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Benefits of working for us

Hertfordshire County Council has a variety of benefits in addition to the remuneration package offered to employees. These benefits cover a wide range of areas from flexible working practices to discounted purchases, ensuring that there is something to benefit every employee.

Flexible Employment Practices

LifeWISE is a package of Initiatives to help you achieve a better work life balance. It brings together existing policies and practices that aim to help people balance their work commitments with their personal lives. There are 3 stands to LifeWISE:

• Healthwise - helps people to enjoy healthier lifestyles
• Carewise - Helps people to balance their work with their caring commitments
• Options - A package of benefits (some of these are listed below) for you to choose from.

The Local Government Pension Scheme

The local government pension scheme (LGPS) is a contributory scheme to which employees contribute 6% of their salary. It is one of the most secure available and in the opinion of independent financial advisors, is hard to beat. A statutory funded pension scheme in its own right, it is contracted out of, and provides benefits every bit as good as, the state of earnings related pension scheme (SERPS).

Personal Development

HCC is totally committed to giving its employees every opportunity to pursue their own personal development, raise their standards of performance and enhance career prospects. So much so that it has introduced a Development Charter to create a culture of learning and set training and achievement targets. This means that when you are employed by the County Council, we will support you in training and development you need, both on and off the job, to achieve your full potential which, in turn will help us to meet our best practice targets.

Generous Holiday Entitlements

A job with Hertfordshire County Council also entitles you to generous leave entitlement. The Local government leave allowance is usually between 22 and 32 working days per year, depending upon grade and length of experience.

Lease Cars

HCC subsidises a lease car scheme for employees graded M2 or above or to those who travel more than 2250 miles per annum on HCC Business. Peugeot also offer all HCC employees a personal contact hire scheme.

Leisure and Fitness

You can gain a variety of discounts on Gym and sport centre membership from over 10 different gym providers and 20 different gyms across the county.

Health Benefits

Employees can benefit from private medical insurance from AXA PPP Health Care, HSA Personal Medical Plans or BUPA at discounted rates. Cover for Critical illness and Life assurance is also available from Philip Williams & Co. HSA also provides a Healthcare cash plan which provides cash payments towards a range of health benefits to individuals and their families.

Travel Insurance

HCC employees can receive Personal Worldwide Annual Travel Insurance at competitive rates from Philip Williams & Co. Cover starts from £45 per personand cover is available for individuals, couples and families.

Financial Advice

Frizzell provides a free independent financial advisory service to HCC employees. The services they provide include advice in areas of benefits, protection in the event of serious illness, savings, investment and tax planning.

Childcare Vouchers

The Childcare Voucher scheme enables you to exchange part of your salary for Childcare Vouchers. The vouchers are exempt from National Insurance and Tax and therefore represent a saving for employees who use them to purchase childcare. The vouchers can be used to pay virtually any childcare provider.

Carewell

Hertfordshire County Council has chosen to provide all employees* and their household family members with access to an all-new employee assistance programme called CareWell.

CareWell (provided PPC) replaces the previous Employee Assistance Programme supplied by Right Corecare and offers a much enhanced range of services including:

• General information and Citizens ’Advice services (anything from consumer issues to education residency advice)
• Counselling, via the telephone and up to 4 face-to-face sessions
• PPC AskWell (an interactive member only website providing information, advice and fact-sheets on health and wellbeing, see link below for access)
• Management Consultation (a dedicated service for managers to offer professional advice and coaching on staff management)

When using CareWell you can rest assured that you will be getting the very best help and support as over the 29 years that PPC have been in business they have built up an international reputation as the leading provider of professional advice and counselling to organisations and their employees.

CareWell is available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.