The Award Scheme

Introduction

Family Council

The Family Council is an advisory body to the Government. It provides a high-level platform for examining family-related policies and promoting a culture of loving families in the community. The Family Council advocates cherishing the family and promotes the family core values of "Love and Care", "Respect and Responsibility", and "Communication and Harmony" as a main driver for social harmony, so as to forge a closer and harmonious relationship amongst family members.

The Family Council has organized the biennial Family-Friendly Employers Award Scheme since 2011 aiming to enhance the importance of family core values, foster a pro-family environment, and recognise companies and organisations implementing family-friendly employment policies and practices.

Family-friendly Employment Policies and Practices

Family-friendly employment policies and practices have, in recent years, become increasingly popular with employers. These policies and practices are intended to help employees balance their work and family lives, thereby bringing benefits to both employers and employees, and in turn resulting in improved morale, enhanced working relationships and reduced staff turnover.

The policies and practices can be broadly classified into the following four categories:

Job-related Family-friendly Employment Policies and Practices which allow employees to manage their time to take into account their family commitment, e.g. flexi-working hours, flexi-working place, flexi-working arrangement, flexi-rostering, job sharing, etc.

Employee and Family Care Arrangements that take into consideration the family situation of the employees and have a positive impact on their family life, e.g. child care or elderly care arrangement, compassionate leave, maternity leave/paternity leave that is over and above statutory requirements, family care leave, employee counseling services, occupational safety and health measures, etc.

Employee and Family Care Benefits and Support offered to employees and/or their family members with a positive impact on their family life, e.g. scholarships for employees' children, insurance coverage for family members, complimentary/discount on corporate goods or services, emergency financial support, etc.

Outside-the-workplace Family-friendly Employment Policies and Practices which promote work-life balance and family core values, e.g. company trips, social gatherings, special family engagement events, such as parenting seminars, family recreational activities and "Bring-your-family-to-work" day, etc.