Supporting our working parents
Since 2016, we’ve worked hard to establish a flexible and inclusive working culture, working with our colleagues to nurture an environment where productivity is more important than presenteeism. It’s something that’s appealed to the many working parents in our team who this month, have been given even more benefits from OFR. Our head of HR Lucy Kirkup explains.
I’m a working parent and as a mum of two wonderful small people (aged 9 and 7), I’m all too familiar with the struggle faced by parents as they juggle kids and a career.
It’s an issue that’s been at the forefront of the news this week too; in his spring budget, the Chancellor Jeremy Hunt outlined new plans to support working parents with childcare, but the ideas won’t come to fruition until at least 2024, leaving parents still making tough decisions each day.
We’re combatting that by reinforcing a workplace that is less interested in seeing colleagues in the office each day, and more focused on rewarding the great work they do. Flexibility has been an option for OFR people since day one; for us it wasn’t just born out of the pandemic, as we’d always empowered colleagues to work from home – or from any other place that suited their day to day lives.
But this week we’ve gone even further, establishing new policies which benefit parents taking leave to welcome a new baby, or to welcome an adopted child into their home.
Enhancing existing policies, we have now doubled the paid maternity and adoption leave period for OFR colleagues, and we’ve extended the shared parental leave time too – helping more parents stay at home as they adjust to an expanded household.
It’s imperative that modern businesses launch initiatives like these – helping anyone in their workplace as they juggle work and home life. Our policies reflect this and even extend beyond working parents; our general flexible structure means that anyone with caring responsibilities – from children to elderly or vulnerable relatives – is given the autonomy to shape their own working day.
It’s one of many benefits that we give to OFR people – with things like healthcare, health assessments, investment and training programmes, and even paid leave to take time away from the office to do charity or community work.
It’s working well so far, and we now have more than 100 colleagues based all over the country, with high staff retention too.
If you want to know more about the roles we’re hiring for just drop a line to our recruitment team: recruitment@ofrconsultants.com.
