By Powerscourt on 08/03/2023
International Women’s Day 2023: Powerscourt #EmbracesEquity for Women in the Workplace
Powerscourt is embracing equity – the theme of International Women’s Day 2023 – and celebrating our industry-leading parental leave and childcare schemes.
Since 2022, Powerscourt employees have benefitted from our Enhanced Maternity Leave package: 26 weeks at full pay. To help our colleagues prepare ahead of, during and for their return from maternity leave, we offer specialist 1:1 coaching. On top of this, we provide a bonus of two month’s salary to all colleagues returning from maternity leave to continue our support on their workplace journey.
Elly Williamson, Partner and Head of TMT, has been one of the first to experience the advantages of Powerscourt’s updated maternity leave offer. She reflected:
I’ve been in agency communications since 2004 and I joined Powerscourt as Head of TMT in 2018, when my first child was four months old. I recently returned from maternity leave after the birth of my second child.
Powerscourt had been supportive in helping me adapt to life as a working parent when I first joined – family is treated as very important here – but was even better the second time round. I was able to benefit from a recently enhanced, sector-leading maternity pay policy, and we recruited an interim head of team to make sure the client base I’d worked hard to build was well served. This let me focus on my family until I was ready to come back, not just by spending time with my new baby but also being there when my older child started school.
On my way back in I had return-to-work coaching sessions, which gave me time to reflect on what might be challenging and what I could do to tackle that. Our hybrid work from office/home strategy also means I can catch a bit more of my family without it holding back my access to clients and colleagues.
Powerscourt also recognises the financial pressures facing families as a barrier to true equity at work. Studies show that high childcare costs can prevent women returning to work: 43% of mothers said that the cost of childcare had made them consider leaving their job[1]. To support family life, we now operate a Workplace Nursery Scheme to support working parents. The scheme provides meaningful savings on the cost of childcare each month, benefitting employees, the employer, and the childcare provider.
Victoria Palmer-Moore, Managing Partner, said: “Family life is very important at Powerscourt, but the decision to start a family can also provoke a great deal of career anxiety, particularly for women. In the spirit of this, we want to support women not just while they are on maternity leave, with a pay package which is one of the best in our industry, but through the potentially difficult period of returning to work as well. The support we offer is part of our comprehensive benefits package which will, I hope, ensure that we continue to attract and retain the women who help make Powerscourt what it is today.”
[1] Source: https://pregnantthenscrewed.com/one-in-four-parents-say-that-they-have-had-to-cut-down-on-heat-food-clothing-to-pay-for-childcare/
