Childcare has become an enormous cost for many young families, often arriving exactly when parents are trying to return to work after parental leave. Too often the sums simply don’t add up, and talented people step away from careers they love because childcare eats up much of what they earn.

We want to help change that for our team.

This year we introduced a new policy where permanent Raspberry Pi employees with a child between nine months and school age receive a salary uplift of £1,000 per calendar month, per child, as a contribution towards childcare costs (that’s the figure for full-time employees, and it’s pro-rated for part-time colleagues). With payments beginning once a child reaches the age of nine months — around the point when many parents are returning from leave — and continuing until the August before they start school, our aim is to ease the financial burden on young families.

There are no strings attached to how the money is used. It’s a straightforward contribution, paid through our payroll, and designed to take some of the pressure off during the most expensive early years of parenthood.

We think this matters for a few reasons. First of all, supporting our colleagues through a demanding stage of life reflects the kind of company we want to be.

It also helps with wellbeing and retention. Parents shouldn’t have to choose between a career and raising a family, and the return-to-work period is when many feel that tension most acutely. Easing the financial strain makes it far easier for people to come back, stay, and thrive. Lastly, it helps us build a stronger and more diverse team. The cost of childcare falls unevenly, and too often pushes women disproportionately out of the industry; by meeting some of that cost head on, we hope to keep brilliant people in technology careers. If this sounds like the sort of team you’d like to be a part of, take a look at our open positions at raspberrypi.com/jobs/.

We’re proud to set this benchmark, and we hope others in our industry will follow.