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Celebrating families at Paysafe
July is ‘Families Month’ at Paysafe, where we are highlighting our support for colleagues with caring responsibilities. For many of us this has been more challenging than ever during the pandemic. We hear from members of our Families@Paysafe employee network to understand what companies like Paysafe can be doing to support colleagues in a families context.
Nrupal Das, Principal Product Manager, India
We need support structures to cope, or flourish in our lives so having an employee network like we do at Paysafe is a great example of how to support employees. Each and every member supports each other and we grow together in knowledge and emotionally as well. We also have to be really considerate, accommodative of colleagues’ time and challenges. Spending some time with team members talking about their health, well-being and general discussion is a big help for anyone.
Georgie Wolf, Legal Counsel, UK
Flexible working is the key to supporting colleagues with caring responsibilities as well as communication. It is important to communicate with your manager so they can provide support as otherwise they have no way of knowing about our responsibilities outside of work and everything we are juggling. It also helps to be open with colleagues and share challenges you are facing as this is the best way to receive support and advice and be able to better manage those challenges.
Tihomir Nedyalkov, Compliance MI Reporting Manager, Bulgaria
Nowadays, the line between work and family life has been extremely blurry, if not disappearing altogether. As a result, I think more than ever we do need to look at our colleagues like friends and family, instead of just co-workers. Relationships built on trust and mutual understanding are much stronger than relationships built on bonuses and controls. We should be having conversations about family struggles, well-being, and mental health as often as we are having conversations about revenues, performance, and deadlines. I see understanding and support as the building blocks of a strong "family", and a "family" will always outperform simply a group of individuals.
Michaela Unger, Marketing Program Manager, Austria
Our Families@Paysafe employee network is so inspiring, motivating and full of positivity. It is one of the few possibilities to chat with people who are in the same part of life at the moment, struggling with kids and work and collecting useful information/tips/tricks for simply everything. We have to hold together in these hard times: helping each other with simply lending our colleagues an open ear, supporting each other with our work and motivating each other.
Sheetal Nagraj, Banking Delivery Lead and Global Lead for Families@Paysafe
It’s a three-tier challenge. We need HR policies to enable carers to carry out their responsibilities with flexibility and still able to build a secure, strong career at Paysafe. You also have to have support from leaders – when they demonstrate the behaviour they are seeking; the teams feel empowered to do the same and look after their mental health and work-life balance. And finally, you need networks driven by employees: it is for everyone to take time and get involved, raise their voices, praise what’s going well and change the culture, be authentic, genuinely be kind and care for colleagues. These all have to work together, without any one of these tiers it will not be successful.
Shannon Spates, VP of HR, US
Leaders need to ensure that they are doing for themselves what we support for our employees. It’s also about authentically caring. It means so much when someone authentically asks how you are and if there is anything they can do to help. I’ve been in challenging situations with my own family – caring for ailing parents, children and some of the hard times of life and it provides so much comfort when someone reached out just to check in and find out how I was coping. Never underestimate how much a kind word can brighten someone’s day.
Roy Aston, Chief Information Officer at Paysafe and executive lead of Families@Paysafe
I am really proud that our families network has created a platform for our employees to discuss the challenges they face balancing work and pressures at home. The unfortunate events many have experienced throughout the pandemic have highlighted that companies need to take time to understand the needs of those that have caring responsibilities whether that be directly at home, in a local area or even managing from afar. At Paysafe we will continue to listen to our colleagues’ needs and look for ways to create flexibility to balance the many different pressures many people have to deal with day to day.
Anna Howard, Corporate Communications Director, UK
The challenges and experiences that we face in our everyday lives at home can have a huge impact on the version of ourselves which we bring to work and it’s therefore important to build a flexible, mindful and kind working culture among employees. This type of inclusive culture can bring tangible benefits to both the company and its employees in the long term and should be embedded across the company from the top. At Paysafe we also have a fantastic range of initiatives which support family life, such as summer hours and wellbeing afternoons when we are encouraged to spend time with our families or focused on ourselves.
