Informal care involves unpaid, typically long-term care, provided to a person in your immediate social environment and residing in the Netherlands. The person may be a partner, parent or child, but also another family member, friend or acquaintance. It is important to realise that informal carers often do not have a choice: they have an emotional bond with the person in need of care and have no other option but to care for them.
For informal carers
When you have to combine your work with informal care, your work-life balance can come under pressure. Avoid overburdening yourself due to your informal care responsibilities by talking to your manager in good time. Together you can try to find a solution to fit your situation. VU Amsterdam also has various special arrangements under which you can request leave for informal care.
For managers
The combination of work and informal care can be physically and emotionally demanding and so you as a manager must take this into account. It will not always be clear that an employee is also an informal carer, so make sure to ask your employees about their situation, for example during the annual interview or regular work meetings. This can make it easier for your employees to talk about their informal care responsibilities. If an employee tells you they are having difficulty combining work and informal care, you can jointly try to find a solution to fit their situation, because no two situations are alike. It is also good to keep the interests of your department in mind, and try to prevent work backlogs or a long-term workload increase for the informal carer’s colleagues.
Leave schemes and special arrangements
VU Amsterdam offers a range of leave schemes that can be used to find a healthy balance between work and informal care. Examples are emergency leave or short-term or long-term care leave. In addition, an employee can ask their manager for a permanent or temporary change of their working hours, work schedule, or place of work based on the Flexible Work Act. An employee and their manager can also agree on a special arrangement, such as permission to call doctors and authorities privately during working hours and/or being available for phone calls from these parties. Finally, a manager can grant (additional) special leave for exceptional circumstances.