As we gear up for our annual Family Friendly awards later this month, we need your help in deciding who the winners should be.
We asked our members to enter their best Family Friendly ideas and innovations – this year for two categories – customer facing and internal staff innovations.
We'd like you to vote for the ideas that you think are the best. Please read on to find out about the policies - and to vote. Everyone who casts a vote will be entered into a prize draw where one winner will get a £100 voucher for the store of their choice. You can vote in both categories or just one. You must be a registered member of MN to vote.
For each category, you can vote for up to three companies.
Some of the companies are household names and need no introduction, while others are not quite so widely known. Below is an outline of the policy each company has put forward as being their most innovative family friendly policies for customers and for staff.
You can find all sorts of supporting info for the customer facing innovations here and for the staff innovations here.
Having read all the nominations, click at the end to cast your vote.
Customer facing innovations
Ambrosia Ambrosia now have mini-pots of custard or rice with calcium and vitamin D, needed for normal growth and bone development in children. Made from 100% naturally-sourced ingredients and contain no artificial colours or preservatives, there’s no need to chill them, handy for the cupboard and out and about.
Barclays The colouring book initiative was developed last year after our Mumsnet 'Family Friendly' Silver accreditation – as part of the accreditation process, Mumsnetters visited our branches and made recommendations for how we could improve. One of the areas for development that they gave us was for in-branch distractions for children.
Bella Italia ‘Tried and tested’ family-focused dining: Bella talked to parents and children about what’s important when eating out. Feedback has been developed into a whole new experience now trialling in many restaurants. Key innovations include ‘first-food-fast’ free breadsticks on arrival, adult dishes in DC portions (sizes for little and big kids), free refillable cordials (still and fizzy) and a family-led service approach.
Butlins Imagine a place where everything that happens is designed to make a very important little person very happy. That’s just what you’ll find on a Butlins Just For Tots break, four days designed especially for little ones. From opening and closing times, to food, entertainment and environment, these breaks have been created with the Under-5's - and their families - at heart.
Explore Learning ‘A mile in a mum’s shoes’ - Following feedback on our 2013 Mumsnet Award, we began a company-wide initiative for staff to experience a typical afternoon from a parent’s perspective. By walking ‘a mile in a mum’s shoes’, we identified small changes that made a big difference to our customers.
Heathrow Kids play areas The Kids play areas in each terminal have been going from strength to strength. There’s a really great and easy to find play area in our new Terminal 2. And all our play areas are now supervised for longer.
Matalan Our new Family Friendly concept store in Cardiff has a floor dedicated to children, this includes our new ‘Baby Nurture Area’ with changing facilities and baby feeding area. As well as bespoke family sized fitting rooms with enough room for a pram/pushchair and wall toys to entertain the little ones.
McDonald's Restaurants Limited Getting kids to eat their 5-a-day can be tricky and one of mum’s top challenges is making fruit fun! That’s why we launched Free Fruit Fridays™, our long term commitment to giving away a free Fruit Bag with every Happy Meal® purchased on the first Friday of the month.
Metro Bank Family friendly zone on our website - as a community bank we’re proud to work closely with local people, and we love to share our passion for banking with customers. Our new online Family Friendly Zone brings to life our commitment to financial education and shows parents, kids, teens and teachers how we can support them.
TalkTalk TalkTalk is passionate about using technology to make Britain better off. We asked families how they use our broadband, home phone, TV and mobile services, and decided to give them a better deal with a free mobile SIM card, nuisance call blocking, extra TV content and more.
Unilever UK & Ireland Unilever’s Live Better Challenge with the Guardian is helping millions of families realise the benefits of living more sustainably including saving water, energy, wasting less food and using up leftovers. This not only reduces household bills, so there’s more to spend on your family, but there’s a feel-good factor too.
Staff innovations
Barclays Barclays are due to launch a “Stay in Touch” app, this allows colleagues to keep in touch with their managers during maternity and paternity leave. Features include: Links to HR Portal to show what support is on offer and a calculator, allowing colleagues to calculate what pay they will be returning to.
Butlins As a brand that aims to deliver the perfect family break, Butlins themed a recent recruitment drive for their Contact Centre team to particularly appeal to parents who wanted a job that allowed them to have a great work/life balance at a time when it was especially important to them.
Heathrow This year we have placed an even greater focus on families by literally standing in their shoes. As part of our security officer training we ask colleagues to “walk in the passengers shoes” as a family to really understand the issues families face when flying through Heathrow.
Matalan We want to make sure that our new mums continue to feel part of the business whilst also enjoying their maternity leave. As a way of keeping them updated on everything from job opportunities to our family friendly benefits we introduced a ‘Matalan Mums’ Facebook group.
Metro Bank Laptop pool - sometimes colleagues may need a day to look after a child or other family member. We’ll always give them time to work out arrangements but if they have urgent work they want to do and don’t have a company laptop, we’ll courier one to them at home.
TalkTalk Thousands of people work at TalkTalk and during the last year we have been working to go from being a good place to work to a great place to work. We understand the need for flexibility and invested in better systems and processes to help people work from home and balance work and home life commitments.
Unilever UK & Ireland Unilever is committed to supporting its employees to manage their work and family obligations. Our Family Friendly Policies aim to meet the needs of families, carers and the older generation including flexible and agile working, back-up care support for children and elders, nursery partnerships and leading-edge Maternity and Paternity Support.
Vote here: www.surveymonkey.com/s/3Q3VZQG
Voting closes: Friday 14th November at 11am
Good luck!
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NOW CLOSED! MN Family Friendly Innovation Awards voting now open! £100 to be won…
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AnnMumsnet · 05/11/2014 10:02
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