DFS Furniture Group, the largest sofa retailing specialist in the UK (which includes the brands DFS, Sofology and The Sofa Delivery Company), is adding additional services from digital health app Peppy, to offer support for fertility, pregnancy and early parenthood to their employees. This builds on the existing family-friendly support it already offers to all 5,500 employees.
As part of the Group’s inclusion strategy, the company is committed to enabling employees to bring their whole selves to work, whilst supporting them to live happy healthy lives at every stage. It already offers support via Peppy Menopause (launched July 2021) and Peppy’s Men’s Health (launched June 2022) to its employees, and felt that it also wanted to support its employees if and when they decide to expand their families.
The Group chose to expand their service offering with Peppy due to the engagement with, and utilisation of, existing services from the company. The fact that Peppy offers fully inclusive, personalised support for staff of all genders and sexual orientations, and to their partners too, was a key driver too.
Peppy’s support includes access to one-to-one private messaging and video consultations with experts, peer-to-peer group chat and support, live broadcasts, and a library of articles, resources and videos.
Joanne Shawcroft, Group People Officer at DFS Furniture Group said:
“We’re so pleased to be adding Peppy Baby and Peppy Fertility to our existing programme of wider inclusive wellbeing support. We want colleagues to know that whatever life stage they are at, we can support them in their home lives and in the workplace.
“We were particularly impressed that Diversity & Inclusion is embedded at the very heart of Peppy’s proposition and so we feel confident that no matter what size or shape our employees’ families take, Peppy’s personalised approach will provide the right support.”
Francesca Steyn, director of fertility and women’s health services, Peppy added:
“Fertility issues can affect as many as one in six people. It’s a hugely important issue that any sizable organisation, such as DFS, cannot afford to ignore.
“DFS is a forward-thinking employer who will undoubtedly see the benefits of supporting its staff at what is an exciting, but sometimes daunting, time in their lives. These additional services will support all staff, whether they conceive naturally, need advice about the complexities of fertility treatment, or need help during the early stages of parenthood.”
Workplace Wellbeing Professional is an online magazine featuring news and analysis on a broad range of employee wellbeing topics, focused on a UK based audience.