Parent-friendly Finder: The experience of a mum-of-three

I started working full time at Finder’s Sydney office when my third child was two months old. Eight months later, I can say Finder is a great place for parents. In this article, I’m going to share the reasons why I’ve found Finder to be so parent-friendly. It may provide some useful insight into our team culture, and you might even find some ideas to help make your own company more parent-friendly.

My baby visiting Finder office during lunch break

A paid parental leave policy

In addition to Australian legislated parental leave, Finder offers eight weeks paid leave to the primary caregiver and three weeks for secondary caregivers. Also, the policy was recently changed so that you can access this benefit as soon as you complete your probationary period (generally six months).

Convenient office location

Our Sydney office is located close to Town Hall station, a major transport hub that makes commuting relatively easy for parents. The area also has plenty of childcare services. There were spots available for a baby in two centres (both within a two-minute walk from the office) that I contacted three months prior to my planned start date.

Free lunches, drinks and healthy snacks

Not only is it time saving and good for the hip-pocket but having free healthy food available helps an always-hungry breastfeeding mum immensely. There is also a coffee machine in case I need a boost after a sleep-deprived night.

Yummy healthy lunch

Flexible working hours

Some members of my team are distributed and we effectively organise ourselves around flexible working hours. This means I can start later in the morning after dropping the kids off at day care and school or leave early to pick them up. At a global level, all company meetings have a remote-access option and are recorded in case someone cannot join in. On a team level, we organise remote pair programming sessions every time we need help. We have engineers working from different parts of the world literally 24 hours a day, ensuring there is always someone ready to lend a hand.

Option to work from home

Currently, my husband and I both work from home once a week. By saving on our commute time and opting for a quick lunch, we can combine work and enjoy time with our baby. These flexible working arrangements can also benefit parents of “fur babies” too!

My colleague’s fur baby accompanying her while she is working from home

Onsite bike racks

For busy parents, the commute is often the only time available for sport. For me, cycling helps me to stay fit and to keep my mind free of its usual busy thoughts for almost an hour a day. If not for cycling, I would never find a way to spend that much time without thinking about work or family, and without the availability of bike racks in the office, I wouldn’t feel comfortable doing it.

In-office showers and change room

Showers are important after an active commute. I also use them as a quiet space for expressing milk at work.

Drawing-friendly walls

All the walls here are writable. Don’t underestimate this feature when it comes to kids visiting the office. Not only are children busy creating murals (literally for hours!), the company benefits too by getting cute pictures everywhere.

Kids leaving inspiring messages in one of Finder’s meeting rooms

Community support

We have a network group within the product and engineering team where we work on making Finder an even better place for working parents. Our next step is converting one of our kitchenettes into a wellness room.

I asked my colleagues to share their thoughts on how parent-friendly Finder is. This is the feedback I received:

• “Very. My experience has been fantastic with tremendous empathy and support for my family situation. I feel like I am well supported by the organisation and my peers. I’m grateful for the opportunity to work flexibly when it is required.”
• “Finder is a great place to work, especially if you are a parent. As a parent of a seven-year-old and expecting a second baby in December I have complete support from my team and manager in terms of working from home, taking carer’s leave, etc.”
• “I’ve had two babies while working at Finder, and each time everyone was very supportive, kind and considerate of my situation.”
• “As a first-time parent and a secondary caregiver, I found the three weeks’ worth of parental leave a great amount of time to bond with my newborn.”

I hope Finder’s parent-friendly tips were useful! Have some ideas about how a company can help parents more? Please share them with me in a comment.

Interested to know more about working at Finder? Check out our Careers page.