Working Families' advice and guidance have helped us to think about how we best support our employees with more opportunities for agile and flexible working.
Working Families have helped us to hone on our blind spots and pushing us to actively manage and improve on our Family Friendly policies and benefits. This support has helped up to improve on our Top Employer’s Benchmark ranking and overall employee experience.
Through our partnership with Working Families, we have significantly enhanced the working lives of our parents and carers at Drax. This collaboration has been instrumental in fostering a supportive and inclusive work environment.
One of the key benefits of this partnership has been the opportunity to benchmark annually. This process has proven invaluable, providing us with insights into best practices that we might not have identified on our own. By comparing our policies and practices, we have been able to continuously improve and adapt to the evolving needs of our workforce.
Additionally, the lunch and learn sessions organised in collaboration with Working Families have been a tremendous asset. These sessions have offered real value to our Parents and Carers Colleagues Resource Group, which was established following the findings of a previous benchmarking activity. These interactive sessions have not only provided practical advice and support but have also fostered a sense of community and shared learning among our colleagues.
It's been a pleasure partnering with Working Families. This collaboration has been key in our efforts at Drax to create a workplace where parents and carers feel truly valued, supported, and empowered to thrive both professionally and personally. Together, we're building a more inclusive environment for our colleagues.
We have a longstanding commitment to flexible working and ensuring our colleagues are able to combine their career and family responsibilities. For a number of years, Working Families has supported us on our mission to become an agile business. We're pleased to be recognised as a leading business for working families and look forward to further developing our policies and practices that empower our colleagues to find a working pattern flexible to their needs.
Membership of Working Families has provided us with great support on our journey to being a family friendly employer. We’ve benefited from their wealth of experience, evidence-based tools and resources which our inclusion network has been able to use and share with their members. Not only this, Working Families also provide our employees with expert advice on all aspects of being a working parent and carer.
Lottie and Susanne, that was a really thought provoking and useful session, and I think it’ll have really helped raise the profile of flexible working and empower people with caring responsibilities.
ILF Scotland have found the relationship with Working Families pivotal in our journey to be a life friendly employer. The support from the team and events are excellent, helping us to constantly improve our own offer and have found the benchmarking particularly useful in challenging our own thinking on what we do. When this has been coupled with hearing from other innovative and creative organisations, it has allowed us to really stretch what is possible for a public body like our own. Simply put, membership with Working Families has been fantastic value and we thank them for their advice, warmth, humour and support.
The insights we get from Working Families help us to provide excellent support to our parents and carers. They give practical and helpful advice and resources for our people and they help us, as a business, to benchmark ourselves within both the legal sector and the wider market.
The Working Families’ benchmark is an independent survey that comprehensively measures all aspects of our policies and practices around agile working.
Our membership with Working Families gives us access to resources and benchmarks that are valuable in understanding best practice and market changes, through which we can ensure our policies and procedures remain competitive and provide support to all of our working families.
The University of Manchester is passionate about enabling our employees to find a positive balance between their home and work lives. We believe that it is key to attracting, engaging and retaining our talent. We are a member of Working Families as their resources and benchmarking services allow us to ensure that we are implementing the best possible practice and continuously improving the support and initiatives provided to all of our working families and parents.
This year marks our ten-year anniversary of benchmarking with Working Families. For the last decade it has been a useful tool in ensuring that we support our workforce to allow them to have a positive work life balance. At times, the benchmarking challenges our thinking and provides opportunities to further development of our policies and processes. The networking events and support that comes along with the benchmarking are also excellent resources.
The benchmark helps our business track progress. It helps us identify gaps and areas for development to feed into future strategic plans.
Vicki Skelton, DEI Manager
