Q2 has marked a new chapter in life and work, with several steps forward. Coronavirus restrictions began easing, and the vaccination programme speeded up, just after a new official code of practice came into place on the right to disconnect from work.

Around the same time, the Tánaiste also invited submissions on putting the right to seek remote working into law.

In this context, Legal Island will be discussing what the next phase holds for employers, with a focus on work-life balance, particularly in relation to working families.

Over the previous year, the pandemic had fundamentally transformed our work-life dynamic, further blurring the lines between work and family. The Department of Enterprise and Employment described both new public policy initiatives as part of Leo Varadkar’s plan “to create more flexible family-friendly working arrangements, including working from home and working more flexible hours”.

• Learn what Ireland’s leading employers are doing now, and next, to engage their workforces and enable work-life balance in a new hybrid working world
• Focus in on how to help working parents and carers meet the novel challenges ahead as we move towards the summer, and then the Autumn.
• Identify the lessons worth keeping from how working parents and carers coped with periodic lockdowns, and the school-free world. What can employers continue to do to provide practical support with care.

In this webinar recording, Legal Island is joined by Oliver Daniels, Client Services Manager and Oliver Black, Commercial Director, Bright Horizons to consider what it means to be a family-friendly employer in Ireland in – and after - the ‘Time of Covid’ and in a new world of work-life balance.

The Recording

Transcript

Scott: Good morning, everybody. My name is Scott Alexander. I'm from LegalIsland. Welcome to this webinar that we're doing in association with Bright Horizons. Flexible working . . . Or sorry, flexible family-friendly working is what we're looking at today. Here are our hosts. That's me. Most of you know who I am, so I'm not going to tell you my bio, but I will read out the bios of our two guests speakers today who are Oliver Daniels and Oliver Black.

Taking the first one, Oliver Daniels, he is . . . say hello, Oliver. He is the business development manager at Bright Horizons. Both doting father and loving son, Oliver Daniels has first-hand experience of the daily challenges working parents and carers face, which inspires and motivates him to help others combine work and family truly successfully.

In his role as operations manager for Backup Care, Oliver was responsible for smooth and seamless service delivery throughout the UK and Ireland. He led the Backup Care team for eight years, implementing improved systems and processes as well as growing the largest provider network of its kind in both countries. He is the Bright Horizons business development lead for Ireland, a natural fit given the amount of time he spends there or at least used to before the lockdown.

Oliver loves to unwind with a good book. His guilty pleasure is pulp fiction, and to stay healthy he swims regularly. But the joy of Oliver's life, the apple of his eye, the greatest source of comic relief is, without doubt, his smart, beautiful, and not-so-little-anymore, little girl. They cause you nothing but grief as you go through. I have two of my own.

Another speaker is Oliver Black who is the head of commercial functions at Bright Horizons. Oliver started his career at P&G, which presumably is Procter & Gamble, Oliver, as a brand manager with . . .

Oliver B: It is.

Scott: Yeah, it is, yeah. There you go. With Oil of Olay which I remember being Oil of Ulay, I'm that old, and he was part of the team that introduced P&G's trailblazing maternity support programme. He was the first person in the UK to move the childcare market online, launching Tinies in 2000, which has become the UK's largest supplier of childcare and nursery staff.

Oliver and his brother, Ben, then set up My Family Care in 2006 to be the leading provider of work and family solutions. Those solutions were all designed to make work and having a family a practical and profitable reality for both the company and the employee by providing elements like emergency child and eldercare to over 300 of the UK's best-known employers. He eventually sold the business to Bright Horizons in 2019 where he now heads up all the commercial functions.

Oliver is a proud father of three young children, which some describe as living the brand, and he has an unhealthy obsession with endurance sports, which is why both our speakers look so fit and healthy.

Now, yeah, this is all about trying to balance the family and work responsibilities, folks. So that's why the bios, I've asked them from that angle to show that both our speakers here know what they're talking about. They're trying to get across a message that it is possible for employers and employees and families to work together, I suppose.

You saw a little ad there for the Annual Review, folks. It didn't last long. We're just getting the slides ready for Oliver Daniels to take over. There will be a little delay before they pop up. But the Annual Review this year, as you may know, is on the 24th and 25th of November. And there is an additional day on the 27th of January, which is an HR day, an international HR day. I've been writing the programme for both of those, and you'll be getting details very soon.

So I am going to pass it over to the two Olivers. If you have any questions, drop them in the question box, and I will ask them anonymously once they've finished their presentation. So they're going to make a presentation for 25 minutes, half an hour or so, and then we're going to take Q&A. Okay, I'm going to pass you over now to both of the Olivers.

Oliver B: Thanks, Scott.

Oliver D: Thank you so much for that, Scott and the lovely introduction. And thank you, everyone, for joining us today. We hope to share some useful insights, learning, and expertise around our role in supporting many of Ireland's leading employers when it comes to them supporting their working parents and carers. Give you a bit of history around how it worked pre-pandemic, what the journey has been like for so many of them during the pandemic, and also looking ahead to the future.

So for the agenda today, I trust you can see my screen now and then the free carers will be covering up. Well, first of all, what are Ireland's leading employers doing right now? And also next to continue to engage their workforces and enable that work-life balance in their new hybrid working worlds. I think that's a phrase you'll hear pop up quite a bit, hybrid. And it's certainly something that we'll delve into in more detail for you.

Also, we're going to be looking at how you can best, as an employer, support and help your working parents and carers. And this is drawn from our expertise and experience working with over 40 leading employers in Ireland right now to help meet the novel challenges ahead. Certainly, as we look to summer, hopefully not going to be as challenging as last summer was for working parents in particular but definitely still probably going to be quite challenging. And also autumn and, you know . . . I hesitate to use the phrase, post-COVID world, but hopefully, that's where we will be getting to.

And then finally, lessons worth keeping. How did working parents and carers cope with things such as the periodic lockdowns, parents of school-aged children, in particular struggling to kind of remote work and homeschool in the same time in a school-free world. And, you know, what can employers continue to do to provide that practical support and care.

So just a little bit more about Bright Horizons very quickly. Just simply saying that, yeah, we are dedicated to providing that best-in-class support and family throughout the UK and Ireland. We've been doing that for, in Ireland itself well over 10 or close to 15 years now, in fact, but it's a truly global operation, and this may resonate with some of you because a lot of you were working for organisations that are also multinational, that are global players.

And so we've got a long heritage. We're first founded in the U.S. and then . . . but I've been, as I said, operating in Ireland, in particular, the UK, places like India, the Netherlands as well. So we really do have that great expertise there. But, equally, we're just as well focused at helping smaller employers too. So that's something that we've been working very hard to meet the needs of large or small employers.

And we aim to partner, not just to be seen as a supplier, you know, advise on strategy and to draw on our in-depth experience of providing childcare providers in a commercial marketplace as much as it is around supporting employers with their family-friendly policies and strategies.

And just to give you, again, a bit of an example of that. Right now, we work with over 1300 of the UK's leading employees. Sorry, UK and Ireland, and the U.S.'s leading employers. And we've provided services ranging from things like backup care through to parental transition coaching through to on-site nurseries, help with launching and sustaining the employer network such as parent networks and carer networks. All of these services are geared towards driving things such as employee engagement, helping with the talent attraction and retention and so on.

And, in fact, one of the things that we say is that whilst the challenges of work and life are complex, our solutions are certainly . . . We tried to make them as simple as possible. And they fall into four broad categories, and those will pop up, but it's just to give you that taste or an idea of what we currently do. And, in fact, you know, when I mention the 15 years of expertise in Ireland, it's all together since we started in the U.S. 30 years, in fact. So I can certainly say that we've got a good idea of what we're doing, and it's reliable information you can count on.

Equally, we are constantly looking at innovating and adding in new solutions. Things such as incorporating virtual holiday camps. I will tell you a bit more about that. In Ireland, that was a real success last summer with our existing client base and right now, we're looking at things like offering one-to-one remote tuition as well as for employers looking to support their working parents and carers who are worried about such things as the myth of the lost generation that you're hearing a lot about in the media with children who've been homeschooling in the past not doing as well as they could have done.

What are Ireland's leading employers doing now and next to engage their workforces?

So exactly what are Ireland's leading employers doing now and next to engage their workforces and enable that work-life balance in a new hybrid and working world? It's a good question. And it's something that Ollie, you may be able to help me out a little bit here with in terms of some of the things we're looking at with hybrid working mental health, you know, family supports, etc.

Oliver B: Definitely. I mean, there's lots of things going on in this area. You've seen kind of . . . As you say, we're talking about hybrid working. We're seeing some of the mental well-being challenges right on the agenda, how it all plays into diversity and inclusion. I think, given the very nature that this is a webinar, we're seeing everyone in their 360, you know, where kind of family lifestyle interacting very strongly with work. So I think that plays to it as well. People's physical well-being. The fact that, you know, brilliant at the beginning that the tech enabled us to do this, but we're now seeing kind of some of those productivity gains going down as we see stuff coming back. So no, lots of things that people are doing that we'll come to talk about.

Oliver D: Fantastic. And in fact, I suppose that key phrase is a time of change and transition. And as we have the summer ahead, we've got employees who are keen to move forward with new working arrangements, office usage, ways of working, aware that, you know, working parents do have a bit more juggling to do. When we come back, the new normal, and things like that, Olilie, we are hearing things like a return to the office is not going to be the way it was pre-pandemic.

Oliver B: Yeah, I think there's a couple of things just to pick apart. Yeah, we've got the summer coming up. Normally people look forward to kind of the summer and I think probably the way that this pandemic is going, you know, September is going to be, hopefully, the return to normal, but we've got that horrible summer period to negotiate where people . . . You know, we're almost just getting back to the new normal and, yet, we're going to have this huge, long, summer bit, and we're going to have to be thinking about kind of hybrid working.

I think when we talk about families, yeah, we talk about families in its broader sense. So it's not just people with young children, but childcare, dependent care, eldercare, but we need to think about the infrastructure that's going to allow this hybrid working. And if you think about care, as infrastructure, if you like, that's what we're going to need to put in place to enable people to work in this hybrid world.

There's so many news articles out there on whether it's, you know, two to one, or whatever. I've read about a firm the other day that's kind of two days in, two days out, and one day of choice, etc. There's legislative bits that are coming out in terms of the right to work from home, etc. Irrespective of whatever the right format is for you, your business, the people with care responsibilities of which sort of 60% of your employees are going to have care responsibilities are going to need some infrastructure around it. And, definitely, what we're seeing is that, whereas I guess our heritage used to be in kind of professional services, where things like backup care had a strong ROI, I would say I'm spending more and more of my time, NHS trusts, hospitals, delivery businesses. I would say that this is so much more than…

Oliver D: We lost you for a second there, Ollie, but I think you're returning very quickly. Oliver B: Mainstay of every business in terms of how they help their people combine work and family. Oliver D: Brilliant. In fact, that's a great point, Ollie. Absolutely. And then one of the bit out of Ireland that really struck out and when you compare some of the things that some of the leading employers were doing last summer and just to name check a couple of clients who really embraced the bit they wanted to support their working parents and carers, I think of Bank of America and Facebook, both large employers in Dublin and around Dublin, but with their workforce actually coming from all over and commuting in. And then in response to that first lockdown, in response to that piece around the school-free world bit and parents trying to remote work at the same time, they both rapidly increased the level of subsidy and support that they were offering. So that was a practical step they took. They said, "We recognise that all of our workers are facing challenges, but our working parents, in particular, are facing a double whammy here. And we want to make sure that we're backing them up to the hilt."

So they just, you know, asked us, what we did very quickly was put in place, the backup care piece, they already had, a really generous offering but then literally doubled it for a short period of time almost, like, a crisis management approach. And that was certainly something that we saw a couple of employers, as I mentioned in the Dublin area doing and adding to that return on investment. And, you know, we speak a lot about ROI. When we speak to our clients, we talk a lot about our productivity gains, and that's important, of course. We talk about the days saved that would have been lost to breakdowns in childcare and eldercare. But it was also as much around the well-being, the employee well-being piece, really, you know, that morale bit.

And, you know, when we look at the feedback we get from the existing user base in Ireland, it's really clear that this kind of support from their employer was huge for them. It kind of increased their loyalty piece as well. They said, "What a great place. I know they got my back. You know, I stayed here for a while. I've grown my career. I've developed my skill set, and I'm going to continue to invest my time with this particular employer. It's where I feel at home." I think that's something that came across really, really strong so I just wanted to call that piece out. And just leave it on there and, you know, touching on those family support pieces, Oliver. And then we talked about return to work and what we're seeing. What do the best employers do?

Oliver B: Yeah. There's a plethora of things you can do, but I guess in terms of my thought process around what we're seeing, is to break them down into their various silos. So there's the practical piece. You've talked about backup care. We've talked about some of the educational stuff where schools are being closed. We've seen a huge stress point for parents in terms of looking at the ability for children to catch up. So, you know, thinking about . . . We've talked about care. We've talked about education, some of the practical stuff.

I think there's a massive leadership piece as well. By leadership, it's the messages coming out from businesses. Now, there's two parts to that. One is from a leadership point of view, empathy, and showing empathy and saying the right messages, recognising how difficult it's been for parents and carers to navigate through this process. So thinking very clearly about those messages. But number two on that side is line managers. And I think line managers play a massive part in this. So making sure that line managers are echoing those same sentiments. And the other bit is also making people aware of what help is there. There's never been a time to over-communicate in terms of all the support that is available to employees.

So I guess I break them down into the practical piece, you know what you can do, backup care, education, etc. You've got the cultural and emotional stuff, so in terms of leadership and the messages that are coming out in terms of we've got your back and we're supporting you down to the line managers making sure that they're echoing exactly the same messages but tied in with all the support that is there and making sure that people know what support is available to you. And I would go overboard on that side.

Oliver D: Couldn't agree more. In fact, it rings a bell. I was talking to Sarah Knoppe who is the previous Global Benefits Program Manager for LogMeIn. And they're based .. . Their international headquarters are based right here as many of the tech sector is right here in Dublin. And, equally, she's been responsible for rolling out a programme, a global programme supporting their working parents and carers throughout Ireland, throughout the UK, India, the U.S. places that we happen to be present, we're able to partner with them on.

But one of the things that she was speaking about was that leadership bit, that empathy piece that you're speaking about, and how important that had been in. And, in fact, they've redrawn up some of their core values around this to reflect and respond to the pandemic and say, "This is what we're going to be doing in terms of making sure that you feel listened to and supported." Not just in that practical bit around backup care as you mentioned but being able to flex your work, perhaps not having to work core hours, but you know, still achieving the same outputs, but maybe not between 9:00 and 5:00. All of those kinds of things that are really crucial to draw through the line, throughout the culture, and making sure that that percolated down to the line managers, in particular. So, yeah, I couldn't agree with you more on that bit.

What lessons have we learnt from how working parents coped during the Pandemic

So what did we learn and we should, you know, take forward, I suppose? You know, what are the lessons worth keeping from how working parents and carers coped with periodic lockdowns and the school-free world? Well, I suppose, from my perspective, you know, having been in some ways on the frontline and seeing what working parents are dealing with . . . One of the things we've learned a bit, certainly COVID-19 intensified many pressures that were already there. It kind of rocked our realities, you might say. And, you know, as I've mentioned, with our existing heritage and in Ireland, in particular, the conversation became intensified with employers, and the need became even more prominent from working parents and carers themselves.

So, as simple as it sounds, first of all, there are a few things, a few learnings that we had. Advice in finding care can go a long, long way. Giving people access to services such as, I don't know, speak to an expert, something that's available on our platform of workers, have a space where you can speak to a childcare or eldercare expert. In fact, and eldercare . . . You know, we've spoken a lot about the childcare piece and rightly so but, also, you know, we often talk about, we ourselves internally, we often talk about invisible carers and that sandwich generation bit. And they're people who've got perhaps both or maybe they've just got eldercare responsibilities, and that can have an impact on your work-life balance. It impacts your ability to work.

And in Ireland, certainly, we've seen increased interest from working carers who've suddenly encountered challenges around eldercare driven by the pandemic, perhaps because their parent has had to self-isolate because they're vulnerable and at risk because of their age. And that's actually been something where they're actually they're turning out to be the main carer. And we've been able to provide some, you know, practical support over the phone, virtually, with virtual sessions. And that made a huge, huge difference.

And, in fact, you know, when it comes to the childcare piece as well, even that's still been challenging. Parents, we know incredibly resourceful. But even so, we've seen an uptick to speak to an expert request with Gary Kennedy, our local expert, who's commented that . . . And then I'm just going to quote him word for word here, "The mood I'm picking up in general is that without an extended family or social network structure in Ireland, working parents are experiencing a greater level of upset and stress." And this will, I think, resonate with a lot of our audience who've got perhaps international workforces. Again, you know, we all know that Dublin, Ireland draws off inward migration in terms of highly skilled workers. But, equally, those workers are coming in without that extended family support network and they are struggling, as a result, because of COVID.

Another recurring theme in Ireland has been that perhaps employees of some organisations were not deemed essential workers even though their roles were on the government's published essential worker list. And that meant that some of them couldn't access some of that support that they should have been able to do. And that was a real challenge for people on the frontline.

Oliver B: I can probably jump in here and a couple of other bits in terms of lessons. I'm going to go back to the manager's theme, actually, just how critical it is in terms of being a good manager. We did some survey work across the UK and Ireland. And, you know, people's loyalty, if you like, drops massively with an unsupportive organisation or an organisation they think is unsupportive. I think it was 66% less likely to feel committed by employees on that front.

I think what we've also seen is people rebalancing their lives, you know, what's important to me, work, work and family, both things? But you're definitely seeing that higher priorities for people who are kind of going, "Yeah, family is really important to me." And, therefore, this whole talent retention piece and attraction piece is important.

And for managers, I think it's really, really pretty tough. You're being asked to perhaps to have conversations that you wouldn't normally have. Maybe you got lots of young managers that haven't been through this that are finding it difficult to empathise. And I think probably one of the things that we saw is that line managers need help with this point and they . . . there's no point . . . I'm going to upset people by kind of going sheep-dipping people in some sort of training in February and actually the conversation you need to have is tomorrow and it's about giving managers just in time help that they need to have those correct conversations.

And without talking about all the stuff that we do, one of the smartest things we do is something called our parental leave toolkit, and parental leave toolkit for managers, which is really kind of around giving managers and individuals just the help they need at just the right point that's relevant to them, and that's grown in kind of need, and the feedback that we're seeing from it where people are kind of going, "Actually, the conversation we need to have is tomorrow." And actually, I've got those at my fingertips telling me the conversation they need to have tomorrow in order to help my, you know, my workforce or the people that work for me keep all of this on track.

Oliver D: Definitely. And, you know, that put me in mind of, again, some of the existing Ireland employers who've almost presciently put in that support in for quite a long time. Northern Trust are a great example. You know, significant populations based not just in Dublin but over in Limerick as well. I've met 3000 people there. And, you know, again, several years ago they said, "No. We want to really address our piece around retention of talent, particularly female talent after the maternity . . . taking maternity break, and ensuring that when they come back, they come back with competence and they continue to stay with us, stay with us, stay with us as a valued member of our teams." And that's something that they've had put in place via parental leave toolkit and our parental transition coaching piece.

I think BMI are a good example of that, and what they found is that in some ways it helped them to be prepared for COVID in ways that they hadn't anticipated because they're already flexing and they're already able to adapt to some of the changes that they were facing in the workplace because of having to remote-work and homeschool at the same time and so on because that had already been in place.

And that's something that's really, really good to see, and we're also seeing with new clients coming on board, and I'm putting, Mine of the Century who came aboard earlier this year in response to COVID and wanted to put it in really, really quickly and we really pieced up the support. You know, something like 6000 people they've got in Ireland. That's a significant population who've been able to tap into all of the points that you're talking about with line manager support, the coaching piece, the backup care piece. All of those bits have all been absolutely critical to help them navigate successfully through all of this and then prepare for what's happening and what's coming next.

And I think that's a good time here perhaps to move on to that piece in particular, you know. When we talk about what should employees continue to do and why should they do it and what we know about the return on investment for providing the kind of support that we've spoken about, well, there may be some bits that you want to reiterate for us, Ollie.

Oliver B: Yeah, yeah. No, no, I mean, I feel bored talking about the kind of backup care again. Most people's arrangements break down. You know, they'll break down anywhere from 10 to 12 times a year in a normal year. If you look at COVID, and this is across childcare, dependent care, eldercare. It is when that grain of sand gets in the way and all things go absolutely sort of Pete Tong I guess in a way and everything falls out of bed.

Backup care basically allows people to organise backup childcare, dependent care, or eldercare anywhere in the country at around about half an hour's notice. We'll do over a million hours of backup care a year. What it does though is . . . I guess is a couple of things really. One is yes, there's great return on investment because you're enabling someone to work when they otherwise couldn't do, but what we do know is how people feel as a result of it. So we know that they love their employer for helping them navigate their way through it. It relieves stress and offer peace of mind, so there's a massive well-being piece, and there's a loyalty piece as well. Some of the . . . you've been able to combine these two things is infinitely less likely to go somewhere else, and so we're driving productivity engagement and loyalty, etc., and as an employer, you know, there's a hard ROI number behind it.

So I think those bits we're definitely seeing. We're seeing kind of people . . . we've seen people extend their sessions because it takes into account kind of childcare, eldercare, dependent care, etc.

I think on the other side is really about . . . you know, you touched on it earlier sort of talking about people staying the journey. So Norton Rose, you know, we see them get 14% more kind of staying and continuing their career. Often people get very confused about kind of why, "Oh, yeah, everyone comes back." The real question is do they stay? And I'm thinking of a particular client where they have something like 95% of their people come back, but actually they lose 40% of those people in the first year. In actual fact, it's about proving that people having a family doesn't stop your career.

So I think Norton Rose 14%, PageGroup something like 12%, etc. And all of these bits play into . . . all of those extended bits. We talked about diversity and inclusion, so gender pay gap reporting. We see that our clients have probably got about 2% lower gender pay gap than their peers. Now, what we do is . . . I'd love to say it's causation but it's more kind of correlation, but all of these play into those other metrics. So engagement, productivity, and loyalty, which makes you an employer of choice, makes it more attractive for people to come to you and helps those people stay the course. And so I think those are some of the sorts of things that I would say on a practical point that, you know, people should . . . we're seeing employees kind of carry on with.

Oliver D: Absolutely. No, brilliant points. And, in fact, whilst you're talking also put me in mind of . . . We talk about practical support with care, but also the knowledge and expertise bit. You know, I did mention and touch on them, the service that we speak about to speak to an expert, but actually last year if you remember when the first lockdowns occurred in the UK and Ireland within days of each other, so back in March, late March towards early April, and what we did very quickly was put together a series of webinars, coronavirus-themed webinars, that draws on the coaching side of our business, and we had a number of experts covering up about nine different topics, all related to the way in which, you know, the pandemic and lockdown, etc., impact on you and your working life and balance.

Part of it was around childcare of course. A lot of it was around you and your own well-being and around your own state of mind, quite frankly. Some of it was around your performance management, and some of it was around relationship management. You know, people have suddenly been locked up cheek by jowl with their partners when usually, you know, absence makes the heart grow fonder. They used to go off into the office and coming back, and then they're just in each other's faces all the time.

It always makes me chuckle because when I look at the nine . . . you know, as you know, we track the data on this a lot and the number one watched webinar was the domestic bliss one. It was the one about how not to let your partner drive you mad. It wasn't around how do you manage a school-free world? I mean, it wasn't around how do you manage performance. It was how not to let your partner drive you crazy which…

Oliver B: And I think this . . . again, kind of all of this plays back to some of that empathy piece. We're talking about managers and leadership, etc., kind of recognising how tough it's been and recognising there are some simple things, even just making a nod to how recognising how tough it makes people, you know, empathy, and I think that's definitely something that that we see is kind of, "We're on your side and we're here to make it okay on the other side."

Oliver D: Yeah, I couldn't agree with you more there. And earlier I mentioned how much that's prevalent in Ireland right now, and, you know, kind of . . . as I mentioned, because I've got something like 40 clients, 40 employers doing this. And, you know, again, for our audience's sake, I just want to get an idea of the spread throughout the sectors.

And, you know, remember when we first launched nine, I was keenly aware of it. It was very much a kind of biased towards the financial services sector in particular. I mentioned that Bank of America and Northern Trust and BNY Mellon being early adopters if you like of this particular range of support. But then we've seen the other sectors over the last three or four years really jump on board a bit. I mentioned the tech sector really embracing it around 2012, '13, '14, but then we've seen the legal sector in Ireland.

We've seen the entertainment sector when I think about Sky and so forth. We've seen the pharmaceutical sector then started to get on board big time. Regeneron came on board a couple of years ago with all of this as well, and the professional services part as well. So I guess, you know, my message here I think is that it doesn't matter what sector you're in. It doesn't matter what your diversity and size of your workforce, this kind of support is something that's universal in terms of it's really, really important.

Oliver B: Yeah, and I think you're right. So the other one I was going to . . . the sort of the Amazons or those kind of people in the world. So if all of these people are coming on board, and I guess Ireland's going to be the English-speaking route into Europe, and as you say, it's going to be a hotbed for people coming in, I think there's going to be the war on talent and people coming in around from their networks, and therefore from an employer's point of view, this is just smart. You're making workforces kind of fit for the generation you want to recruit and retain, etc. So yeah, we're bound to say it, but I think these are just . . . we're seeing that broader spectrum of organisations kind of recognising that they need to play in this space and do a better job. And there's some simple things you can do, which don't cost the earth.

Oliver D: Precisely. And I think that's actually a great point. And we're coming towards the end of our session anyway, so maybe a good idea to throw out some questions there. But you're absolutely right, the war for talent and retention piece. A lot of our existing clients, our peers and competitors, the people listening right now, so they're doing it already, and also a lot of their people are listening today. Their sister offices in the UK and in the U.S. and so on have already been doing this too, so they might want to think about that bit.

Scott: Okay, thank you very much, Oliver, who's clearly got a worse broadband at the minute than I do and deepest, darkest Armagh. Well done, Oliver. Your voice in the ether, but nonetheless, we'll bring you in. But we've a comment coming in here and she says . . . hold on a second, "We have backup care with Bright Horizons, and I've used it. Genuinely brilliant service that's really very valid. Not sure the cost but it's highly recommended considering as an additional belief." And Alison adds . . . if I can scroll this up a bit. She goes, "Promise I'm not a Bright Horizons employee."

Oliver B: I was going to say, Scott. Obviously, that is not placed at all.

Scott: It looks great. Get back to me, Allison, if it's really... That looks to be that this is from an employee point of view. Obviously, she's had to pull on it. So you mentioned . . . well, both the Olivers mentioned to you, you've got a lot of inward investment coming into Ireland, a lot of multinational companies coming over here. And whilst you can get visas and you can bring your family over if you like, it's that extended family that can cause difficulties when it comes to care that, you know . . . I've got a daughter in London and I've got another one in Sterling and, you know, there's no family around them. They don't have any kids at the minute but they've got a Chihuahua, right? My younger daughter has a Chihuahua.

Oliver B: Unfortunately, there's no pet care yet, Scott.

Scott: I'm just giving you. There's an opportunity for now. But the thing is, had that been a child, the difficulty there is that she's in a place where she doesn't have the extended family around. That's all right for folks like me. You know, my mother-in-law lives next door, you know, like, it's fine. But you do have all those people coming in. If people are moving into a country or a big city like Dublin or Cork and they don't have the family around them, that's the kind of thing presumably that's going to be there for them. But what about people that are coming in and that don't have family responsibilities or caring responsibilities? Is this just part of the employee value proposition that some employers will give you this if you need that and you'll get something else if you don't have those things.

Oliver B: I guess let me try and answer it. So one is you actually right about people moving in with more itinerant than ever before. You know, my folks live in Yorkshire. I've got family kind of all over the place. And what's happening is, you know, we're all having children later in life and our parents are living much longer and we're the schmucks in the middle, you know. We're going to be working infinitely longer than other generations and we're going to be caring for people on both ends of the spectrum, that kind of nice sandwich generation piece.

So I made the point earlier that over 60% of an employee base will have some direct caring responsibility. So this isn't just, you know, people with young, small children and families, etc. This is a big old deal. Part of it, the service that we talk about, is dependent care. So it's not just people . . . it's aunt, uncle. It's you. We had a guy at Bloomberg who broke his leg the other day and we turned on care for him. Oliver talked about the . . . in terms of the well-being piece. The way we deliver our services kind of going recognising everybody.

I would say probably our most watched webinar that we had the other day was stress versus pressure. It had nothing to do with care responsibilities but just the simple fact of how people navigate their way through this. So I don't want you to sort of say kind of like, "Well, what's in it for me?" But certainly when people launch things like what we do they auto-enrol everybody into it because there's something in it for everyone.

Scott: Yeah. I was on . . . in fact, some of the listeners here today might have been on it as well, the CIPD held their Festival of Work this week by the way, and I was listening to that. And there's a sizable push now for the KPIs or for boards to include these caring elements, right? This is, you know . . . it's not just the corporate social responsibility.

It's about reaching targets on diversity and inclusion and doing all kinds of stuff here. And you mentioned the way that these things tie in. That's the way I see it that if you don't provide some kind of support for employees, the kind of support they need, further assists or whether it's something else, then you're not going to achieve those targets and you're not going to be an attractive proposition because every employee out there can look you up and check out your company before they go, and there are social media posts.

Oliver B: You're right. From Glassdoor to people putting policies in front of the paywall now. You know, John Lewis just announced that they are harmonising, you know, the maternity and paternity stuff. You know, these are things to be loud and proud about, and I think what we're going to see . . . you know, you're seeing, okay, gender pay gap reporting, ethnic pay gap reporting, disabilities is the next one. All of these things are going to be out there to be good, responsible employers, and you're right.

Some of these things are going to be threshold factors that you're going to need to do in order to compete for that talent pool. So I think it's the thin end of the wedge. I think it's only going one way, Scott.

Oliver D: Absolutely. And then regarding last year, IBM. Sorry, my apologies, Scott, I just wanted to touch on the fact that IBM . . .

Oliver D: Can you hear me?

Oliver B: Yeah, yeah. Go for it.

Scott: Yeah, yeah.

Oliver D: Yeah, I was just going to say. Do you remember last year where the IBM long-standard client of ours with significant population just outside Dublin near the airport actually, last time I checked around 2000 people, but they published their work from home pledge and they got way ahead of the crowd, way ahead of the curve if you like, by doing that quite early on.

And in many ways, you know, we saw quite a lot of the other tech sector employers were scrambling but coming also very quick to start saying, "Yeah, we're going to start providing something like this." And they made that pledge last year, in fact last summer, in response to the first lockdown, and they knew how much of a struggle it would be for their working parents.

Oliver B: I don't think you taken it quite on board, but one of the themes was camera not ready or not ready to be on camera kind of thing and that being okay.

Scott: Oliver, I mean, one of the things that one of you mentioned was the gender pay gap there. In Ireland we expect to see a gender pay gap coming in next year. The legislations going through Oireachtas at the minute. And this thing here where you can show, like, a 2% drop. So the Ireland . . . the national gender pay gap at the moment is 14%, so you're looking to get below that type of stuff, and it's these kind of policies. It's not just the fact that you've got the policy that helps people that need those sources. It's actually the impact that has on and then says we've got a lower gender pay gap therefore we're the one you want to come to. It's that type of thing but where it's all feeding into one another. It's quite interesting.

Oliver B: You're actually right, Scott. Policies of threshold stuff, you know, how people live these policies, and culturally, you know, we all know that sometimes the policies is one part of it, but how that gets translated down through the organisation. I mean, I've banged on about line managers, and how critical it is. You know, there's that adage. You know, people join organisations and they leave line managers. And if you can get that bit right culturally, you've got an incredibly strong business.

But I think people before they join are now being far more ruthless in terms of, you know, is this an organisation I want to join? Can I see myself being there? And diversity and inclusion . . . I'm going to talk about the gender piece, but if I can see somebody ahead of me who's combining work and family and doing it successfully in a way that's authentic, if they can do it, I can do it, and, you know, if I can see it, I can become it, is that sort of piece.

So Barclays publicly stated that it cost them over £30,000 to replace anybody in their business. So when anyone's sat here kind of going, "Crikey. How do I justify this internally?" You know, just look at the cost of replacing anyone in your organisation. And I remember when we did it with Rolls Royce I think it was they sort of said, "Oh, well, you know, these all sound lovely things that you're kind of going to do." And they said, "Give it to us in hard facts. You know, we're engineers." And we were like, "You know, if we save two people this will pay for the entire cost of the scheme across your entire 22,000, you know, people." And they were like, "Okay, we get it."

Scott: Yeah, yeah. It's funny because I remember at the start of the lockdown there were a number of senior lawyers that we deal with in Legal Island and Dublin that just decided that we're going to give up. They were going to spend time in their home. And people's attitudes have changed. You know, you can see it in the way that they approach it not just I don't want to go back to the workplace fulltime, but they want to spend more time with families or they've discovered what's important

Oliver B: We're three dads on this. You know, young fathers are some of the most disengaged in the workforce today. You know, it's not the '80s anymore. I kind of want to see . . . I want to do a better job than my dad did in a way. You know, I'd like to spend more time here. I'm not quite sure how. And I think one of the downsides of COVID is everyone kind of thought kind of like, "Oh, this is going to be brilliant, you know, because dads are going to be home. They're going to see kind of how much moms do and that's going to be great."

In actual fact what has happened is, you know, gender pay gap is going to go backwards. What we've seen is actually moms have, you know, kind of . . . they rolled up their sleeves and they've done an awful lot more than before and they're exiting the workforce because we're not holding on to them. So a lot of the gains that we've made on gender pay gap if you like are going to go backwards as a result of COVID, which is just not good. So yeah, Ireland you're talking about gender pay gap coming in. It's coming in across Europe, you know. Everyone's looking with envy, so, again, anyone who thinks it's not going to happen I would say kind of, you know, it is going to happen. Yeah, exactly.

Scott: Yeah. Maybe not in Northern Ireland. We'll see what happens with the Assembly with any of those things. That's been really interesting. Just one final point and then we'll finish. Line managers. You've mentioned that line managers, obviously people leave line managers. That's an old adage, leave the manager not the firm. But managers needing help is a bit like in the . . . this new code of practice obviously in Ireland on bullying, and there's this notion of a contact person who knows which scheme to use, or knows where to go and give people pointers, and it's almost like, you know . . . I don't know many managers that were promoted to deal with this.

You know, quite frankly, you get promoted to deal with your job and to run the team and do what it is. But what kind of supports do you think managers need in order to be able to even advise or point people in the right direction? It's more than empathy, isn't it? You need some kind of technical skill?

Oliver B: You're absolutely right. And sometimes I always hate that bit when I hear people kind of go, "Oh, it's all right. My manager's got children. He or she gets it." Kind of thing. Why should it be luck, you know? It should not be luck who you've got. I mean, that's the staff. Going back to the support, you're right. It's much more than someone saying, "You know, I really empathise with it."

My view is that line managers, it's a pretty, pretty difficult job, you know. You've got all of this responsibility and you're having to navigate it in a way that people are not necessarily in front of you, you know, in terms of all, "Well, I can control what outputs I've got." So hybrid working, and how do I make all of that work and get back to getting beyond that presenteeism bit?

In terms of the support bit that we focus on, a lot of it is around the parental journey bit. It's a huge kind of bit to navigate, and the worst thing that can happen is the line manager kind of goes, "Well, you coming back to . . . oh, am I allowed to ask you if you're coming back to . . . " Better if you have the conversation with HR, you know, and then I don't really need to be involved in that. And actually that's the conversation you do need to have.

So a lot of the work we do is kind of going to line managers and saying . . . it nudges almost as kind of going, "You know, this week, Julie is about to go on leave. You know, she's going in six weeks because we know all of through all the tech and bits and pieces. Look in a review with Julie. Here's what you're going to go through at that review. These are the things you're going to say. These are the things you're not going to say. This is what you need to be aware of. Julie's been out for eight weeks now post-maternity. Well, you know, get in contact. See how it's going, etc. Here's what you can talk about. These are the things you might want to mention, etc."

And so it's not that people are unwilling or anything, but what gets measured gets, you know, kind of gets managed. And if I can help give you just the right nudge, just the right point for you to kind of go, "That's good. Yeah, I'm going to go and do that." It makes all the difference rather than this out of sight out of mind, or, "Crikey. That seems really difficult. Let me not get involved in it." So I think for line managers it's tough, but I think there are some simple things that you can do to make their lives easier and it's not putting them on a training course in February.

Scott: Okay. Okay, no problem here. We're going to leave it there. People ask me where can we get a recording of the session? It'll be on our website later on if you're a subscriber, but I think this one's also being turned into a podcast, so your usual podcast providers will be able to do that as well.

Any final thoughts? I'll go to Oliver Daniels first. Any final thoughts for the audience before we go?

Oliver D: My only piece was then around the future, the future of work, and this isn't going to be a temporary quick fix as Ollie mentioned there as well. All that COVID has done is accelerated the need for greater levels of support from employers for their people, and if they don't do it, they're going to get left behind. They're not futureproofing their workplace, they really will start to lose out in that transition piece, and, you know, we're ideally pleased to support of course, and we'd love to talk to you if you want to learn more about that. Scott: Okay. Ollie? Oliver B: Well, we talked about the football earlier, but I don't think we should go there, Scott. Scott: Well, thanks, everybody.

Oliver B: I'll leave it there.

Scott: Thanks, everyone. Thanks to the two Olivers from Bright Horizons. Our next webinar is with Ronan Daly Jermyn. It's on the 29th of July, the day before my birthday actually, which we get off in Legal Island. So that's one of the many things. You get your birthday off in Legal Island, so I'll be off the following day. And we will be joined by Michelle Ryan at RDJ. So any questions on that. We don't really have an agenda. It's whatever is current, so send in some suggestions there, folks, in to Katie at Legal Island. We will deal with those. So thanks, everybody. Thanks, Oliver. Thanks to the other Oliver and . . . Oliver D: Thank you very much. Have a lovely weekend. Oliver B: Thanks, guys. Have a good weekend. Bye.