Pension law specialist Sacker & Partners jointly won the Cityparents Best for All Stages of Motherhood Award at the Working Families Special Awards. Now in their seventh year, the Top Employers for Working Families Special Awards showcase the UK’s most flexible and agile workplaces. HR magazine is media partner of Working Families.
We take a look at what made Sacker & Partners stand out...
What it did: Julia Perrin, director of HR at Sackers, told HR magazine that it is particularly important for Sackers to consider the needs of working mothers. “Sackers employs a high proportion of women; many of whom are working parents,” she said. “We have therefore put in place a range of policies and benefits to support them. These include enhancing maternity, paternity and shared parental leave; providing a maternity resource pack to expectant mums; and being open to flexible working arrangements when they are looking to return to work. We also have a one-to-one maternity coaching scheme for lawyers (using specialist external coaches), which is supported by an internal maternity mentoring system."
The firm hosts webinars for working parents on topics such as choosing childcare and overcoming your working parent guilt. This support is not just limited to those with younger children, as Sackers has also provided webinars on subjects such as keeping your children safe on the internet and choosing secondary schools.
The results are clear to see: 100% of its lawyers who have taken maternity leave in the last five years have returned to work.
What you can learn: Perrin advised organisations to look beyond financial help for parents. “There are a range of things employers can do to improve their offering to working parents,” she explained. “Some of these are financial – such as enhancing statutory benefits – but not all of them need to be expensive. Providing information and setting up internal networks can be particularly effective in helping new parents tap into the support and guidance of colleagues who have previously returned to work after having children, and on balancing work and home as children become older.”
