Leading global law firm, White & Case LLP, discusses their experience with Maven

Maven: What issues around workplace retention did you need your family benefits solution to address?  

White & Case: As a law firm, we want to make sure that we retain our female associate attorneys. In the legal industry in general, over time we've seen gender parity in men and women in law schools. We've seen gender parity for men and women coming and being onboarded as young associates at major law firms. But there was some sort of bottleneck or filter where we weren't seeing that [at our partner level]. And part of that is because right around the time that many women are thinking about starting a family is when they have to demonstrate that they are partnership material. So they're going through the most stressful part of their career while thinking about making a very stressful change in their personal life as well. So we were working to alleviate at least one source of that stress, to help female associates be able to both take care of their work at home and take care of their work at the office. What Maven offers seemed to directly address some of the concerns that we were having, so we reached out, and we've been partners ever since.

“Maven has offered so many resources to both mothers and fathers—before they go out on leave, while they're out, and when they come back.”

Maven: How did you make the business case to key decision makers that partnering with a company like Maven was a smart investment?

White & Case has a strong value-based culture that includes supporting our employees in their personal endeavors. We needed to make a very logical connection that starting or growing a family is one of the most important personal endeavors that many of our employees are going to undertake while they're here. The second issue was to demonstrate that there's a meaningful return on investment. While I think the values issue is more important for us, we also had to make a case that this would provide meaningful savings.

Maven: What impact have you seen on pregnant employees and working parents who use this benefit?

White & Case: Maven has offered so many resources to both mothers and fathers—before they go out on leave, while they're out, and when they come back. We communicate with every individual that's going out on leave that Maven is available to them. We've seen almost everyone take it up to some degree. What Maven provides is a whole suite of benefits so employees don't have to necessarily take a half day off to go and meet with a lactation consultant in person or try to find a doula. They can use Maven's services on their phone or on their computer and reach out directly to the [practitioners] that they need information from. They can do that from work; they can do that from home, in the evening, on the weekends. So that flexibility is extremely important for our very, very busy associates.

Maven: You decided to offer your employees access to Maven’s fertility benefits—what has the response been?

With the fertility benefit, we didn't necessarily think that we would have a lot of people taking it up, but I think we misjudged our own population. We've seen that explode. After an initial communication—just a simple email communication that went out [to employees] announcing this benefit—we saw a number of people sign up immediately. I personally had people come up to me and thank me and our team at White & Case for putting this into place.

I think one of the main reasons that Maven's fertility benefits are so helpful is that the fertility landscape is very confusing. Through our medical insurer, White & Case already provides some fertility guidance. However, it's not at the level that Maven can provide. In addition to that, Maven has been able to partner with and talk directly with our other benefit providers that are related to fertility. So instead of an employee having to navigate two or three different sources of information, they can go directly to Maven who can provide them with all the information they need and tell them specifically, as a White & Case employee, "Here are the other benefits that you can utilize, and we'll hold your hand while you're using those." Maven's fertility program helps make a really confusing and scary process a lot simpler.

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We’re proud to see the tangible impact Maven is having on advancing women and families at White & Case while also helping to reduce healthcare costs. Click the request-a-demo button below to learn more about Maven.

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