Pets at Home to introduce Pet-ernity Leave

The new scheme will mean that colleagues will be allowed one paid day off per year when they welcome a new dog, cat or horse into their family.

The scheme is being launched in April as part of a new range of flexible benefits, called ‘For all the times we share’ that help colleagues balance their work and home life, by giving paid time off to better manage some of life’s milestones.

Pet-ernity Leave is just one of a number of schemes being offered. This is in addition to the existing benefits of having a birthday day off, an extra week’s holiday when getting married, a charity dayeach year.

Chief Executive of The Pets at Home Group, Ian Kellett, said: “We want to help and support key events in a colleague’s life. We are also launching a ‘flying the nest day’ when a child leaves home, a ‘new roost day’ when you move home and a day’s holiday on your birthday.

“We know that if you have a new dog, cat or horse it can be quite stressful and to help with the settling in process that comes with welcoming a new pet into any family, we want to grant one day’s paid holiday to help support them. It fits into our ethos – we recognise the importance of pets.”

At Pets at Home, 95% of colleagues own a pet and it’s no different for the pets that are welcomed to the Handforth headquarters on a daily basis, where pets of all shapes and sizes join their owners at work.

In fact, more than 50 well behaved dogs are present in the office at any one time, from a Bernese Mountain dog to a German Shepherd and Red Toy Poodle, well behaved dogs of all different breeds and sizes are just part of a normal working day.

New Benefits Available to Pets at Home Colleagues:

New Roost Leave

We recognise that moving house can be a stressful experience and in order to help with this process we allow an additional one day’s leave for colleagues to use when they move house.

Flying the Nest Leave

If you are a parent, the day your child moves out of home for the first time, maybe to go away to university or move into their first home, is an important occasion and one that as a parent we appreciate you will want to experience. Therefore we are introducing an additional one day’s leave for you to use to help your children make that first and very important move.

Pet-ernity Leave

Having a new dog, cat or horse in your family is a joyful time but we do know this can also be stressful for you and your new pet. To help you settle your new family member in we will give you one day paid leave.