Our Family Friendly Policy

A note from the Founder and CEO, Chris Donnelly, launching the VERB Family Friendly Policy.

Here at VERB the majority of my senior team are female and we have a very balanced female to male ratio within the company. I am proud of the culture we have built and I think a balance of genders, and diversity, generally has enabled this. 

Our work is only as good as the talent that we have here at VERB and we also recognise that people have a life outside of work. We’ve always been a young company but with more parents working at VERB now, and with a bigger team, creating a family policy has been something I have wanted to do for some time. It’s also something I see important to become the best agency to work at. 

Parental leave policies in the UK vary from company to company but largely speaking unless addressed, a policy will sit as the Statutory policy. The Statutory Maternity Policy is 6 weeks at 90% of your usual salary, and then 33 weeks of Statutory Maternity Pay. For new Dads out there, the Statutory is at 2 weeks off work before you have to return to work. We wanted the policy at VERB to be more equal between men and women, and more supportive. This is why we have introduced an enhanced policy to support new mums which gives up to 16 weeks full pay. We have also matched our Shared Parental Leave to that of Maternity leave. This means dads / secondary adopters can share the mum’s maternity leave. We want to remove the assumption that caregiving is the responsibility of the woman. Shared Leave enables the couple to make a decision based on what works best for them together, sharing the responsibility of parenthood equally.

I’m delighted to say we have two expecting Dads at VERB at the moment. One of whom is using the Shared Parental Leave policy to extend his paternity to take 6 weeks off with his first-born.

“I’m very grateful to VERB as the Shared Parental Leave gives me the opportunity to experience fatherhood and really be there 100% for my wife.”

Fran, SEO Account Manager

We have also used this as an opportunity to listen to our team and offer some more unique policies such as child sickness leave, policies for time off to go through IVF and the adoption process. We know it’s not just about the initial journey of becoming a parent; it’s the on-going support that is often overlooked by businesses. Because of this, we have also introduced an onboarding back to work and flexible working arrangements, which will be in place for 3 months upon returning to work. 

I’d like to think we are creating a company in which people feel supported; linking back to one of our core company values of being supportive. We should be putting family first and this policy will further enable all VERB employees to do so, regardless of their gender, race or age.

Chris