A Family Friendly Working Scotland is here!

In our quest to find out more about Flexible Working we spoke to the organisation Family Friendly Working Scotland. They certainly know a thing or two about the benefits for individuals and businesses.
Tell us a bit about your organisation and what you do:
Family Friendly Working Scotland creates and supports working culture change in Scotland that builds economic success and improves the lives of families.
We work with employers, government, families and others to promote a flexible and family friendly working culture. This is a way of working which delivers business success and enables working families to have a good balance between work and family life.
How could FFWS help a Mum who is wanting to apply for Flexible Working ?
Family Friendly Working Scotland is part of the Working Families group. We have lots of information for individuals, to support them to request flexible working. We also have a free legal helpline for individuals and employees seeking help and support on family friendly working questions, benefits and more.
How could FFWS help a Mum out there wanting to start a new business?
Our main target market is employers, encouraging them to look at their working culture and to see the benefits of offering flexibility to employers so that everyone who wants to work has the opportunity to do so in a way that works for them and the business. We inspire and work with organisations, large and small, across Scotland to understand the benefits of offering, flexibly, family friendly working for employees.
Our online case studies — both employers and employees- may offer inspiration about how people can work flexibly, which offers benefits for to the organisation and the individual.

What does a good Work-Life Balance look like to you?
This will be different for all of us, depending on our individual circumstances, but for us at Family Friendly Working Scotland it’s all about the importance of choice. We would like for everyone to be able to fulfil their potential and to be in a position to choose both a career and family life (whatever that looks like) that works for them and also for business.
For us, we think the conversation is moving on — it is not so much work and life anymore but simply life. And work is part of it.
For myself and my job share partner Nikki, we split our time during the week between work and spending time with our young children. Another colleague has one day to focus on personal writing projects.
What is your inspiration?
Here at Family Friendly Working Scotland, lots of people motivate and inspire our work. We have had the privilege to work with Helen Cameron and Olivia McLeod who job-shared the Director role of the Children and Families Directorate at the Scottish Government. Helen sadly passed away
in June, but her professional legacy and her flexible approach to work inspired many.
We know that there is a long way to go, changing working culture. But
every day we are inspired by wonderful, forward-thinking employers in Scotland who understand the difference a little bit of flexibility can make to their employees, and who in turn reap the benefits of a productive, loyal workforce.
What does your organisation hope for the future?
We would like to see a new working culture in Scotland which is
flexible by default.
