Policy and technical assistance on work and family

Work and Family

Advocacy and awareness-raising

The ILO works at the global and national level on promoting and raising awareness of the principles of the International labour standard instruments on work and family, and its effective implementation. Recent advocacy efforts have focussed on linking the contribution of work and family policies to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) on gender equality (MDG3), Achieving Millennium Development Goal 4 through Decent Work and Achieving Millennium Development Goal 5 through Decent Work. At the global level, the ILO contributes to Useful links for Work and Family to recognize, measure and support unpaid care work. At the national level, advocacy actions have included the preparation of workshops, videos, informational material and campaigns on the importance of maternity protection at work in countries such as China, Sharing Work and Family Responsibilities in Paraguay and Mozambique.

National-level policy and technical advice

National-level policy and technical advisory services are provided to ILO constituents on demand or as part of the implementation of ILO Strategic Outcome “Women and men have improved and more equitable working conditions”. These services are also delivered as part of ILO participation in national joint activities of the United Nations Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF). ILO technical assistance is designed to support member States in improving legislation, regulations, or policies regarding work and family. In recent years, these advisory services have been provided to ILO constituents in many countries, such as Chile, China, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Paraguay and the United Republic of Tanzania.

Training on work and family

The ILO has developed two training tools on work-family reconciliation. The WISE-R Action Manual Module and Trainers’ Guide on family-friendly measures provide an extensive illustrated overview of practical and low-cost guidelines on implementing good practices in regards to work-family measures and maternity protection in small businesses. This training package is part of Improving working conditions at the workplace, a participatory methodology designed to help small- and medium-sized enterprises to simultaneously improve working conditions, workers’ well-being as well as productivity. This training module was pilot-tested in both Mozambique and United Republic of Tanzania and is now available to ILO constituents and other organizations.

The A Training Package on Work and Family contains a wide range of information, activities, examples of good practices and other resources to guide action and initiatives on work and family. It aims to illustrate, describe and assist in the development of work and family initiatives, and how these can become enterprise policies, while at the same time, also be an integral and compatible part of competitive and productive enterprise management.