Banking benefits for babies…

Life can be tough for new mums when they go back to work after having a baby. Being away from the new arrival, tiredness and getting back into things at work can all increase the pressure on the new mum.

Goldman Sachs, the giant investment bank, used to have a pretty tough reputation when it came to employees. For example, they reportedly only used to give staff four hours off of work for bereavements.

Times are changing though and they have now becoming more flexible and family friendly for their workforce.

Goldman Sachs employs 6,000 people in the UK and they have become the first company in the UK to offer to pay for its breastfeeding working mums to courier their expressed milk back to their babies if they are travelling with work.

The bank told their staff that “Parenting and work can sometimes feel at odds. Goldman Sachs aim[s] to make the balancing act a little easier”.

Whilst some people may feel that this is a way of putting pressure on mums to return to work as soon as possible, it has to be said that the company offers some of the most generous maternity leave out there. They currently offer six months’ full paid maternity leave to new mums.

Whilst Goldman Sachs are the first company in the UK to offer this benefit to new mums, there are already several companies in the US that provide a similar “baby milk shipping” service to their staff.

IBM, Twitter, EY and Accenture all provide this benefit.

All in all, a nice initiative and I’m sure the new babies are especially happy.