Employees Matter is approaching its 19th year. I gulp every time I think about it as I just don’t know where the time has gone. Employees Matter actually started its life as Parents Matter when I personally felt the struggle of bringing up children and working. I wanted to try and make the working lives of parents that little bit easier, supporting them at work to enable them to find the time to manage both effectively. Bringing family support into the workplace went a long way to enabling understanding and dialogue between employer and employee. And continues to do so.
As our children grow, as parents we face different challenges. I have been spending a lot of time recently thinking about the landscape that our children are living in and this was specifically triggered by the horrendously tragic story of Sarah Everard and the Everyone’s Invited initiative that was sweeping through schools. The responsibilities that we have as parents are huge and I questioned whether, on this particular topic of female safety, I had let my children, and in fact, myself, down. At the end of the day conversations about female safety need to start with your children and I think I had let this one pass.
Recent events have changed the conversation about female safety. Women are beginning to confront the sad fact that they don’t feel safe a lot of the time. Men are understanding how to become allies to their female friends and colleagues.
And parents are asking questions like:
• How can I raise my daughter to speak up?
• How can I raise my son to be respectful of females?
• How can I raise my son to be an ally to girls?
And perhaps most importantly:
How can we have conversations about such important topics in our homes whatever the age of our children?
So with this in mind, I am proud that Employees Matter is entering into this dialogue and are asking workplaces to step forward to create these conversations with their working parents.
Alongside Sarah Newton, an ex-police officer who has first-hand knowledge of dealing with all levels of sexual offenses and at 19 Sarah herself suffered an attempted street abduction, we have created a session that aims to answers the above and many other questions so you can start important dialogues in your home.
In this session Sarah Newton aims to answer these and many other questions so you can start important dialogues in your home.
If you would like more information on this ‘Raising The Future’ session please get in touch at zsinclair@employeesmatter.co.uk