BREAKING NEWS: P&G win gold on the mumsnet family awards (which they sponsor)

[iloveberries]

Anyone else a bit cynical about this and think that P&G have basically 'bought' the award. My best friend and husband used to work there (how i met him) and I can guarantee they are anything BUT family friendly to work for!!!

it is subjective - except that there are things you can quantify like the benefits - do they enhance any statutory benefits. And then the one that lots lost points for which was how hard do they work to communicate what's available to parents. No point having a flexible working policy if only the HR department know about it - and you can check those reasonably easily because we asked to see evidence. How and where they promote the policies. And then we cross referenced with what the staff said. So yes, it is subjective but then so much of social policy is. We've tried to share a bit more of the process here www.mumsnet.com/family-friendly/how-we-decided-who-won-an-award

It is not anecdotal or of the minute.

Well, as much as hundreds of anecdotes form a pattern. I am pretty sure the market researchers would have coded the voluntaries and DQs and made some effort to rationalise them.

You can't have a pop-up family friendly culture. It is long-term. For me, my eldest is going to be 20 in a couple of months. If I were to be surveyed, my early day memories would be on the forefront. I remember them vividly, more than my subsequent children when I was more mellow. There is no way for a company to bury unfriendly practices.

sorry no I mislead you there - we had 3 companies for 8 months. We worked really, really hard with an amazing new person at MNHQ and managed to get 16 members in the end. 2 gold, 3 bronze and 11 silver. But my word it was not an easy thing to encourage companies to do. Really, not.

Ponders, my history is my sacred cow - no go area.

You might as well drop it because no amount of harping is going to make me disclose.

Move on.

Sorry I don't think my last post went up. Just said that I'm sorry I wasn't clear. We had 3 companies for 8 months. It was like pushing a snowball up a hot hill. A new person came on the team at MNHQ and between us we managed to persuade another 13 companies to join in the last few months. It was really hard to encourage companies in - one sector is notable by its absence if you look through the list and it wasn't cos we didn't ask! I've tried to explain the whole thing a bit better here www.mumsnet.com/family-friendly/how-we-decided-who-won-an-award

Oops it did go up. So now I'm repeating myself like a mad old bat. Oh Dear. Maybe I should retire gracefully but I will come back tomorrow if anyone has any more questions.

Did somebody say 'cow'?

I just don't believe you can get an accurate picture of a company by observing them for 8 months ....

At best the information is anecdotal and personal : with your history not wanting to tell MN anything about yourself, how the hell can we believe you that what you told the interviewer would be accurate?? The p'd off employees would have left one way or the other - perhaps the real interesting thing would be to examine the exit interviews and look at the reasons why employees left.

my history is my sacred cow - no go area

then there is absolutely no point in your posting specifics which relate to your history & then complaining when people ask for clarification

here's a thought - next time P&G is mentioned, sit on your hands

And there's no point in your rising replying to it. Just don't do it. Save your energy for better things.

that is hard - it's why we asked for evidence as well, but the problem with policy evidence is that's its relatively easy to write a good policy. I think the accurate picture thing will come over time. What we have now is baseline data. We have information which allows us to say - this company does that, and this company does this. Why don't you both get up to the same standard and offer parents consistency. Next year, we're going to do a year 2 audit on the companies and where we had concerns this year we'll expect them to demonstrate what they've done. Asking for exit interview data would be great actually. Interestingly one member has 98% of its staff that go on maternity leave come back to work afterwards. That's pretty good. But they only got a silver because they didn't show us enough to be able to give them anything higher - even though anecdotally and on the basis of that 98% they seem to be pretty good.

Ha, I can't believe I have spent the past 1.5 hours on a Friday night reading this thread...

FWIW, I used to work at P&G (though for an agency, not for them). Don't get me wrong, I absolutely hated the job - I was trying to be a writer and working in accounts - but looking back they were reasonable in quite a few ways. I think a lot of the examples given so far have been about management, but I was working at the lower rungs of the ladder (as are most employees I guess). Everyone had flexi time (I worked 7-3), a lot of people worked part-time, staff (not me) had access to a company shop where you could buy all their products eg. nappies at v. cut prices, and they all got lovely hampers at Christmas. For a global business, I think the staff did feel that they were part of P&G.

Also, by far the best company I ever worked for in terms of caring about its employees was Greggs. Did you approach them Vicki?

I do think it's normal to pay a fee to enter a competition. Not sure about the 'all shall have prizes' approach.

Thank you Laugs

That's fair comment & completely open

We did approach Greggs. They do amazing stuff with their charitable trust. Can't remember what the reason was they couldn't do it this year but we'll definitely try again next year.

And I am So taking the point about 'all shall have prizes'. :)

I stopped working for Greggs long ago but I do think they were good.

Also, my mum saw the chairman at a talk about that book The Spirit Level. After a talk about, basically, how capitalism is bad, he put his hand up at the end and explained who he was and said he didn't feel he was that bad and asked how he could improve. This was in a church in Northumberland, by the way, not a business conference. I warmed to him even more after that.

Ooooh - would love to know if you approached Admiral Insurance about this - or if you might do so in the future....

Thank you for posting - after the MTG furore, it has been interesting to be given an idea of how this has actually worked.

FWIW here's my two penneth before I go to bed...

There is a lot of value in having the right policies and procedures in an organisation. It gives something to aim for and without it, IME, it's virtually impossible to make things happen. People need boundaries and to know what's expected of them.

It is also extremely important to have a handle on how people in your organisation perceive the organisation (often organisations are very concerned about their external brand but forget their internal brand is at least equally as important) and how employees feel is arguably one of the most valuable measures of how successful an organisation is. If 80% of your organisation think you're a good place to work that's great. The next question is why don't the other 20% think like that and what are you going to do about it?

Organisations spend a lot of money running Employee Opinion Surveys (EOS) and yet they mean nothing if you don't ask enough people, the right people (I've honestly been greeted with astonishment by employers when asked if they get people on maternity or sick leave to complete the EOS) and then act on the results.

I worked for two organisations in the same industry. One ran their EOS in house and ran it quarterly because they were going through a period of change and wanted to test the atmosphere of the organisation and act on the findings. The only used a flashy external consultancy, ran it annually and did nothing tangible with the results. Guess which one had satisfaction rates of nearly 90% and which was hovering around 50%?

Family Friendly is a fantastic initiative and really, really worthwhile. I wonder if going straight for the HR stuff is a bit ambitious but I don't have all the facts so I'm just guessing. Looking at service and family friendly initiatives for external customers is where I would have started because you don't need organisational buy-in (you can mystery shop and test customer service without the consent of organisations) and then you can present the findings as the catalyst for access to fix those issues by looking at the people responsible for delivering the service and how they are looked after and enabled.

God I really want to come and work on this now - it's right up my street. I'm going to email Justine and PM Vicki tomorrow

I should've just said this instead of my epic post: Don't ask organisations. Ask MNers for nominations and feedback and then hand out awards and approach those who are miles off to offer consultancy to improve so they're in the running for next year.

I agree. It has been really interesting to hear from Vicki. Although I did enjoy the MTG furore.

I think there is also a point to be noted about Mumsnet being a media business. Readers should realise just how much is for sale in terms of advertising and promotional opportunities. For example, the way editorial reflects advertising in every single magazine, or how the 3 for 2 table in book shops is paid for, it's not really the 'best' books. It's up to us to wise up about this.

x-posted and was agreeing with Oakmaiden, though I agree with Katie too.

the HR is really important though for MN imo as it moves away from just seeing mum's as consumers who want wide enough aisles to get their buggies down or colouring in books at pizza express. women and mothers are workers or people who want to return to work one day for the most part. the most important breakthroughs have to come in the areas of employers and government being family friendly to employees.

laugs i do think it's different when you're product is effectively a community of people and their writing. that just isn't the same as a magazine.

your not you're sorry. too tired.

I'm not excusing it WallowedInFlies, that's just the way I think it is. We should think of MN as a business rather than a community.

At least we are adults. There are a lot of teenagers reading magazines and thinking they need to do X Y Z (which has all been paid for) just to be acceptable. I doubt if anyone will feel that way about P&G as the result of this survey.

I am tired too and off to bed.