When Peter Lim decided to take paternity leave after the birth of his first daughter he realised two weeks was not going to be enough. Prior to starting their family he and his wife Charmaine reflected on the work-life balance they wanted and a short break didn’t seem right.
“We decided quite early on that it makes sense for both of us to be working to some degree because with both our parents our fathers worked and our mothers didn’t,” he says.
“What we saw was a growing gap between their experiences, fulfillment and growth, and now they’re at retirement age and that difference is quite stark.”
They both wanted to work but, equally, they didn’t want to sacrifice time with their children. Charmaine was entering a medical training program for ophthalmology that meant being on call and studying, so Lim decided to let work take a back seat for a while. He had only been at Caltex for six months and his probation period had just ended but he approached his employer to work reduced hours anyway.
“At that point in time I sheepishly asked would you mind me working four days a week for a while?” he says. “There was a bit of apprehension but that was partly on the basis of a man asking to work part time and partly because I’d only been two minutes in the door and asking for variations for what was already agreed to for my employment.”
But Caltex didn’t hesitate for long. They discussed the new working arrangements and set about reallocating his workload. Lim then worked part time for five months and two years later, when his second daughter was born, he did the same.
“It was excellent on a whole lot of levels,” Lim says. “In terms of family, my wife Charmaine needed to balance what she needed to do to find a lot of support, and I think for me also it was an appreciation of what it is like to be at home and look after kids on your own. When you’ve got those days at home it is on the go the whole time and there’s no downtime. Even just having a quiet coffee which you can have at work you can’t really have as they’re always clawing at you.”
Nevertheless Lim was thankful to be around his daughters in their most formative years and build his relationship with them. When he returned to full-time work his view of the demands of working mothers had shifted. Today he manages a team of 23 people and many of them have young families.
“As a manager now I do have a much greater appreciation of all the things they have to balance,” he says. “I think the competing demands and the realities of pick up and drop offs, and the looking after them has shaped me quite significantly in the way that I understand and cater for parents and those who have other care responsibilities.”
Flexible working is part of the Caltex culture. Having spent the start of his career in traditional law firms where long hours are the lauded-norm, Lim did struggle with this initially.
“I had a big question mark about how that would work,” he says. “But I’ve been pleasantly surprised with how well it’s gone and actually what people have put in and I think that there’s a strong trust there and a strong sense of reciprocity as people are responding to their greater freedoms by maintaining or improving their output.”
Currently in his team, two women job share and another four work part time. Some have occasional work from home arrangements or flexible start and finish times for drop offs and pick-ups.
The value Caltex places on family and the employees need to balance their personal and work life is one of the things Lim appreciates the most about his employer. It is what he believes makes them distinct.
“It is unlike any other place I’ve worked before and people describe it as a family culture and there is a strong sense of care,” reflects Lim.
“It’s a really unique culture partly due to the attention to care and safety because we live and we work in an industrial workforce where safety is a big part of that. But I think broader than that it is something tangible in the way that people relate to each other and it is a very lovely place to work.”