"Never before has work life & family life been so closely integrated. We always want our people to feel good about balancing their work priorities with their family priorities. We know that family comes first, and that workplaces need to adapt accordingly."
Organon is a global healthcare company focussed on women’s health. Our vision is a better and healthier every day for every woman, and we believe that by pushing past the limits of today we will be able to provide a healthier future for women and also a healthier future for their families and communities around the world. We recognise that families come in all shapes and sizes and that it is not just about parents and children, but more broadly about the extended family and caring responsibilities that our employees have and which change over time and life stage. To be family friendly is aligned to our Company values, mission and vision and is part of our DNA.
At Organon, all employees are empowered to work flexibly from day one of joining our team. We recognise that there can’t be a one size fits all approach to this – what one person needs to balance work and life is different to another’s. We treat our people as adults and individuals and focus on the outcomes our people achieve for our business and not where they are when they do the work. Of course we have a strong focus on connection and collaboration and there are many situations when face to face is the optimal way to enable that, however we believe our principles based approach to time in the office and also flexibility has bolstered our People First Culture and had a tangible impact on the engagement and motivation of our people, even during recent months of the very fluid environment we operate in thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic.
One initiative that we have launched during 2021 since our launch as a new company is the Gift of Time. We have given all employees up to three hours per day to focus on supporting children with homeschooling and/or up to two hours per day to focus on health and wellness – without having to make up the time. We have also encouraged all our employees to get vaccinated with additional time off work for this. Our leaders have empowered their teams to have open discussions about the reprioritisation or dropping of some work priorities during this time so that our people are not overworked and burnt out by the time we emerge from the pandemic.
“We really think it allows our employees to be more sustainable at this time, to balance their home-schooling and wellbeing, as well as their work priorities,” says Nirelle Tolstoshev, Organon’s Managing Director in Australia.
“And to come out of this feeling more energised and with some fuel in the tank, versus being totally exhausted with no annual leave left. We just think that this is a more sustainable approach.”
Our people have been overwhelmingly engaged and refreshed with our approach during the pandemic, and have organically and voluntarily shared their stories on our internal social channels as well as being featured in the press. Our employee story below beautifully articulates one family’s experience of the difference that this support has made to them during such a challenging time.
We see the benefits of being family inclusive aligned with the benefits of being generally inclusive. It is not just about those with family responsibilities, however if our people experience a culture and work environment which places equal importance on them balancing their non work priorities with equal focus as their work priorities we will have an engaged and energised workforce who go the extra mile for the customers and patients we serve.
We have placed family inclusion as a key part of our approach to diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging and it is well researched and documented that organisations with inclusive cultures achieve better business outcomes and productivity, better retention and engagement of their employees and have a solid track record when it comes to attracting new talent. It is early days for us as a newly launched women’s health company, but it’s already clear we are off to a cracking start!
Teresa Asten, Medical Services Product Specialist and Paul Asten, Senior Brand Manager are both Founding members of Organon, and they share their story below:
Our household is made up of a set of rambunctious almost-4-year twin boys – who are each other’s best friend one minute and arch nemesis the next, a 6 year old boy who is able to navigate his iPad with the dexterity of an Apple support team, and whose real first sentence was “Wi-Fi not working”. The supposed heads of this household are fellow Organon founders, who are both in a perpetual state of bewilderment and still wondering how two had become five in such a short space of time. Within this chaos, we had managed an order which was unique to us.
Then COVID hit. Social distancing. Lockdowns…home-schooling!
No-one could have anticipated the impact that a microscopic spike studded sphere would have on everyone. Our family struggled to find an equilibrium of a new normal. Our social circle had shrunk to a circumference of 5km. The delineation between work, school and home had blurred, blended and broken. However, alongside us, our work has also tried to navigate what this normal meant for its business and most of all its members. When safety was an issue, we were enabled to work from home. We were encouraged to go get vaccinated without having to take annual leave. We were given the Gift of Time, whereby we could take up to three hours out of our work day to home-school our kids and up to two hours for health and wellness without having to make up the time. We were given two extra days of annual leave to recharge.
The extra time meant that as parents, we had guilt free flexible time to help our kids find some normalcy to their day. It doesn’t feel like empty platitudes when a dedicated global group has been set up called Parents@Organon to see how the company can help the families who work for them.
It’s reassuring that at the worst of times, our company will always look after their people.
Who could ask for a better work family than that?
"Never before has work life & family life been so closely integrated. We always want our people to feel good about balancing their work priorities with their family priorities. We know that family comes first, and that workplaces need to adapt accordingly."
Parents At Work acknowledge and pay respect to the past, present and future Traditional Custodians and Elders of this nation and the continuation of cultural, spiritual and educational practices of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
