EXCLUSIVE: Cisco Adopts Wide Family-Centric Organisational Culture To Support Staff Wellbeing

Employee Benefits Live 2018: multinational technology organization Cisco has embraced and promoted a family-centered organizational culture, and corresponding personalized benefits, to support the well-being of its 73,400 global employees and enable them to better manage the integration between their personal and professional lives. .

In a session entitled "Flex to meet the demands of the modern family: a global perspective," Amanda Diston, director of total international rewards at Cisco, said: "Yesterday's benefits are not adequate for the purpose of our organization. truly promote inclusion, we want to create an environment that involves people, that remains committed, that also allows them to possess the information that is available and available to them, and that they themselves make decisions, at a significant step from the traditional and look at how we provide things that are customizable? "

For Cisco, this approach includes considering general notions of family, whether it relates to same-sex relationships, divorced and second families, friends and roommates instead of spouses, or the generation of a sandwich, caring for children and elderly parents. This organizational culture centered on the family is used to shape the benefits for the employees that are offered, to ensure that they are customizable and applicable to the different stages and situations of the employees' lives, as well as in an inclusive way taking into account its global location.

"We want our plans to be customizable. We need plans where employees can choose what they see fit at the time, and life insurance could be increasing, which could be reducing life insurance, it could be marriage, it could be adding a new child to coverage. medical care, "explained Diston." In countries where [having] multiple wives are allowed, it may be necessary to cover several wives in a plan, or operate a plan that does not show an interest rate because, according to the law of the Sharia is not allowed, it's really about understanding all of our markets and making sure that, for that environment, we can be as inclusive as possible. "

However, this has posed a challenge in suppliers of supply. Diston said the organization informed its suppliers that the inclusion should be included in its benefits, or that Cisco would take its business elsewhere.

More clearly linked to the benefits for the family is the work that Cisco has done around its license plans, in particular establishing a minimum global fixed time for maternity and paternity leave, regardless of which of the 96 employees that operate in the organization is based in. Cisco also offers up to three days of leave for grandparents, extended leave for caregivers and emergency free time. Employees can also access counseling services, either for themselves or for their children who may have special needs or mental health problems.

Welfare is linked to the spirit of family care; a topic that Cisco takes seriously within its global welfare program. This focuses on encouraging small incremental changes in health behaviors, with line managers responsible for leading the program. This is particularly relevant because health and wellness goals are presented in the weekly check of performance management at meetings.

A great challenge in this area, observed Diston, is the balance between work and life. The demands of a global business make the maintenance of traditional office hours unrealistic for many Cisco employees, who may need to start early to speak in some time zones or work later to communicate with others. Diston explained that Cisco focuses on the integration of work life, rather than the balance between personal life, recognizing this potential conflict and providing employees with tools to mitigate the negative effects caused by these work patterns.

Diston said: "We want people to have a balance, but in reality, we have realized that it is probably more an integration of working life that is more realistic for us." What that means is to take a free morning if [employees] have a quiet morning, go and do what [individuals] should do at that moment. We are not seeing [their] hours, we are seeing [their] outputs. We stopped trying to find a solution for the balance between work and personal life because, in our global environment and our global way of working, it was not realistic, so we almost had to tell people who are adults, to find the proper balance. "We'll put the programs out there for you, we'll put the tools out there for you, but you need to find the right way to balance."

Employees have even talked about ways to achieve this balance, thanks to the organization's commitment survey. Feedback from this led to the introduction of a volunteer initiative, which allows staff to devote 40 hours a year to volunteer work, and the organization gives each employee a day off for his or her birthday.

In addition to having the benefits in themselves, Diston stressed that communications around these are also vital. In particular, he noticed that small pieces of bite-size information worked better because they are easy to digest by the staff. Cisco uses a mixture of both paper and digital communications; This includes your television channel, webinars, videos and movies, and employee groups. Cisco's communications also present a graphical approach because the organization has found that this is more attractive to its employees.

"We know that we are not a good work-life balance culture. We know, we will admit it. But, in reality, we want employees and leaders to recognize that in order to promote a healthy and productive environment, they have to be the owners of people and feel responsible for their well-being. Our program does not focus on diet and exercise, it has that in it, but it focuses on how [we] create a healthy balance of how to work. "It focuses on the mind and focuses on the connections between [employees] and [their] leaders, [employers] and [their] employees, [employees] and [their] families and how they all intermingle in a day," he concluded. Diston.