LinkedIn and Symantec initiatives helping parent employees succeed

Mum is the word at LinkedIn – and Dad. Management at the US business networking site’s Irish operations has seen a 275 per cent rise in maternity and paternity leave this year.

“There’s something in the water here,” says Wendy Murphy, senior human resources director at LinkedIn EMEA.

Burgeoning birth rates have encouraged the company to look at the way it supports its new parents.

Of LinkedIn’s 1,000 staff in Ireland, 50 per cent are not Irish nationals. In fact, it has 63 nationalities – speaking 26 different languages. This gives a whole new complexion to traditional notions of what “family friendly” means.

“One of the issues we recognised was that, in this baby boom we are experiencing, so many of our new parents are not from Ireland and so don’t have the support network of family and grandparents that can be so important,” says Murphy.

“Our response was to develop an employee resource group, which is employee-led, which helps new mums and dads with all those questions such as how do you find a babysitter in Dublin and where’s a good school, all those helpful tips and tricks that parents can pass on to one another.”

LinkedIn brings in experts from Mumager, which provides training to help new mums cope better with what can be a fraught return to work after maternity leave.

“It’s all about helping women figure out how best to make that transition back to work. It’s a time that can come with a huge amount of guilt, so it’s about helping them deal with that, helping them set expectations in relation to not having to be the best mother, partner, cook, parents, all of which can put huge pressure on women,” says Murphy.

Pregnant

The company also offers online training for line managers, equipping them to know what to say when a staff member says they are pregnant. “It’s having that conversation around whether or not the person on leave wants to be contacted while they are out, for example,” says Murphy.

“Some people don’t want to be contacted at all, others want to know everything that’s going on. It’s whatever works best for you,” she says.

Another initiative developed to help foster a better sense of work-life balance is Perk Up. “Kids get sick, it’s a fact of life. What was important for us was to see how could we better support parents around that fact,” says Murphy.

“With Perk Up, they get an allowance, valued at €300 a quarter, which they can use for such things as invoiced emergency babysitting, for example. It doesn’t have to be child related, you can use it for a course of 10 massage treatments, or for a dog-walking service. Our whole aim is to help all our staff be successful inside and outside of work.”

Supporting a good work-life balance is an effective employee engagement and retention tool.

“What we’re finding is that flexibility applies to everybody, not just to one demographic,” says Marie Ronan, regional HR senior manager EMEA at Symantec.

“Sure Millennials are used to fluid working hours, but Generation X-ers are likely to have family commitments that require flexibility, so it ranks highly for most employees. People here can work from home.

“If they have child-related matters to attend to, there are no eyebrows raised, they don’t even have to give a reason. I’m a parent myself, so I know how loyal that kind of support for your family life makes you. If you were to try and put a cost on it in terms of being part of your benefits package, it would be invaluable.”

‘Part of the culture’

At Symantec, these aren’t just policies, they are part of the culture, she says.

“Symantec is very good at looking at people holistically. They see you as a member of your family and of your wider circle.”

Women in particular are supported at the company by the development of its Women’s Action Network, a forum for addressing issues relating to gender and empowerment.

“We ran an International Women’s Day event recently, with Olympic boxer Katie Taylor here to speak both at a general event and also to a smaller group of participants nominated by other staff members for having broken the mould in some way,” she says.

The company runs CoderDojo classes for employees’ children and recently ran its first Global Service Week too, encouraging all its team to get involved in volunteering. “As well as offering people five days’ paid volunteering work, we match the hours they put in with a payment to the charity. We had people doing everything from cleaning beaches to working with the Vincent de Paul and the DSPCA.”

Enabling staff to participate in socially responsible activities as part of their working life is another way of supporting a better work-life balance. And here too the knock-on effect is a higher level of staff engagement.

“Our entire company is based on innovation and passion. We want people who are passionate about our company,” says Ronan.