Welcome to POSACs

An organisation promoting the benefits of employing Parents of School Age Children.

Hello

Aims

• To create an internet job board for 9am to 3pm positions all around New Zealand, enabling potential employees to apply for jobs that suit them in their own location.
• To petition businesses to create POSAC positions and advertise them on this website. 
• To create awareness and a higher profile of the needs and potential of Parents of School Age Children in the workforce so that POSAC positions become part of mainstream life.

Providing for POSACs would require businesses to agree to offer employment:

• Between the hours of about 9am and 3pm Monday to Friday, approximately 27.5 to 32.5 hours per week. 9am to 3pm with a half hour lunch break equates to 27.5 hours per week. 8.30am to 3.30pm with a half hour lunch break equates to 32.5 hours.
• With at least six weeks' holiday per year, half of each holiday: 3 weeks in summer and one week in each of the three two week breaks. This would involve the standard 3 weeks paid holiday plus 3 weeks' unpaid holiday. It would not require 6 weeks' paid holiday.
• With mutual flexibility in the above with regards to employee and employer needs. In this respect both parties need to be flexible for the sake of each other. If a child is sick, the employer allows time off (paid or unpaid), but if the child is sick for too long, then the employee finds childcare and returns to work. The employee should be prepared to make up time outside normal working hours. The employer should be prepared for sudden events requiring the employee to attend to children.

Benefits to the employer and society include:

• Taking optimum advantage of a workforce that has previously been untouched or inadequately catered for.
• Making provisions for POSACs increases employers' options considerably especially in a time of low unemployment, by releasing into the workforce many people not otherwise working.
• Parents would have more self-determination in their work lives and adequate time to give to their children. This would aid in child development and help reduce the incidence of mental illness, substance abuse, teenage pregnancies, anti-social behaviour, youth crime and vandalism; some of which affect businesses directly.
• Solo parents on the DPB would have greater incentive and support to get work, which would relieve some of the welfare burden, make the culture of work more widespread and enable future generations to be familiar with the benefits of gainful employment. WINZ now has sophisticated enough systems to work in with employers to act as a backstop to paid employment and cover for holidays not paid for by employers.
• Birth rates have dipped below replacement levels. Establishing POSACs as a mainstream option would improve birth rates by creating a social environment more amenable to the raising of families.

Statistics

POSACs may be solo or in a working relationship. Following are some figures from the last census (2001):

The creation of jobs specifically targeted at POSACs would particularly affect the 180,000 families where the care giving parent works part time or not at all, protecting their family role, or providing an opportunity to work that was not there before. It would also affect the other 110,000 families where parents (couple or solo) are all working full time, giving them the opportunity to step down their work commitments and give more time to their children if they wish to. 200,000 couples computes to 400,000 parents. Add the 90,000 solo parents, and this issue affects some 490,000 parents. Add their children, and the number comes to at least a million, or a quarter of the population.

Possible POSAC jobs

There are many jobs within business that do not require attendance from 8.30am to 5pm, each day.
Some examples:

• Office jobs, especially on computers.
• Factory jobs. Factories could have a 9 to 3 shift just for POSACs.
• Jobs in large retail centres, supermarkets etc, based on roster.
• Cafe and hospitality lunch shifts.

In many jobs teenage children could fill in for their parent during the holidays, getting essential work experience and reinforcing the benefits of POSACs in employment.

Eventually newspapers would need to have a special column for POSAC Situations Vacant.

Social Responsibility

Industry is there for people, not people for industry. In light of that, a successful business should mould itself around the needs of people. Reproduction and raising of offspring is the most essential human function. Happy, satisfied and fulfilled staff mean high productivity, and the next generation provides the next batch of potential employees. Successful businesses need to factor this into their operation and supporting POSACs in employment is one way of doing this. This does not represent a soft social option but is sound business practice with economic benefits such as providing an increased pool of potential employees, retention of current staff, improved industrial relations, and increased productivity.

If you would like me to talk to your organization on this subject or are interested in supporting the cause then contact us.