Organisation Background

The INO is Ireland's largest professional trade union for nurses boasting a membership of in excess of 25,000 members.

Rationale for the introduction of family friendly Working arrangements

In nursing family friendly policies are imperative given that the majority of nurses are women, mothers and carers who would not be able to participate in the labour market if flexible working hours were not an option.

The lack of family friendly policies in the past led to an exodus of nurses from the workplace which had major repercussions on the health services. Thus the recent introductions of new agreements on flexible working arrangements in the health services is a major boost to nurses who now have a range of choices in work patterns which will allow them to combine work and family responsibility. All family friendly policies are a tool for recruitment and retention of nurses.

Existing Family Friendly Policies 

In 1985, following protracted discussion with the Department of Health, agreement was reached on the introduction of a Job Sharing Scheme in the Health Service. The recent agreement on flexible working in the Health Service became effective on February 1, 2001 and includes the following:

• Pensionable Part-time or Atypical Working
  Individual members of staff may apply to work on a permanent part-time basis involving working hours of between a minimum of an average of 8 hours per week and a maximum of 39 hours per week. This is open to all grades of staff.
  
• Revised Working Hours
  Permanent whole-time and job-sharing staff may apply to work a revised pattern of hours e.g. an individual currently working on a job-sharing basis may apply to work 25 hours or 30 hours per week or another variation of hours. In addition whole-time staff may apply to reduce their working hours to e.g. 25 or 30 hours per week.
  
• Term Time Working
  An agreement has been reached, in principle, for the introduction of term-time working on a pilot basis during the current year.
  
• Paternity Leave
  Three days paid paternity leave was agreed effective in January 2001.
  

Take Up 

There is a very high uptake, up to 30% in some hospitals, of nurses participating in the Job Sharing Scheme. On the introduction of the Scheme in 1985 there were certainly teething problems arising from the fact that a nurse who applied for Job Sharing was required, under the Scheme, to name a partner to work opposite her/him. However, this difficulty was subsequently addressed in a revised circular in 1986.
Additionally, on the introduction of the Job Sharing Scheme as there was such a high number of applicants awaiting access to the Scheme, selection criteria was an issue.

Impact of Family Friendly Policies

An exercise, carried out by the INO, on the impact of the Job Sharing Scheme on the delivery of care clearly demonstrated that participants in the Scheme were much happier as a result of being able to combine their working and family responsibility. Participants in the survey also stated that they were very enthusiastic while at work and their levels of stress had decreased.