Family Friendly Policies

We were pleased to be shortlisted as finalists in the prestigious Personnel Today Awards 2019 under the category of Diversity and Inclusion, shortlisted alongside big organisations such as Lloyds Banking Group, The Co-Op, Network Rail, Deloitte, IBM, Rolls Royce, Santander and Iceland.

We were also shortlisted in two categories of the Working Families Best Practice Awards 2019, alongside organisations such as Barclays, Sky, Deloitte, Centrica and Royal Bank of Scotland. The two categories were: ‘Best Flexible Working Initiative’ and ‘Best for Flexible Recruitment’.

To achieve this recognition, we organised a campaign to showcase our staff members who work flexibly, talking realistically and practically about the challenges and benefits of flexible working. In addition, we implemented a requirement that all of our job adverts must list specific types of flexible working available in that role and require hiring managers to justify removing flexible working options. 98% of our jobs are now agile!

Family and work

To help our employees with their home lives, as a parent or carer, we have developed multiple family-based policies and initiatives.

We aim to support parents and carers by offering a variety of different working assistance across the organisation including a ‘Parent Together’ peer support scheme. Alongside these parental benefits come as a day-one right and have no criteria around length of service.

As recognition for our support in this area, we are proud to have won the Working Dads Award for parental policies in both 2022 and 2023.

Similarly, for carers, we have a Carers Policy which includes one week of full paid leave.

Here is a sample of what we offer:

• Occupational maternity and adoption leave of 90% pay for the first six weeks, followed by half pay for the subsequent 12 weeks,
• Up to 10 paid Keeping in Touch (KIT) days,
• 4 weeks of paid paternity leave,
• Paid leave for antenatal appointments for both parents,
• One week of paid fertility leave,
• Minimum 3 weeks of fully paid additional leave for both parents of premature babies.