Employees should feel taken care of, says Haleon’s Kim Pecina
Consumer healthcare company Haleon employs around 22,000 people across more than 60 countries. Based in the UK, we were established in July 2022 as a spin-off from GSK.
Our employee benefits were inherited from the GSK days. They are not perfect. Benefits are dated and there’s not much consistency or flexibility. I want to implement more global standards and move towards a more all-encompassing benefits strategy. Our motto is ‘For health with humanity’ and we should be showcasing this in our employee benefits.
This shift has already begun. On our first day as an independent company, we announced a new policy giving all employees 26 weeks fully paid parental leave after the arrival of a child, plus caregiver leave of four weeks.
We’re also looking at the health and wellbeing benefits we offer. We’re an oral healthcare company, so should be offering employees oral health benefits. We want them to feel they’re being taken care of from a wellbeing and health perspective, because that’s who we are.
Taking a global view
Our employee health and wellbeing function is part of HR, so I work closely with them to implement their strategy and ensure everything is aligned. If we see a really amazing health and wellbeing benefit we will always speak to them first to ensure it fits the overall strategy.
And although we take a global view on the benefits strategy, we recognise that some benefits will be country specific.
I don’t expect everything to be global, but we want to look at what’s out there. Where we can’t bring it together through a global approach then we want to use the budget to give employees something innovative and fresh.
