Combining a busy and rewarding career with parental or carer responsibilities can be a challenge. We want to develop an environment where working parents can develop their career and also feel supported in balancing their role with family commitments. This not only allows our people to better cope with the pressures of being a working parent, but also allows them to flourish whilst retaining valuable skills within our business.
To help our people balance their commitments at home and at work, everyone at the firm is provided with a suite of resources and training events through our relationship with WorkLife Central (formerly CityParents). We’ve also been taking steps internally to help everyone at the firm achieve a better work-life balance.
Our Agile Working Guidelines, which apply Globally, give our people the flexibility to decide where best to work to fulfil the needs of their role and trusts them to make the best decision where to work on any given day (for example, at home or in the office). It also empowers our people to build greater flexibility into their working day, so long as client and team obligations are met.
In our London Office, we have taken additional steps to support working families by enhancing our family leave benefits. This includes providing maternity coaching to all women going on maternity leave and upon their return to work and offering an internal ‘parental buddy’ to all men and women returning from maternity, paternity, adoption, or shared parental leave. We have also introduced a ‘Returner Induction programme’ to help colleagues settle back into the firm after an extended period of family related leave.