As Answer Digital grows, we want the way we support our people to grow with us.

That means looking beyond the projects we deliver, the clients we work with and the technology we build, and thinking carefully about what it means to be a genuinely great place to work through every stage of life.

That’s why we’re incredibly proud to introduce our new and improved Family Leave Policy, representing a significant investment in our people and a big step forward in the support available to Answer families, but also on the Tech scene.

More support when it matters most

Welcoming a child into your family is one of life’s biggest moments. It’s exciting, life-changing and, as plenty of our team will attest, probably not the point at which you want to be worrying about work.

Our new policy significantly increases the amount of fully paid leave available to both primary and secondary caregivers.

For primary caregivers taking maternity, adoption or shared parental leave, those with three or more years’ service will now receive 26 weeks at full pay, while those with under three years’ service will receive 13 weeks at full pay.

Secondary caregivers, including those taking paternity leave or leave as a secondary adopter, will now receive four weeks at full pay.

It’s a substantial improvement to our existing offering, but more importantly, it gives our people greater freedom to focus on their families during a period when their time and attention really matter.

One policy, however your family is formed

Improving the financial support was only part of what we wanted to achieve.

Families don't all look the same, and routes to becoming a parent don't either. So, rather than maintaining separate policies with different terminology, we've brought everything together into one Family Leave Policy.

We've also moved towards the more inclusive terms Primary Caregiver and Secondary Caregiver, helping ensure our policy better reflects the different families, circumstances and routes to parenthood within a growing team.

It might sound like a relatively small change, but language matters. We want people to be able to open a policy and immediately feel that it applies to them and their family.

Why are we making the change?

Because we're employee-owned, and that should mean something.

Being employee-owned isn't simply a line on our About Us page or marketing terms. Answer belongs to the people who work here, and the decisions we make about the future of the business should reflect that.

As we grow, we want to keep investing back into the people responsible for that growth. We've always talked about creating an environment where people can build long-term careers at Answer. But a long-term career happens alongside a life outside work. People become parents, families change, priorities shift and responsibilities grow.

If we want brilliant people to stay, develop, mentor others and help shape Answer's future, we also need to create a business that supports them through those moments. Our new Family Leave Policy is part of that commitment.

Creating policies that reflect modern working lives

The technology industry prides itself on being progressive. We’re constantly talking about innovation, transformation and challenging the way things have always been done. But when it comes to workplace policies, the sector hasn’t always moved at quite the same pace.

Many policies still reflect a more traditional working world and haven’t evolved alongside the people who now make up our industry. As more women build long-term careers in technology, and as our understanding of the different experiences people navigate throughout their working lives grows, we believe our policies need to grow with them.

At Answer, we didn’t want to wait for this to become standard practice elsewhere. We wanted to look at where our existing policies could do more, listen to our people and introduce meaningful changes that better reflect the realities of a modern workforce.

We know we won’t have every answer, and our policies will continue to evolve as our people and their needs do. But we hope that by being open about the changes we’re making, we can encourage other organisations across the technology sector to look at their own policies too.

A change shaped by our people

Changes like this don't happen without people pushing them forward.

A huge thank you therefore goes to Luisa Van Der End and Tessa May, who have championed the improvements from the beginning and played an instrumental role in turning them into reality.

Their commitment and care have helped create something that will benefit Answer people and their families for years to come.

And that's perhaps the part we're proudest of.

We're building an ambitious business, delivering increasingly complex work and continuing to grow our team. But behind all of that are people.

As an employee-owned business, we want to make sure we're looking after them too.