Investors in People - Work Life Balance Award

Stroud & Swindon, the UK’s 15th largest Building Society is delighted to announce that it is the first building society to be accredited with the Investors in People Work Life Balance Award. Following a programme of regular assessments over a period of seven years Stroud & Swindon have attained this national standard that recognises an employer's commitment to work life balance options.

With seemingly ever increasing pressures and stresses at work, getting the correct balance between work and play is becoming a progressively more important issue. The value of Stroud & Swindon’s approach was recently confirmed in a staff opinion survey, which found that work life balance ranks in the top ten priorities for employees.

Using the results of an earlier survey Stroud & Swindon set up a ‘Worklife Focus Group’ in order to assess the implications of the research and decide what changes were to be made.  The group was drawn from all areas of the building society and included people directly affected by work life balance issues.  They came up with a number of family friendly policies including; dependent care leave, parental leave and emergency leave.

Dependent care leave created the biggest impact on the organisation and an innovative 3-day emergency leave policy was introduced.  Despite some reservations that staff may take advantage of this policy these fears were unfounded and over a twelve month period on average only 7.5 hours of this leave was used by each employee.

Overall the implementation of these new policies resulted in a reduction in sickness absence and a strong reduction in staff turnover.  Turnover amongst staff that work the new flexible hours is down to 6%, against 22% amongst those that do not.  Moving forwards, Stroud & Swindon hope to make the flexible working programme the norm within the company.

Commenting on the award, Sue Bailey, Senior Manager Human Resources at Stroud & Swindon said, “We are delighted to have been accredited with this fantastic accolade. At Stroud & Swindon, we understand that modern life requires a much more flexible attitude to work. Set hours every day, five days a week are becoming less the norm and more people are opting for flexible working hours, nine day fortnights, part time working and job sharing.

“There are obvious advantages to employees in that they are able to manage their work, social and domestic needs better. For employers, it means that attracting and retaining a high calibre of staff is easier and that we have a happy, productive workforce.

“This award comes at a great time for us having recently been recognised as finalists in the Regional Employer of the Year category of the National Business Awards 2007.  Stroud & Swindon prides itself in being a first-class employer so to have had our hard work recognised is extremely rewarding.”

To locate your closest branch visit www.stroudandswindon.co.uk or call 0800 618161

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For further information please contact:

Lee Blackwell / Suman Katyal
The Wriglesworth Consultancy
020 7845 7900

Notes to Editors: