21 September 2021
Often, parenthood is seen as an experience that jeopardises professional efficacy. But in reality, becoming a parent offers an incredible opportunity for growth, both at home and at work. In their everyday relationships with their children, people hone relational, organisational and innovation skills to create synergy between their private and working lives.
That’s the direction that the EY has taken their strategy. They’re promoting a new corporate culture where caring for families isn’t an abstract concept. It’s a lived experience. It’s why they’ve chosen to commit to transforming and elaborating their corporate programs and policies to offer new opportunities for their employees and workers. They’ve also decided to implement a training journey in collaboration with Lifeed, supporting parents (with children aged between 0 and 3 years) as professionals and individuals.
“We want to support parenthood, allowing our people to dedicate more time to their children and offering them opportunities to growth both personally and professionally. That’s why we’ve chosen a top-rated program to accompany our new parents in their journey, giving them the tools to value the skills that they’ve acquired through caring for their families”, says Massimo Antonelli, AD at EY Italy and Managing Partner of the Mediterranean Area.
The birth of a child is a unique emotional and psychological experience that triggers personal growth for both parents. Caring for others develops and strengthens relational, creative and organisational skills that were previously overlooked.
Problem solving, risk taking and decision making are just a few of the skills linked to parenthood, but they can make a real difference in our personal and professional lives. At the heart of the Lifeed You Care You Learn project at EY, we started with the idea that becoming a parent mustn’t be seen as a stumbling block at work, but rather a building block. The digital training program focuses on self-learning and personal growth, based on a revolutionary approach towards parental-work synergy.
The program uses the Life Base Learning method, and uses a range of different tools:
– micro-learning lessons with multimedia materials
– formative modules focusing on different skills
– real-life missions to see how learnings can be applied in everyday life
– corporate rooms to share and compare experiences and reflections with other parents on the platform
Thanks to the Lifeed training program, employees can train a range of different skills:
– Relational: empathy, listening, communication
– Organisational: delegation, time and complexity management, decision making
– Innovation: problem solving, creativity, change management
Lifeed’s You Care You Learn program allows EY’s new parents to experience parenthood and caregiving while developing new skills and learning how to transfer those skills from one area of life to another.
According to EY’s philosophy, becoming a parent is an experience that triggers personal growth, creating human value for both parents. That’s why the company has decided to support its parents both in terms of time with their families and financial support.
First of all, EY offers new fathers (including adoptive fathers) an additional 10 days, on top of the 10 days paternity leave that the government gives them (women are currently offered 5 months leave from the government). Through this, they want to give their employees the time to stay with their family, up to a period of 20 working days.
The new corporate policy also transforms the financial bonus for mothers into a parental bonus. The financial bonus is designed to help parents pay for nursery and baby sitter fees when they return to work. This initiative has now been offered to both mothers and fathers, employees and freelance workers.
