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‘We absolutely need to stay ahead of the curve’: Fein and Abels on domestic violence leave
As we await the outcome of the Government's long-called upon bill for 10 days of domestic violence leave for all workers in Australia, Mumbrella's Kalila Welch spoke with two industry powerhouses in Thrive PR founder Leilani Abels and Initiative CEO Melissa Fein, about how the new bill fits into the bigger picture of the industry's typically progressive leave policies and employee entitlements.
Last month the Albanese government introduced a bill to Australia’s Federal Parliament to legislate ten days of family domestic violence leave for all Australian workings, including casuals, with the Prime Minister Anthony Albanese describing domestic violence as a “stain on the national soul”.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese pictured with a group of domestic violence advocates and other politicians on the lawns of Parliament House (Credit: ABC News, Matt Roberts)
The bill is one that has been long sought after by domestic violence survivors and advocates, offering a new layer of much needed support for those seeking to leave violent relationships that will enable victims to take time of work without having to risk their employment or sacrifice income. With the Australian Bureau of Statics finding that at least one in four Australian women have experienced physical or sexual violence by a current or former partner since the age of 15, a crisis that has only worsened during the pandemic, the bill has been widely lauded as one that will save countless lives.
Leilani Abels, founder and managing director of Mumbrella’s PR agency of the year and the first PR agency in Australia to introduce its own domestic violence leave policy in 2020, Thrive PR, says that, if successful, the bill will be “a game changer”.
“As with we’re seeing advocates declare, this change will be the difference between life and death for many women, unfortunately. It honestly will. Luckily, we have not had a current employee access this policy since we have introduced this in in New Zealand and in Australia. However, we have had multiple employees across all of our locations say that had this policy been in existence in in previous places of employment, it would have changed their lives.”
CEO of IPG Mediabrand’s Initiative and industry leader of the year at this year’s Mumbrella Awards, Melissa Fein is similarly emphatic of the importance of the policy, adding that the private sector also has a big role to play on progressing supports for women and others experiencing domestic violence situations.
“I think firstly, just for any government to shine a light on such an important issue is fantastic,” says Fein. “It also shouldn’t always be led by government. We know in this country that the private sector has a huge role to play and I think that being in the advertising industry, we have an opportunity to get ahead of a lot of these changes. We don’t always need legislation to change before we change as an industry or a private organisation.”
And obviously, there are a number of benefits for those organisations who do take the lead on this front, establishing a reputation for progressivism and no doubt assisting their efforts to attract and retain staff in the current talent crisis. However, Fein is quick to assert that this should never be the focus of policies designed to help employees.
“We absolutely need stay ahead of the curve. People care about these issues more than ever. But we don’t make decisions about serious topics and issues, and how we implement our own policies around this based on how we are going to retain or attract people. These are serious issues that are really relevant to not just females or people that identify as female – it’s gender neutral, it can happen sort of to any gender, or minorities.”
Abels is of a similar mindset when it comes to taking a lead on progressive issues, having taken the step to extend its domestic violence leave policy to Australia at the same time as its New Zealand operation, when New Zealand legislated domestic violence leave in 2019. In making the policy accessible to its Australian team as well, Thrive PR become a leader on the issue locally.
“We have just under 100 staff, primarily female, or 80 something percent female, across six locations and that includes New Zealand. And New Zealand has really been the spearhead for policy in this space globally,” says Abels.
“When that was introduced into New Zealand, we set a framework. So that same policy, which in essence is what the [Australian] federal government now is progressing with, of getting entitled employees – full time, part time and casual – to have ten days of paid leave entitlements.”
Leilani Abels, founder, Thrive PR
Abels says that in addition to the agency’s access to the New Zealand framework, Thrive PR’s primarily female workforce and female leadership has meant that it has always “aimed to be forward thinking in how we develop family friendly policies, which not only nurture the growth of our current employees and retain those employees, but also attract more have more fabulous smart women”.
She describes the “rising cases of domestic violence in this country” as “alarming” and something that further motivated the agency to make the policy “visible and easily accessible” within the business.
At Thrive the framework is backed by easy access and confidential management, with no need for team members to provide supporting documentation or “jump through hoops” to be able to access leave quickly.
“It’s available from the first minute they walk in the door with and it’s also supported by other initiatives, for example, our 24/7 employees assistance programs,” says Abels, referring to the agency’s face to face and online counseling program. The policy is complemented also by a flexible framework and culture that allows employees to adjust their work schedule to align with the needs of their situation.
The IPG Mediabrands network, which includes Initiative, has implemented a similar policy, offering people paid domestic and family violence leave from 5 to 10 days.
For both Thrive PR and Initiative, domestic violence leave is one of a suite of policies designed to protect and empower employees, and particularly female employees, in what has been a growing focus on employee happiness and retention across the industry as a whole.
Thrive PR has made flexibility a core tenet of its offering for employees, with a standardised hybrid work model and a four week ‘work from anywhere’ policy that allows employees to work anywhere in the world for a month of the year. For working parents, the agency also offers a ‘design your own Return-to-Work’ schedule initiative for parents in their first month of returning to the workplace, amongst a number of other benefits as they settle into parenthood.
IPG Mediabrands has also been a leader when it comes to support for new parents, offering an extended primary carer’s leave to 16 weeks, and extending its superannuation policy to cover the entirety of the un-paid portion of its people’s parental leave, in recognition of superannuation’s contribution to the gender-pay when women leave work to raise children. In recognition of the devastating impacts of miscarraige, Mediabrands also implemented its ‘right to recovery’ scheme, providing employees access to 8 weeks of paid leave for pregnancy loss under 20 weeks, and full parental carer leave for losses over 20 weeks. Secondary carers receive 2 weeks for under 20 weeks, and full parental leave for over 20. The company has also established loss-leave for parents of pets in recognition of all families.
Under the leadership of Fein, Initiative has also introduced a number of policies in addition to the Mediabrands schemes that attempt to address the challenges faced by women and others in the workplace as they navigate the complex web of career and life. The agency’s Maternity Masterclass program funds flexible learning programs for new parents who wish to work on building their skills while on carers leave, while formalised felxibility plans have established ‘uncontactable boundaries’ for employees, which constitutes ‘no contact’ periods – even in the case of an emergency. Initiative also offers up to $7,500 annually in family planning benefits for single, LGBTQIA+ staff and couples who wish to grow families. The grant can be used for egg friezing, IVF or other medical service regarding fertility.
Both the Mediabrands and Initiative policies were born out of personal experience for Fein, who had herself had gone through the devastation of miscarriage and the costs and challenges of fertility treatment.
“Businesses haven’t been set up to have that open sort of culture where people feel comfortable to come in and say, ‘I’ve just experienced this, I needed take time off,’. It was unbelievable, the amount of people, women especially, that had come forward to say that they’d also experienced miscarriages in the workplace and had gone straight back to work,” says Fein. “There was almost like a demeanor that came with it like, ‘well, I can’t go to my boss and tell them that this has just happened, I don’t feel comfortable with that. And so therefore, it’s easier just to go back to work.'”
Melissa Fein, CEO, Initiative
Through her own experience, and the experiences of women around her, Fein is determined to turn around workplace culture when it comes to these difficult conversations, by making the frame work clear and visible for employees.
“Whilst personally, you don’t want to go through these experiences, if you can make an impact and change for the next person who’s going through it and if we implement leave policies and some funding around that it’s going to help the people who are going through similar experiences.”
In addition to her own experience, Fein credit’s her mentorship with young women who have been forced to make difficult decisions around timing motherhood and career milestones as another driver behind the IVF funding specifically.
“What I felt like my role was to play in all of that is for our people to have options. So egg freezing, therefore, became a big part of that. And so I was saying to some of the females, especially some of the younger ones, if I was going through that, again, I would probably freeze my eggs even earlier.”
She adds that the policy was also in part influenced by one of Initiative’s senior leaders, who had come to the point in her life where, while she didn’t have a partner, she wanted to start a family, and was able to do so and become a solo mother by choice through a sperm donor program.
“Just watching what she went through, again, my ambition is how do we support more about amazing people coming through the ranks who haven’t found a long term or a stable relationship to go and have a baby, but they still want to start a family.”
However, for both Fein and Abels, supporting their people, and specially their female identifying people, is more than just creating policy. Openness, flexibility and support all needed to be embedded in an agencies culture for policies to really take effect, and for employees to feel safe and comfortable leaning on their place of work through difficult times.
“As an agency, we need dedicated resources on people and culture exclusively to be able to engage and deliver the these programs,” said Abels. ” As you said, creating a healthy and safe culture, so people feel that they can reach out comfortably and confidentially for these conversations is absolutely key. So, that also comes down tovvisibility, openly talking about critical issues in our community, not just within our workplace, but but more broadly. And then also backing that with an easy to understand and simple process, which gives team members confidence that they can engage with resources, internally, and that there will be a lot of respect and confidentiality around how that’s managed.”
For Fein, accessible counselling services also play a part in ensuring people feel comfortable to find help in different ways.
“I really genuinely feel like that we need to be doing more than just annual leave days. And that for me, it’s probably table stakes. And so that’s why, you know, we’ve created sort of the, the anonymous pathways for people to come in and talk about what they’re going through, but also have those open conversations to say, I need not just time off, I need some flexibility in my arrangements, you know, is there anyone that can help me find some safe shelter for a temporary time, these are the conversations that we welcome. We’ve got trained people within our organization to sort of be a first responder to some of these conversations.”
Fein notes that while the need for the industry to be on board when it comes to women’s issues, too many organisations are still far behind, even lagging when it comes to “table stakes” such as parental leave policies.
“I think that there’s certainly some accountability, whatever the whatever the sex of the leader of that business is, I think there’s certainly accountability to look around them and look at, you know, how that they need to step up and start at the basics of getting the parental leave policies, right. So they can make a comfortable place to work and an all inclusive place to work.”
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