Deloitte, Winner 2012, Best for Mothers Award
Deloitte is a professional services firm employing nearly 13,000 people in the UK. Over the last year they have specifically introduced and enhanced their offering for mothers, partly to retain existing talent, but also as a way of increasing the number of women who occupy senior positions with the organisation. By supporting mothers through their maternity experience and beyond Deloitte is able to keep and develop their female talent.
Some of the steps they have taken include: further enhancing maternity pay; providing 1:1 coaching for senior staff and their line managers on transitioning on and off maternity leave, and free webinars for all staff; the ability to ‘buy’ more leave if required; extended emergency childcare provision to include options for mothers with older children; a mentoring scheme connecting mothers; and a single parents network to run alongside their existing parents’ group.
Deloitte have been able to track the initial results of deploying enhanced provisions for mothers. Their maternity return rate has increased to 93 percent.
Absence levels for women have fallen, and are even better at 2.9 days p.a. for women who work flexibly. Part of the success of the development of policies for mothers has been the ability to track their success through good use of monitoring and metrics.