Family friendly jobs/industries/companies?

[HappyMommy2]

Is your job family friendly? In what way?

Is it because of the industry, or the specific company you work for? Please share!

I am "in transition" and need to get ideas for my new direction.

thanks!

[Just Kate]

My husband works for a very large state university and it is very family friendly.

Benefits he/we get, just off the top of my head...

- 3 weeks paid paternity leave (6 weeks paid for maternity leave)
-Domestic partner health insurance benefits (including same sex domestic partners)
-Flexible scheduling when possible
-Every building has a lactation room
- Dependent/ Spouse tuition discount
~21 sick days per year, unused days can be rolled over from year to year *
~18 vacation days a year in addition to sick leave*
- On campus childcare as well as day camps for school age children during school breaks.

*some of the benefits are dependent upon years of service, my husband has been at the University for 4.5 years at this point.

[meandmine]

Schools: nice benefits, get all the same breaks as your kids. When there is a snow day you don't need to figure out childcare because you get a snow day too :-). Summers off with your kids.

Downside: long hours (I just read the average teacher works 11 hours a day (no kidding!!)), low-pay, very inflexible work-day (you have to have sub plans ready if you need to take time off and there isn't much of that).

M

[ALittleBitCrunchy]

Mine company is a lot more family-friendly than my husband's. I think it's the difference between big corporate and small family-owned. I get more benefits, more time off, more opportunities... The biggest benefit to me, however, is that my company is a 24x7 operation, which means that I have a much wider choice of hours. I can't work any hours I want, but I am able to push some of my hours out of the M-F 9:00-5:00 block. That's a huge help for us.

[almadianna]

I work for a Norway based company so we have good pay and great benefits that are very family friendly.

We pay nothing for our health insurance for the whole family, including dental and supplemental insurances from Aflac. I get 4 weeks of vacation in the first year but if I work over 40 hours I can take that time off later so I usually get around 8 weeks of vacation per year total. We also have 3 weeks of sick time that can be taken off to take care of kids, doctor visits, etc.

oh and I have found that most engineering firms have similar benefits because they have to compete with each other, I know all of the ones here in Houston have benefits that are a great deal like ours.

[*MamaJen*]

I work for a very family friendly company. It's a weekly newspaper, which is high stress in some ways, but it's a family run company and they've really bent over backwards to make it work. I brought DS with me to the office fulltime for the first six months, and part-time for the first year, and he's still welcome here -- my coworkers start complaining when they go too long without seeing him. Everyone is really supportive of breastfeeding. I can do some work from home or in off hours. If I have to stay home with him when he's sick, I can still get a lot done. The pay isn't huge but it's easily livable, and the benefits aren't terrific, but I do have affordable insurance. After six years on the job, I can pretty easily get my work done in 40 hours. My office is also less than 10 minutes from my house, so that makes life easy.
I was thinking about moving to a bigger paper right before I got pregnant, but I'm really glad I stayed where I was. More than anything else, I would say my employers and coworkers just value me and my son and show it in tangible ways.

[Qestia]

I work for a university and can't imagine anything else.

- 20 vacation days
- 2 personal days
- 10 sick days
- about 14 holidays including the week between Christmas and New Years
- free classes for me and kids (got my masters for free at the school I worked at)

The places I've worked have been very flexible though it's on a case-by-case basis, I got tow work from home a lot when my kids were infants, and am currently in a 4 day a week schedule. I love it.

[Rowansmama]

Originally Posted by HappyMommy2

Is your job family friendly? In what way?

Is it because of the industry, or the specific company you work for? Please share!

I am "in transition" and need to get ideas for my new direction.

thanks!

My job is super family friendly in that I get to work from home. I have been doing so for 3 years now and love it. I work as a technical writer. I started out in the office, but when I moved they allowed me to keep my job and work remotely.

It seems like a lot of companies that do this are IT based, or jobs where you don't have to deal with people obviously. You might want to look into companies that offer telecommuting options.

[blizzard_babe]

My school district...

Summers off, and most schools in our district also offer an extended Christmas break because many of the villages also celebrate Russian Orthodox Christmas, which conveniently usually starts right after New Years .

In most villages, teacher housing is literally next door to the school, making it easy to dash home at lunch or on break.

Teachers are in pretty short supply, so you have an added value when you need to ask for something like extra pumping breaks, etc.

Kids are more than welcome at school (during non-teaching hours). In fact, I rarely saw my kid when I'd bring him to work on work days. Some coworker would inevitably steal him and he'd get passed from room to room, aide to teacher to aide.

Of course, I had to deal with other less-than-desirables (the two years I lived without flush plumbing... but that was before kids), but as far as family-friendly goes, it pretty much was great.

[MacKinnon]

I also work for a large university but in the county cooperative system. I am part-time, 70% time, but I get access to full benefits at a lower cost than my full-time DH. I get 6 weeks maternity leave and 6 weeks parental leave (Dad's can get the parental leave too) all full paid! Annually I have unlimited sick time up to 1 month (after that you need a doctors note to have more time off), I get 70% of the normally alloted 22 paid vacation days, we get 15 educational leave days for additional training, etc, and 9 paid holidays. They are very flexible about hours worked too, so if I need to stay home one day, I could maybe get half a day in that day, then make up the rest the following week, or whatever. It's not firmly tracked at all, we are actually contracted to "do our job- it could take more or less than X hours a week."

[Ellien C]

My company isn't bad - it's come a LONG way in the last 3 years. I work in IT management and my specific team is FANTASTIC. In my situation, who I worked for made all the difference in work-life balance. When I worked for younger men (30s-40s) with SAH wives it was more difficult. When I worked for a man with a very high powered VP-wife, he was really good about work-life balance. She used to travel on business and he'd have to pick-up his kid so he was great. Now I work for a woman who is the primary wage earner and she's great and another single woman in her 50s who is surprisingly good, too.

[flight]

I work for the Canadian government. It is one of the most family-friendly jobs out there.

-3 weeks vacation to start
-5 "family appointment" days
-lots of sick days (I don't remember because I rarely have to use them)
-really comprehensive health benefit package
-50 weeks parental leave (a portion of that may be used by the other parent)
-options to take a "care & nurturing leave," or set up an extended leave without pay by deducting small amounts from each paycheque and then getting the money back while away

My particular department (where I do engineering work) is even better because we have a workplace culture when working from home with little notice is perfectly allowed (I have done this multiple times to allow myself a chance to walk my son to school or meet him after), business travel is somewhat discretionary in that if your family needs you at home, they'll find someone else to go, and overtime is rarely required. Because we are unionized, the overtime is paid out at 1.5x and we can either take the money, or take time in lieu. (In this manner I actually get 4 or 5 weeks of vacation a year. )