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Over the past 5 years Pernod Ricard Winemakers has increased our focus on continuing to develop a more inclusive workforce. Fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace where everyone has access to the same resources, opportunities and rewards is an important part of our commitment to valuing our people. Being a family friendly workplace is aligned to this commitment and ensures we continue to create a workplace culture that enables all employees to combine work and family responsibilities.
Parental Leave Support and Flexibility
We offer a generous 15 weeks of paid parental leave and the flexibility to receive this at half pay over 30 weeks. Our policy is gender neutral and inclusive of all new parents. In the tragic event of miscarriage, still birth, or a life-threatening circumstance after 20 weeks of pregnancy, we offer our employees 4 weeks paid leave for rest and recovery. In the event of early pregnancy loss, we offer 2 weeks bereavement leave. We have a Parents, Families & Caregivers digital hub that provides our employees with a comprehensive library of external resources that supports them in the planning of starting a family, pregnancy, adoption, returning to work and developing their career as a working parent. We fully support and have a culture of flexible working in order for our employees to balance work and family life commitments.
Wellbeing @ Pernod Ricard Winemakers
We have recently launched a Wellbeing program ‘When life gets big, Go small’. This program includes a calendar of activities throughout the year as well as useful resources within our digital ‘Wellbeing Hub’ focussed on Stress, Sleep, Nutrition and Disconnection.
Our weekly programs include mindfulness sessions, exercise, meditation, and online activities for kids. We have introduced wellbeing ways of working, which includes guidelines on creating space between meetings, focus time to finish off the week, taking regular breaks and encouraging walking meetings. We also have an onsite psychologist to directly support the wellbeing needs for all our employees. All these initiatives help our employees to balance work and family commitments, particularly in consideration of our current environment as a result of the pandemic.
The past 12 months we have seen 4 times more males take parental leave and 40% of our parents have returned part-time after having children. We also currently have 45% female representation in leadership positions across the business. In our recent culture survey, 80% of our employees indicated that their Manager genuinely cares about their health and wellbeing and that they have the flexibility they need to manage work and other commitments. Engagement with our Wellbeing program has been pleasing with a large number of employees signing up for our weekly activities and visitation to our digital ‘Wellbeing Hub’ has increased in the past month.
Gemma Charles – Commercial Manager, Operations
I have worked for Pernod Ricard Winemakers for over 11 years. I received a great amount of support from my leadership team and colleagues when I went on parental leave in 2016 to have my daughter, Winter Lee. I returned in 2017 when Winter was 8 months old and was promoted to a management position working across both Australia and New Zealand. With staff & stakeholders in both countries, I was often required to travel and received constant flexibility to enable me to work my travel in around my family.
I was 8 weeks pregnant with my second child when I saw a new internal promotion advertised within the business. I immediately applied and was thrilled to be offered the position. I opted to be transparent with the hiring manager and shared the exciting news of my pregnancy. I was overwhelmed with how supportive, flexible and encouraging the leadership team was during this period. We worked together closely as I transitioned into my new role, as well as providing training and induction to my parental leave cover. As I prepared to commence my second parental leave period, I felt valued by my company and excited about the plans we had made together for my return to work in 2020. Knowing that Pernod Ricard Winemakers fully supported both my career development and my new role as parent was really important to me and played a huge part in helping me feel mentally prepared as my second daughter, Raven Mae arrived in Dec 2019.
When the time came for me to return to work, I once again received excellent support, guidance and flexibility from my Manager and the business. My transition back to work was managed over 3 months, moving from 3-days a week, to 4-days and eventually settling into a 9-day per fortnight routine that allowed me to take Winter to Kindergarten, and have some one-on-one time with Raven – in addition to diving headfirst into my new role. Alongside returning to work and adjusting to being a household with 2 working parents, I have received an endless amount of support, coaching and training to ensure I have the skills I need to perform my new role and deliver key outcomes for the business.
In conjunction with paid parental leave, paid ‘Keeping in Touch’ days, the Parents, Families & Caregivers digital hub, and support of my manager and the business, I have been able to develop professionally in parallel to building a family life I am proud of. I will forever be grateful to Pernod Ricard Winemakers for being beside me every step of the way.
18 years ago, when I returned to work after my first child I had so many mixed emotions and found the transition incredibly difficult. The company I worked for at the time did not have a family friendly culture and I found myself working weekends to keep up and apologising to my colleagues when family commitments ‘got in the way of work’. Fast forward 18 years and I’m now the proud mother of 3 children. I no longer need to apologise, but instead embrace and promote my role as both a Mum and a highly effective contributor at Pernod Ricard Winemakers. The working environment has shifted significantly and the flexibility that we now expect is rightly becoming ingrained in our working culture. We need to continue this momentum and a family friendly workplace should now be an expectation for all employees in any organisation. If we are able to support our employees in managing both work and family commitments, then we are more likely to have a highly engaged workforce, retain our talent and encourage new talent to join the organisation. Pernod Ricard Winemakers has actively supported me with the flexibility I have needed to manage both work and family commitments and I’m looking forward to continuing our journey as a family friendly workplace.
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