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Working Families Trustee Recruitment 2026 Welcome Firstly, thank you for your interest in becoming a Trustee of Working Families. As some of our trustees approach the end of their tenure, we are currently looking for up to two trustees to join our passionate, highly skilled board. We are particularly looking for charity knowledge and experience, strategic fundraising expertise, marketing and communications or business sales expertise but welcome all applicants with a passion for our mission. We also welcome applications from ethnic minority groups as they are currently under-represented on our Board. Working Families’ mission – to remove the barriers that people with caring responsibilities face in the workplace – has never felt more needed, or more timely. Following the pandemic, the demand for our advice services grew sixfold, as parents around the country grappled with the need to juggle work and caring responsibilities and safeguard their workplace rights. At the same time, our employer members leaned on our expertise and advice to understand how to support their staff teams in a fast-changing and unpredictable environment. Four years on, with the cost of living crisis biting even deeper, working parents and carers need our help to stay and progress in work. Employers are challenging hybrid working patterns and we have launched a new campaign to create Family Friendly Workplaces. Throughout this time, our Board of Trustees have provided the strategic vision and practical advice to help guide the organisation to meet its strategic aims. We’re delighted to bring this new Certification to the UK, following a successful launch in Australia in 2021. Our current strategy will guide our work over the next four years. Our overarching aims are challenging, but clear and achievable. We want to: • Support employers to create and sustain successful flexible and family-friendly workplaces • Empower parents and carers to understand and use their workplace rights • Drive meaningful policy and legal changes to engender secure and flexible jobs as the norm, and advocate for a baseline of protection that delivers equality in the workplace. Underpinning all this will be continued focus on building Working Families into the strongest organisation it can be, with sustainable funding streams and a deep commitment to rigour in governance processes. Our trustee board will play a key role in making these ambitions a reality. Do you have the passion, drive, and skills to help us get there? If so, we want to hear from you. Paul Coulson Chair of Trustees, Working Families 1 About Working Families Our vision We want to achieve a society in which everyone can fully meet their work and caring responsibilities, where all parents and carers have an equal opportunity to find and progress in secure, paid work. Our mission Our mission is to remove the barriers that people with caring responsibilities face in the workplace. We drive positive change by supporting and advocating for working parents and carers, collaborating with employers to build flexible and family-friendly cultures, and influencing government policy. Our values At Working Families, we work hard to make sure our values shine through in everything we do. They help guide how we form policy, how we build and improve our services, and how we communicate with our different audiences. • We are collaborative. We are one team working in a connected and communicative way internally and externally to maximise achievement of our shared goals. • We are practical. We see the whole picture and use this authoritative perspective to deliver tangible support to families and employers. • We are inclusive. We nurture an open and safe culture that enables everyone to be themselves at work. We strive to ensure that our work reaches a full range of families and employers. • We are driven. We leverage our collective knowledge, commitment, and skills to do an expert job for our beneficiaries, supporters, and colleagues. Our history and where we are now We have been supporting working parents for over 45 years. From a group of working mothers meeting in Clapham back in 1980 to talk about returning to work after children, to our reach during the pandemic to more than 1.5 million working parents in the UK, it’s been an incredible journey. We are now a team of 30 dedicated professionals, who all work flexibly (including colleagues working part time, job shares and remotely). In addition to our paid staff, we benefit from the expertise of our pro bono volunteer solicitors’ network, which amounts to 3 full-time- equivalent team members and helps us give high quality legal advice to a growing number of people. We have built a board of academic advisors and our parent and carer panel provides lived experience that shapes our work, ensuring that the voices of the people we are here to support are meaningfully represented. Our strategic direction is set by our highly committed Board of Trustees. For detailed financial and impact reporting, you can find up to date yearly reports on our website. 2 What we do Legal Advice Service We run a free legal advice service for parents and carer, who contact us directly over email or phone, as well as access online information and advice 24 hours a day through our website. The parents and carers who contact us directly have least access to justice. Many are on a low income, the majority are women, a significant proportion are from an ethnic minority background or single parents. They contact us because they want to keep their jobs and manage their caring responsibilities. Our priority for our website, is ensuring our advice pages are up to date, as they remain the bedrock of the advice we provide. We also provide in work benefit advice, to support working parents and carers to maximise their income. Employer Services & Family Friendly Workplaces Certification We work closely with our member organisations, spanning industries as varied as construction and banking, all of whom want to support their employees to better manage their working and family lives and improve organisational performance. Our unrivalled expertise enables employers to create flexible, family friendly and high-performing workplace cultures, by changing mindsets, behaviours and providing proven solutions to the challenges employers face. We provide advice, resources, and benchmarking analysis which, in addition to our webinar and events programme, ensure that employers understand how their organisation can benefit from supporting parents and carers and all who wish to work flexibly. We believe that family inclusive employers deserve to be recognised. Our Family Friendly Workplaces certification provides employers with a framework of best practice guidelines and a work and family action plan to embed family friendly workplace culture. The Family Friendly Workplaces certification provides you with an evidence-led framework to measure ways of working, alongside an action plan to help employers reach their goals and continue developing as a certified Family Inclusive Workplace. Being a certified Family Inclusive Workplace lets people know what is important to organisations, so they can retain valuable staff, attract fresh talent and build a supportive and inclusive work environment that is fit for the future. It’s a global movement, so employers will be joining a growing network of organisations that are helping push up standards around the world, for a future of work that works for everyone. Policy and Influencing Working Families advocates on behalf of working parents and carers across the UK, influencing policy through campaigns that are always informed by evidence-based research. Our work has been instrumental in achieving major policy wins, including the right to request flexible working and Shared Parental Leave. We also run a series of high-profile public campaigns that lead national conversations on flexible working. Our campaigns build on the achievements 45 years of influencing work to create a modern workforce, and aims to encourage a wider understanding of what real 3 flexible working looks like, and how it can benefit both individuals and business. And since 2009 we’ve been running National Work Life Week, now a nationally recognised time for organisations of all shapes and sizes to talk about work-life balance, flexible working, and wellbeing. Our reach Everything we do at Working Families is aims to make it easier for more people to have a healthy, fulfilling balance between work and their family life. We directly empower parents and carers through our Legal Advice Service, and indirectly by working with politicians of all parties to drive policy change and practice. We also support employers to create more family friendly, flexible workplaces. We publish an annual impact report, using data and evidence from the financial year. 4 The role of our Trustees Our Trustees are deeply involved in the work of the charity, set the strategic direction for Working Families, and use their practical skills, experience, and knowledge to support and challenge the staff team. The main role of our Trustees Our trustees are volunteers with a specific legal responsibility to: • Ensure our aims and objectives are being met • Act in the best interest of the charity • Manage responsibility what we have (such as our people and our money) • Act with reasonable care and skill You can find more information from the Charity Commission. Trustee Board meetings Board meetings take place every quarter, lasting three hours. There are board papers for each meeting that require reading in advance. We have two in person and two remote meetings a year. Each trustee is expected to sit on one of our three committees, which meet monthly for an hour. These meetings are held remotely. Location Working Families does not currently have a physical office, and all our meetings are done through video conferencing. The in person meetings are held in central London. Reasonable expenses (including childcare and travel) are reimbursed. What you will gain • The chance to develop new skills, including charity governance • The opportunity to shape the direction of a national charity • The chance to use your own skills, connections, and experience to create new opportunities for Working Families • Be part of driving a dedicated team to achieve our mission and have a positive impact on millions of families in the UK 5 Trustee Person Specification The duties of a trustee are: • Ensure the organisation pursues its stated objects (purposes), as defined in its governing document, by developing and agreeing a long-term strategy • Ensure the organisation complies with its governing document (i.e., its articles of association), charity law, company law and any other relevant legislation or regulations • Ensure the organisation applies its resources exclusively in pursuance of its charitable objects (i.e., the charity must not spend money on activities that are not included in its own objects, however worthwhile or charitable those activities are) for the benefit of the public • Ensure the organisation defines its goals and evaluates performance against agreed targets • Safeguard the good name and values of the organisation • Ensure the effective and efficient administration of the organisation, including having appropriate policies and procedures in place • Actively participate in the Committees of the Board • Ensure the financial stability of the organisation • Protect and manage any property of the charity and ensure the proper investment of the charity’s funds Leverage your wider network for the benefit of the charity • • Follow proper and formal arrangements for the appointment, supervision, support, appraisal, and remuneration of the chief executive In addition to the statutory duties, each trustee should use any specific skills, knowledge or experience they have to help the board of trustees reach sound decisions. This may involve scrutinising board papers, leading discussions, focusing on key issues, providing advice and guidance on new initiatives, or other issues in which the trustee has special expertise. Person specification • A commitment to the organisation • A willingness to devote the necessary time and effort • Strategic vision • Good, independent judgement • An ability to think creatively • A willingness to speak their mind • An understanding and acceptance of the legal duties, responsibilities, and liabilities of trusteeship • An ability to work effectively as a member of a team • A commitment to Nolan’s seven principles of public life: selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty, and leadership. 6 Restrictions • Over 18 • Not bankrupt • Subject to satisfactory references • Not excluded by Companies House or Charity Commission • Conflicts of interest that would be so significant as to undermine the role in general e.g., was a member of a group that discriminated against people based on gender or ethnicity Interested in finding out more? For more information on anything in this document, please get in touch with us via recruitment@workingfamilies.org.uk. To apply for the role please complete and return the Application Form to recruitment@workingfamilies.org.uk. 7