with their own work and ongoing studies.

“We’ve had to adjust and my wife has been amazing, home-schooling the boys so that I can continue working in the week. We then role reverse – she has been studying in the evening and weekends, so we can juggle the children and running the home.”

Jonathan adds that working from home has given him the chance to spend more time with his family, although he’s starting to miss ‘normal’ life. “I miss the face-to-face interaction with my team and the energy in the office,” he explains. “But it’s been really special to be around my family, supporting each other through lockdown.”

His advice for colleagues on balancing work and parenting while in lockdown? Be kind to yourself and ask for support from your team.

“Trying to work alongside children is really challenging and we tend to continue working instead of taking breaks and coming back refreshed. It’s not a ‘normal’ working day and we need to make sure work and family have defined spaces.

“No one is perfect and at times like this it is much better to be your greatest cheerleader than your greatest critic so go easy on yourself. We are all trying our best in challenging circumstances.”