Best Practice
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Best for family support
Matt Phillips from Financial Services Compensation Scheme talks about how the organisation’s award-winning family support helped him and his family when his daughter was born.
Matt Phillips is Head of Readiness at the Financial Services Compensation Scheme, winner of this year’s WM People Top Employer Award for Best for Family Support. When his wife became pregnant, he had recently stepped up into a new role leading a department and was nervous about taking the full six-month paternity leave available. He says: “I was conscious that it may reflect badly on me if so soon after being given a new opportunity or let people down.”
As soon as he told his manager, however, she encouraged him to take the full six months and Matt says there was never any question in her mind that he should take less.
His manager’s, and FSCS’, support became even more important when a month into his parental leave Matt slipped a disc in his spine, requiring spinal surgery. He became incapacitated and could not walk or support his wife in looking after their newborn daughter.
He says: “My manager had been keeping in contact with me to see how I as doing as a new dad and when I informed her of my change in situation, she called me within a day to tell me she had arranged for my parental leave to be paused by moving me to medical leave, with my parental leave resuming once I had recovered.”
Kindness
That kindness and support took a lot of pressure off Matt and his family. He states: “We had been racked with worry about how we were going to cope during the parental leave we had as I wasn’t going to be able to bond with my daughter or support my wife as we had anticipated. My manager’s kind actions enabled me to focus on my recovery and, once I had recovered, resume my parental leave which enabled me the time to develop a strong bond with my beautiful daughter and provide my wife the support she needed during this time.”
He adds: “I will always be extremely grateful for what my manager, and FSCS, did for my family and me during this time and it is a great example of how FSCS puts its people first and provides them the support to care for their families.”
*Matt features in the WM People Best Practice Report alongside interviews with all the winners of this year’s Top Employer Awards. The report is out in the next few weeks.
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