Ferring’s Ground-Breaking Global Family Benefits Package | Christelle Beneteau | HR Leaders

Hi everyone, welcome back to the HR Leaders podcast. On today's episode, I'm joined by Christelle Beneteau, who's the Chief HR Officer at Ferring Pharmaceuticals. During the episode, Christelle shares how Ferring has designed and implemented a comprehensive and inclusive global family benefits package. She talks about the introduction of a 26-week global minimum standard for paid parental leave for both birthing parents and non-birthing parents, how they're actually providing unlimited financial support for fertility benefits, ensuring accessible care for all employees, the key factors to consider when developing and executing a global well-being strategy, and the essential technology partners that are actually enabling their successful well-being initiatives. As always, before we jump into the video, make sure you hit the Subscribe button, turn on the notification bell, and follow on your favorite podcast platform. With that being said, let's jump in. Welcome to the show, how are you?

Well, I'm good. It's good to see a CHRO smiling, so that's a good thing.

The front part, you know all about the business and the people, yeah. So it's always funny. How's family, how's everyone?

Integration, yeah exactly. It's an interesting one. I can barely deal with one kid. My daughter's four, and my wife and I both work, so I don't even know how you do it for three.

Patience, potentially. Tantrums in the boardroom are different, but they're still tantrums. So yeah, patience is definitely one. As a parent, I feel like that's one of the things I had to work on with Robin: be very patient. And I was not born with it. I practice every day, you know. We learn so much from our kids. I feel like Robin teaches me more than I teach her. I love the fact that she puts the mirror up. There's no pretense with them. They put that mirror up, and you're right in your face, and you're like, 'Oh dear.' And they're right most of the time, unfortunately. I love with Robin at the moment, there's no fear yet. So everything is a yes, everything is a jump in the deep end, everything is 'I'll try it.' She's not worried about failure, she's not worried about what someone's going to think. I love it. As kids, they're just free to try, experiment, and the lack of filter. I tell you, when they say the truth comes out of the children's mouth, sometimes that's 'ouch.' I can't even react because it was true. But yes, love it.

A lot of things at work anyway. I hope I won't bore you with the details, but at work, I joined the company two years ago. We've had some very exciting highs and a few lows. Right now, we've just had two outstanding approvals from the FDA on two first-in-class drugs. So as you can imagine, we're a $2.2 billion company, fairly modest, so it's huge for us. It's a great problem to have. So from an HR standpoint, from a business, a lot of challenges and a lot of investment. We need to prepare. We've launched one, we're preparing to launch the other. From a people standpoint, you can imagine the needs there: bring the right people, develop them, and it's a completely changed mindset. But very strong. We've been growing significantly in volume, but not necessarily in profit. So we've been doing lifecycle management for your products. Fascinating from a people skill set standpoint, a cultural standpoint, and we're right in the middle of it. It would be hard to identify one or two; it's all at the same time. But that's why I love it. In some way, you put HR right in the center of it, so that's what I love the most.

At the moment, these two drugs are mainly launched only in the US because they've been approved first by the FDA. So we've ramped up, of course. You prepare a few months before, hoping you'll get approved. So we ramped up on the sales force, but not just that: medical, payers, even some support functions or enabling functions. So there's been a lot of hiring, but also a lot of training, a lot of converting skill sets. People we already have, talent that we're moving. It's a completely different therapeutic area, so new skill sets. People that have been working with us for a long time, great sales people, but they never launched a product. So it's different skill sets, different focus. We had to build up some global teams, but also focus on the US because we're launching there, and we're also planning the ex-US. So a lot to think about. Doing training, converting. It sounds like chaos, but we've kind of structured it. Organized chaos, yeah exactly. That's what innovation is.

Yes, as you said, we came out of COVID, and some people would even say we're right in it. It's less restriction, but it's still the aftermath. We've had the geopolitical situation last year that didn't help, the economical situation with inflation. And we are operating in over 100 countries, selling a product, and operating in 55 countries. So just how people are perceiving all of those elements is very different. You have countries with 20-plus percent inflation rates, some a bit more modest, but it's huge. Externally and internally, as I said, we had some challenges that we faced, we recovered, we have these exciting opportunities, but it put a lot of pressure on our employees. We realize, like anyone, not just Ferring, all companies understand the importance of well-being. And as we all know in HR, or even outside of HR, to be a great place to work, we need to look at well-being of people at work and at home. So it's like learning and development, it's personal growth and professional growth. So that's an area where we spend a lot of time. Maybe one thing we've done like all other companies is flexible working arrangements, not just remote or virtual or physical, but how do you adapt to that? We are not best in class, so I'm not going to go too much into that. We've done what a lot of other people are doing. The one element we're quite proud of, and we're all proud here, is what we're doing. We have a huge program we call 'Building Family at Ferring.' Ferring is a market leader in reproductive medicine and maternal health, so you would expect that we do something for our employees. We are advocating people to have a family, and we're working with some industries to include that in their benefits. So we have to lead by example. Leadership is not just about market share; great leaders are people that others follow. So we want other companies to follow us in that journey. We have two huge pillars in that program. The first one: we launched it last year, we are offering for all our employees, regardless of where they are, regardless of who they love, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, age, we're offering full support in a family building journey, whether it's IVF, sperm donor, egg donor, surrogacy, adoption, financial support. We pay for it, which is a huge amount in some countries, particularly where national health is not covering it. And emotional support: we give them time off, we accommodate the workplace to help them. That's one key pillar. And the second, which I'm not sure what I'm the proudest of, and definitely unique for a big organization like ourselves, we have a six-month parental leave for both birthing and non-birthing parents. So that's huge. If you have a baby or if you adopt at Ferring, you will get six months to really create that link with your new joiner in the family, whether you're the physical birthing parent or not. So that's huge, and it has generated a lot of positive engagement with our employees.

Maybe I should have said it's paid. I know yours was paid. I think Natasha had three months paid. My wife had three months paid, and we just forewent that. But you know, I had twins, I had the normal, but my husband had two days. And in some countries, there's still nothing, it's one day. And even in those countries that had one day, we're offering six months. So it's interesting because we are facing some cultural challenges. Even leaders feel not comfortable taking those six months. But we have a lot of male leaders as well as female leaders, and over certain age, they really proactively say, 'Look, I've got one kid, two kids, three kids. I had half a day, I had one day. I couldn't bond. And now I'm bonding with my grandchildren that I didn't bond with my children.' And we're talking about well-being, but we can talk about diversity and inclusion. If we want more diversity, you have to do that. And we have had some really great testimonials from fathers who come back and say, 'Look, I had my first child, I didn't have that. My second, I was able to share with my wife the burden at home.' And that changes dynamics. It's not just at work. Employer of choice helps employees at home and at work. You can't go into people's homes, but at least if you give them the money and the time to help through that journey.

Internally, we're trying. We're also using testimonials. In addition to offering or supporting our employees for their family building journey, the positive side effects, which I should pretend we had planned but we hadn't, to be honest. But very positive side effects: because we have all of those leaders, managers at any level, and I've got loads of examples of very senior leaders. I'm making sure the senior leaders are taking their BFF (Building Family at Ferring) leave because they are leading by example. And we've had good examples. Basically, because of that, it has given opportunity for internal talent to go into roles they wouldn't have gotten. Sometimes people say, 'You know what, I'll take another three months, I won't be paid.' But those six months, we had people that could not relocate, but say, 'Look, for six months, you either come or you do it remote, or it's a step up.' We might say, 'Well, do we take a risk now? It's only six months, what can happen?' And we've had really successful developmental opportunities that came out of it. So actually, helping our employees to build a family journey, hopefully helping the world to build a more diverse population, and people were opening their minds even in cultures that are a bit less open to this approach. In addition, the positive side effect of the whole thing has been an increase in developmental opportunity. So very openly, Chris, I'm promoting that part a lot more internally because I think people know about the BFF now internally, they talk about it. But what people don't get, and now they're starting to, we had our talent review recently, and out of the senior talent review, four or five moves were made thanks to those parental leave opportunities. And I'm telling you, we had a town hall yesterday, and we have videos, short clips, to remind people. So we include those types of things during the town halls. And we ask our people for testimonials. Some people on LinkedIn, not enough. We don't want to push, people don't necessarily want to expose themselves.

For the fertility and the financial piece, and even the emotional piece, it's outsourced because we want to respect people's privacy. Some people might not feel comfortable, although we are really creating it. Ferring is a family, people are open and talking more and more about fertility issues. In my previous employment, I would not have dared discussing it, but here that's our business. So if we're not open about it and inclusive about it, then shame on us. But we still want to keep privacy, so we are partnering with Carrot globally and Progeny in the US. Basically, our employees have all the contact details, they deal directly with those external providers. So we ensure that we are legally compliant. If we go to surrogacy, we're not being exposed. We're working with hospitals or agencies that are well-governed. So that's outsourced, we pay for it. All of that piece we are partnering with global providers. It's too complicated. For people who want to do that, we've used Carrot and Progeny. There are others, so I'm not endorsing Carrot and Progeny, and they have multiple services underneath those umbrellas. You call them, and they direct you to psychological support, physical needs, whatever it is, because we have a long list of offerings they cover. And we have actually, that's something that very few people did, but a president who's right behind it. Honestly, part of your question: how did you get it approved? I think our whole executive committee, our whole president, fully behind it. And we've even gone for no limits. So you could have four, five, six surrogacies, which is extremely expensive. We might review later, but at the moment, if we want to be the leader, it's uncapped. People who can't afford it could cap it. You don't need to go all the way. For companies who want to look at it, there is a way. There is a significant cost, but if they can't afford that full cost, they can start the journey somewhere. They can still partner with external suppliers or providers and give them a different brief, but they can still start the journey. Not because you can't get all the way there, even starting that journey sends a very positive message to the employees. Our engagement, our retention. I've got four or five employees who say, 'I will stay.' Some out of age, but I said, 'I'm so proud of what we're doing.' For me, that's one of the reasons I'm staying. So it's well-being, it's engagement, it's also part of the retention. Put a cost on retention. I'm putting my CFO hat on. The negotiation that we had to do a little bit to justify the cost: cost of retention and engagement numbers. If you look at that cost, it outweighs the costs. The turnover costs, if you measure that. But to answer the second part of your question, Chris, there is a cost for sure. What we've done, and as I said, the president has been very supportive. I've got to give him all the credit. The team behind it, a cross-functional team led by HR and finance and loads of other functions, helped drive that. I don't want to take anything away from them because it was outstanding. But without the support of our president, who our original brief was even lower, and he said, 'Well, what would it take for us to be leaders? Well, six months. Okay, go for it.' And it was the easiest sell at the executive team meeting, the easiest sell at the board. And we've decided to centralize that cost because if you leave it with a country, if it's a local cost, you give those who are already reluctant from a cultural standpoint an excuse: 'I'd love to do it, but I can't afford it.' So we wanted to remove that barrier. If you're not doing it now, you have no excuse. You don't have the excuse of the money because we're paying for it. But there's a cost that we ring-fenced.

Progeny in the US, the organization was ahead because it's a global program. When I mentioned we're forcing it, on flexible working arrangements we define guidelines and each market can adapt. This one was imposed. We're not dictating, we're very decentralized in many ways, but that one was, 'This is the minimum requirement around the world.' Some countries were already above, so if some countries were already doing it, we're not lowering these benefits. We'll just bring it up. The US was already working with Progeny to some extent, but it wasn't as generous to our employees, so we topped up. But they were already having something that worked really well. We looked at loads of different providers. There are others out there for sure. Carrot is not the only one. Many reasons to go, not just based on price. For us, we needed to have someone that was truly global. Depending on the organization, it might be more regional. Maybe Carrot might not be the most cost-effective or efficient way, but it was a global provider, extremely ethical, very able to absorb the volume of demand. We predicted how many that would be, and loads of other criteria. But it's important to ask those questions. What does a usual experience look like? Because I think some of the programs that I've seen, they've put all this time and investment in, but where they fail is actually the execution of the employee experience of how to even use that platform and the app. Sometimes it's hidden away in the intranet somewhere, and people don't even know it exists. They don't even know they have all these amazing things. So what does the employee experience look like? Where does that live for them? How do they access these tools?

What would you say is the biggest challenge they had to overcome in terms of implementation?

You're not selling, you're passionate. We've been working in this space for a long time, and we've come so far. We could only dream of having things like this in the past. How does it make you feel as an HR leader?

That's great to hear. Just had a random question pop into my head. What are you seeing as the main benefits that are being utilized when you sit down with Carrot and Progeny and talk about what areas are being utilized the most?

No, I love that. I think we can all relate to that. We've all worked in companies where you see this external facing voice and media, and you're like, 'Wait a minute, we're not even doing that internally.' And those talented people leave just as fast as they come in. They come into those organizations and they're like, 'This is not what I signed up for.' Whereas the opposite effect happens in organizations like yours. They're like, 'Oh wow, I want to be here.'

Along that journey, you mentioned you partnered with someone on the learning side. Who did you partner with?

That's true. You can't say, 'Hey, we want to grow and be developed,' and then not take initiative themselves with their own learning. There's got to be a meeting in the middle. But listen, we need to do part two about the learning journey because I feel like we can talk for hours. Otherwise, people will be falling asleep soon. We told you we're going to do our quick fire round, so let's jump into that. Before I let you go, you've got 30 seconds per question. Are you ready?

What are your hobbies and passions outside the office?

Love that. If you could click your fingers and change one thing about HR, what would you change?

How would your family and friends describe what you do for a living? What do you think they would say?

Firing and hiring people is probably the common answer. That's why we need a rebrand of HR. I tell them I make people happy, but I hear you.

Actually, I started my career not in HR. Believe it or not, I'm a biochemist. I studied HIV inhibitors, but that was in a previous life. I moved to marketing, so I started in marketing before moving into HR through headhunting. So I had a life before HR.

That happens all the time. I speak to so many HR leaders, and when they first get tapped on the shoulder to say, 'Hey, would you consider this?' they see it as a step down. They don't realize it's actually quite a common thing. But I'm proud. I'm carrying the flag with pride.

That's a very good question. I think trying to spend more time with myself. That's just pathetic, but something I started doing. Investing time because I realized recently I run at work all the time, and I was spending far too much time running HR and not being an executive, if that makes sense. I was running a home, so I felt a bad executive, a bad wife, a bad mom. They all say, 'No, you're okay.' But I'm trying to give myself the gift of time, which I'm still working on, Chris. So please don't reach out and say, 'How do you do it?'

Who's one person that's had the biggest impact on your career?

That's amazing. Shout out to her. When I grow old, I want to be her one day. Love that. Last question. Especially in the last few years, the role of HR and the role of work in general has dramatically changed. What advice would you give to those HR leaders of tomorrow that are going to be sitting in your seat one day?

I love it. Well, listen, thanks so much for coming in. I really enjoyed the conversation, Christelle. Congrats again to you and the team for all the amazing work.

You need to get a t-shirt that says 'Ferring: The Best Kept Secret.'

Well, listen, enjoy the rest of your day. I'll see you soon. Really appreciate the time and the interest. Bye, Christelle.