Designed to provide tangible support for expectant, new mothers and all those with parenting responsibility, My Family Matters is a new enhanced maternity and parenting package in KPMG.

My Family Matters brings together enhanced support through four key areas – childcare, coaching and mentoring, communication and information and policy. An important element of the programme is the new My Family website – a one stop shop of information for all parents.

A crucial part of launching My Family Matters is bringing alive the organisation’s commitment to retaining talent through two key groups of stakeholders – HR Specialists and the Peoplecentre team, which is where KPMG chose to partner with Managing Maternity.

See coverage in People Management Magazine

Sarah Bond, Head of Diversity, explains the context for My Family Matters: “Return and retention rates are very good at KPMG, but our internal research indicates that sometimes career progression can be slower after maternity leave, which in turn may mean that we lose out on the valuable skills and talent of a significant pool of women.”

Sarah continues: “Feedback suggests that where return to work is successful, much of this is down to simple, consistent communication between managers, teams and individuals. But if this does not happen, women can find it difficult to reconcile how they can manage working and parenthood, particularly to ensure fit with clients”.

To help address these issues, Managing Maternity has worked with the Peoplecentre team in KPMG, to train a team of maternity and parenting specialists. This team is now able to support women and their managers through pregnancy and return to work by signposting internal resources and appropriate policy in a way that recognises the challenges for all concerned.

Helping HR Specialists to communicate the KPMG vision for My Family Matters and act as ambassadors to raise awareness across the business of parenting issues and to challenge assumptions, is another area where Managing Maternity has worked with KPMG. HR Specialists are now leading sessions with managers across the business.

Anna Hayward, Managing Maternity Director, comments: “KPMG was recently named the UK’s best big company to work for in the Sunday Times Best Companies awards. It’s the commitment demonstrated by My Family Matters to parenting issues and changing attitudes internally that means KPMG is setting the pace for what organisations can do to support parents at work.”

For more detail on the elements of My Family Matters, see KPMG's Press Release