Monica Anderton, CHRO at DS Smith

Show Notes

Parenting Meets Production: A CHRO’s Playbook for Parental Leave, Safety, and Frontline Flexibility

Summary

How do you offer flexibility when your business runs on shifts and machines can’t sit idle?

Monica Anderton, Chief Human Resources Officer for DS Smith’s North American Packaging & Paper Division and a 2025 Top CHRO Voice in Manufacturing, breaks down what family-friendly HR looks like on the factory floor. With 20+ facilities and 2,500 employees, Monica serves two distinct audiences—desk-based staff and frontline teams—while staying competitive as a self-insured employer.

She shares how DS Smith used benchmarks and employee surveys to design choice-rich benefits, why “unlimited PTO” doesn’t fit manufacturing, and how they rolled out inclusive two-week parental leave for all parents, including adoption and same-sex partners.

Monica explains how to balance data with “the right thing,” from rapid, paid COVID leave to safety-first policies that depend on transparency when life happens at home.

She also opens up about parenting while leading through travel and crises, and the community and workplace support that mattered most when her daughter suffered a catastrophic sports injury.

Expect tangible examples for building trust, protecting safety, and attracting the next generation with practical, family-forward benefits.

Timestamps

[00:45] – Guest intro: DS Smith scope and what’s unique about manufacturing HR

[01:37] – Serving desk and frontline teams: self-insured benefits, benchmarks, and surveys

[03:53] – Time off on the line: why “unlimited PTO” doesn’t work in shift environments

[05:13] – Inclusive parental leave: two weeks for all parents, including adoption and same-sex partners

[07:58] – Data + values: making “the right thing” sustainable and competitive

[09:13] – Safety in a crisis: immediate paid COVID leave and union dynamics

[16:12] – When life happens: transparency, leave options, and preventing safety risks from distraction

[18:52] – A parent-first moment: catastrophic injury, community support, and a scholarship preserved

Takeaways

- Build benefits as a choice-rich platform validated by market benchmarks and employee surveys.

- Define flexibility by role: staff shifts reliably while offering fair time off and realistic policies for non-desk work.

- Implement inclusive parental leave—small steps (e.g., two weeks) drive morale, attraction, and retention.

- Price decisions with data but anchor in values; act decisively in crises to protect people and operations.

- Ask for transparency during family emergencies; activate leaves, PTO donation, EAP, and care-finder resources to reduce safety risks.

- Model empathy—normalize “it’s okay to not be okay” and equip managers to meet people where they are.

Sponsor

Parenting at Work is brought to you by Juno — the modern financial safety net for working families. 

Juno helps employers offer affordable, impactful long-term financial coverage for children diagnosed with a severe illness or disability, giving parents peace of mind and flexibility when it matters most. 

You can learn more about how Juno is helping companies build family-first benefits that truly make a difference at ⁠⁠junokids.com⁠⁠.

What is Parenting at Work?

Work and family aren’t two separate lives—they’re one reality. Welcome to Parenting at Work, the podcast exploring the human side of business. Join us for a warm conversation with leaders redefining employee support. Each episode offers stories and strategies for building workplaces that care. This is serious coverage with serious heart.

This podcast is brought to you by Juno, the modern safety net for working families.

Learn more at junokids.com

Max Tedaldi (00:00)
All right, hello everyone and welcome to Parenting at Work. I am honored and so excited today to bring you Monica Anderton, an absolute heavy hitter in the world of industrial HR and awarded as one of the top CHRO voices in manufacturing for 2025. Currently she serves as the Chief Human Resources Officer for the North American Packaging and Paper Division at DS Smith, a leading provider of sustainable packaging solutions.

She was specifically recruited there to manage a complex post merger integration and steer growth platform for a business with over 20 facilities and 2500 employees and has led HR teams at Mondi group, Novellas and Home Depot during their massive expansion years in the early 2000s. And Monica, I think understands maybe better than anyone what it takes to support a workforce that doesn't always sit behind a desk. And we have not had too many of those guests on this podcast, so I'm really excited for that.

And today we're going to talk through the unique challenges of the manufacturing environment and how she protects her people and her business. So Monica, thank you so much for joining us at Parenting at Work. Good morning.

Monica Anderton (01:05)
Thanks, good morning, glad to be here.

Max Tedaldi (01:07)
where I'm so excited and I wanted to just, you know, I teed up the, you know, working, you know, at a manufacturing company and having a combination of, you know, people that work behind the desk and people that don't work behind the desk. And I'm really curious about how that shows up in terms of, right, providing benefits for those employees, protecting those employees. What does that mean for your role?

Monica Anderton (01:35)
It's a little complex because you kind of have two audiences, right? We have a...

a regional support group that's doing support functions, finance, HR, procurement. And then we have the field people who are where our manufacturing facilities are located and that's where we make our money. And they're on shift schedules, you know, they're working for second, third, of styles, eight hours, 12 hours. So it's very, very diverse in the people in the demographic, but everybody's kind of going toward the same output, which is making a product that we sell to a customer that makes us money.

Max Tedaldi (02:09)
Yeah. Now, I think that makes sense. And then, you know, what does that mean in terms of how you set up, you know, your team, how you set up the, you know, benefits for those employees? Is it, are you doing a ton of research and trying to find a middle ground? Are you creating sort of two sets of benefit stacks or, you know, resources for those teams?

Monica Anderton (02:34)
Yeah. ⁓

So we do a couple of things. We do benchmarking in the marketplace just to make sure we're competitive because we're self-insured and we manage the benefit programs. But we also run surveys with the employees and also test sort of what's working and what's not working and get their feedback. There's a cost to providing benefits. So we are running a business. So there's always that cost benefit analysis. But you really, really want to make sure that the platform and the choice, and choice is the key word, is meeting the needs of the entire employee.

base. I've got you know an aging workforce that has one kind of interest or issue and I've got a young workforce that has a completely different one. So aging versus young might be starting their families whereas the older generation might be looking at retirement. So you have to have this platform or this offering that meets the needs of everybody and also is competitive and cost effective. So it's a real balance especially in this cost market where the medical

Max Tedaldi (03:14)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Monica Anderton (03:35)
increases have been really steep this year. It it makes it hard to manage but that's our job.

Max Tedaldi (03:38)
and

Yeah. And what's the most common feedback that you get?

Monica Anderton (03:47)
Yeah, think it, you know, interestingly, benefits, it'll be it can be time off, right? And to me, that's not even in the benefits menu that we're talking about. And I think it's it's making sure that, you know, the company holidays, the vacation time that you offer, you try to be competitive. But, you know, I can't be some of these high tech companies because we're manufacturing that say you have unlimited PTO, because I have equipment that needs to run and I need people to be on site. So it's

real chasm of, you know, in the manufacturing space, this is our paradigm and this is what we need out of you and we're going to be supportive and we're going to offer you time off and we're going to try and be flexible, but the reality is we run shifts that create products for our customers that pay us, so we've got to be fully staffed. So it's a real challenge at times.

Max Tedaldi (04:34)
Yeah.

Yeah. And I think one of the things that in looking at your bio and thinking about the manufacturing space, I thought a lot about benefits for families, ⁓ support for both mom and dad. I'm curious if you've seen a shift over the course of the past few years with more dads asking for either paid time off or parental leave.

⁓ and how you respond to that.

Monica Anderton (05:03)
Yeah.

Yeah, that's a fabulous question. We actually have had that request and in the last couple years, you know, we have leave of absence policy and take care of mothers, but what we didn't really have is a parental leave policy and we did some cost analysis of how many folks had had babies, how many people had been out, not a whole lot, but this is the generation that we're trying to entice to come work for us and we have to be family friendly for those folks. And so we actually rolled out

Max Tedaldi (05:29)
you

Monica Anderton (05:35)
a parental leave program and we offered two weeks and it was with the birth of a baby but it was also an adoption and it was for same partner benefits right so we kind of made sure that it wasn't just a traditional offering because we had some non-traditional families asking for the benefits and I think we were really really proud of it and I say I'm proud of it because you know I did all the data I did the costs I did the analytics kind of went in with the executives we talked through are we comfortable can we do this and it was a resale

Max Tedaldi (05:43)
Okay.

Monica Anderton (06:05)
Yes, there was no pushback because they kind of understand that this is so important and then it's the right kind of Lifestyle benefit that we want to offer but also just the receptivity from the employees that did it and and took it the first couple of gentlemen It was you know that that were off for two weeks came back. They were arrested. They were happy. They were talking about their new babies That goodwill you just can't buy but it also is just that feeling of pride that

Max Tedaldi (06:26)
Yeah.

Monica Anderton (06:33)
you know when we looked at it we said we were just gonna do a week right and then one of the folks that worked for me went and did a bunch of analytics and came back and she said why can't we just do two weeks and I'm like I don't know why can't we how much more is that gonna cost so when I went into the execs I kind of went in with two and thought they really push I'll try to try and whittle it down to one they were like sure because it's not a lot of people but it's the right thing to do right

Max Tedaldi (06:38)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yep.

Yeah. that, so I'm, I love that you said that. And I'm so curious about where.

that sentiment fits into your philosophy of the right thing to do. Because I do think that we live in a world right now where every decision that think you make in the corporate space is where's the data? Where's the data to back that up? And then there's another sentiment behind some of these decisions that it's morally, this feels right. And it's how do you balance that? I think you are in a particularly unique situation where you likely need to make those decisions every day for your people. And so I'm curious.

Monica Anderton (07:33)
Yeah.

Max Tedaldi (07:34)
is

how that comes up, right? How much of those sort of right thing to do moral decisions do need a little bit of the data to back them up?

Monica Anderton (07:44)
You know,

I think it's when you're doing something like two weeks of paternity benefits, it's a permanent change. Now, can I go change it in a year or two? Yes. But usually when you put something in like that, it's really, really hard to pull back out. So you have to be really, really careful that what you're doing is going to be the right thing for the business and is competitive and is benchmarkable. Right. And yes, I had the data because we're business people and we expect to have the data and understand the cost impact. But I think

you have to be mindful of what's the long-term impact from the morale, from the engagement to the competitiveness for the next person that you're going to hire when they look at it and there's a family-friendly benefit that resonates with them. My aging workforce is probably rolling their eyes saying it doesn't matter, you know that was some of the push I got and I said but my aging workforce has children that are having children so before you think that that's their reaction I think you need to test that a little bit right and so that it was a very

Max Tedaldi (08:37)
Yes.

Monica Anderton (08:44)
very positive outcome for a very easy change for a very small group of people that are leveraging it because we don't have millions of babies and our you 2,500 people being born every year but it's doing it's just doing the right thing.

Max Tedaldi (08:54)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yep.

Yeah.

Monica Anderton (08:59)
And I think

one other example for you, and I know we hate talking about COVID, but you know, when COVID came out and we weren't sure what in the world was going on, we didn't have pay time off. Okay. We just didn't. But what we figured out very quickly is it seemed like the incubation period and the way that you could keep our employees safe and safety is a key core principle as ours in manufacturing is that we needed to keep people isolated from

Max Tedaldi (09:13)
Yeah.

Monica Anderton (09:29)
our other employees and we within like a day kind of sat down with two or three of the executives said okay how are we going to tackle this we've got safety issues we've got to do masks we've got to quarantine we just immediately rolled out two weeks of pay time off and just said if you have covid stay home do not come back right do not come back we will pay and it was a little dicey with the union and i'm like really we're going to argue about this or we're just going to do the right thing right i mean we are all about keeping

people safe in the business and for our employees and it's just the right thing to do. So I think you have to have that line of sight that sometimes you're just going to make a decision and it's going to be quick and it's going to be okay. Now we've pulled it back out okay because we don't have you know a national disease running through our business but in that moment and for that almost two-year period of nuttiness there was just not a discussion it was do the right thing.

Max Tedaldi (10:11)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yep.

⁓ No, I think that's absolutely right. I think a lot about the social contract, right? And yes, not everyone might be having kids at the moment, but you were at one point a parent of young kids. You are now potentially a grandparent. What do you want to do for your children, for your grandchildren? And those decisions, I think, make our world a better place to live in, right? And so, yes, we need to

our businesses afloat, know, people need jobs, right? That's important. But there are other elements of those decisions that do make the place that we live feel a little bit warmer, feel a little bit safer. And, we're looking out for the next generation. So I think it's, you know, so, important. You were telling me earlier that ⁓ you have three children of your own. I think weevils was the term that you used.

Monica Anderton (11:21)
Yeah. My weebles

are adults now, but yes, I had wee ones at one point.

Max Tedaldi (11:25)
Okay. Okay.

And do they have children at this point? are they? Okay. ⁓ Okay. Maybe. goodness, goodness. And ⁓ so yeah, I'm, you know, I'm curious what role that has played in your professional life. And what sort of

Monica Anderton (11:29)
No, not yet. Thank goodness, I think. I don't know. I'm not ready.

Max Tedaldi (11:47)
compromises, decisions you made around being a parent, but then also how your professional life has overlapped with your personal life in that respect.

Monica Anderton (11:56)
Yeah.

That's a great question. You know, I think first and foremost, I have to say I have a fantastic spouse and partner in a relationship because it is very hard to have three kids. have a son and twin daughters and they're about three and a half years apart. And as soon as I had the kids, I went back to work. I always had the intent to go back to work. And John, my spouse, we share the workload. We have to. I traveled, I have traveled.

traveled my whole career and he's been more grounded. Now he travels every once in a while too with his job, but he seems to be more the stable person and we also don't have a lot of family in the area. And so it really, really becomes important that you've got a partner in the journey because it's hard. And I think in one sense I'm lucky because not everybody has that. And I think, you you and I kind of talked about that. I think it gives me a huge empathy for there was a time that John

John, there was something going on in the US and John as part of his job got deployed and he's not in the military but he works for the government and he has never had that happen before but it was a national emergency and he was gone for six weeks and my son was six and the girls were three and it was an evening ⁓ just gotten home from work trying to get the kids wrangled and somehow my son squished his finger in the front door I couldn't get the door open because I was on the outside and he locked himself in

Max Tedaldi (13:04)
Okay.

Yeah. It's a lot.

Monica Anderton (13:25)
complete pandemonium, right? And it was a moment of, I'm here by myself with these three kids, I'm locked out of my door, my neighbor has my key, I'm running across the road trying to get the three-year-olds who don't know what's going on, you know, it's this moment of appreciating when you have that partner. But I think it was a huge appreciation for my neighbors and friends around me that helped me. You I got the door open, thank God. I took him to the emergency room.

Max Tedaldi (13:50)
Yes, it takes a village. Yeah, yeah.

Monica Anderton (13:54)
The neighbor watched the girls and I think that's where you need your community and people around you and it's sometimes not always your family and it bled in because you know when I talked to work the next day of course I had to stay home and they're like stay home as long as you need right I've always been very lucky to be in an environment where people are very understanding very caring but as a leader and as the CHRO I think that empathy and kindness I also needed to demonstrate back because as a mother and as a parent I understand people

Max Tedaldi (14:01)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Monica Anderton (14:23)
go through stuff and it's like take the time to do what you need to do. Makes it a little hard in manufacturing but how we kind of bridge that gap is we try and offer wellness and tools and our benefits platform to find nannies or support or you know just things that are available to our employees that help them on that journey as a parent depending on where the kids are or what's going on or like me if you had you know sick parents or aging parents I mean you kind of go through a whole life of different

Max Tedaldi (14:35)
him.

Yeah.

Monica Anderton (14:54)
situations and you've got to have some tools for the employees that you can leverage because you may not be able to help them individually but somebody else can.

Max Tedaldi (15:03)
Yeah,

those moments where things go wrong. almost feels like unless things are just ⁓

perfect and planned, feels like everything is blowing up. And I'm curious about what would you say to an employee? Say their kid gets sick, they have a home emergency. What would you want for them to bring to the workspace? In terms of honesty, in terms of the conversation, what are you hoping from them in terms of disclosure, in terms

of how they still, are you looking for them to kind of tough it out? What does that vulnerability kind of look like? ⁓

Monica Anderton (15:44)
Yeah.

I think it's a choice if they're willing to share, that's fine. If they're not, that's fine too. You know, it's hard for us as leaders of people to react if we don't understand what's going on. What I would certainly not want to happen is they don't show up and they lose their jobs. And that happens sometimes, right? They just get at an inflection point and they think we can't be flexible. I think the most that I would ask or what I would wish for is that transparency and that honesty because I think we can always find a way.

Max Tedaldi (16:01)
Yeah.

Monica Anderton (16:14)
And I think people are willing to donate vacation days and other things. I think you know we've got leaves I think there's so much more flexibility nowadays, but it's that transparency and maybe you don't have to give me all your personal business, but like talk to me about what's going on because in Manufacturing you know safety first safety first if you're worried about your son or your daughter your parent Who's sick you are not focused on the task at hand and are you working safely right?

Max Tedaldi (16:19)
Yeah.

Monica Anderton (16:44)
And sometimes when you dive a work accident and you go back, there's something else that was distracting them that they were rushing or they were not mind on task. And life bleeds into your day job and we need to be cognizant of that, right?

Max Tedaldi (16:52)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, that I think is, you know, a commonality among all parents, right? When something is happening at home, you can't help your brain, your brain is still there. And I try to think about what that must be like, you know, in the manufacturing industry. And that, that...

Sounds like it absolutely presents safety issues, right? And so I totally understand that in terms of the honesty there and being able to disclose what's happening, right? You can't help what you don't know about. ⁓ So always leading with honesty, I think is a great perspective. I want to ask you a difficult question. If you're up for a fastball.

I'm curious about the most difficult day that you had, both as an employee and as a parent. If it's a combination of the two or if it's just one, that's fine.

Monica Anderton (18:00)
I, gosh, there's lots of different things that have happened, but I'll tell you one that kind of sticks out. ⁓ My daughter in her senior year of high school,

Max Tedaldi (18:06)
Mm-hmm.

Monica Anderton (18:10)
is a volleyball or was a volleyball player and got a D1 scholarship to play volleyball. So she was very, very good. And they were in the the the the Journey for the State Championship, right? And it's a bunch of games that you lead up to. And I had told my boss and I travel a lot with the job. I'm going to try and be at every one of her games like I need. This is the last year. This is the last time. And I literally they they were in like round two of the play.

Max Tedaldi (18:16)
Yeah.

Okay.

Monica Anderton (18:40)
I literally had landed.

at like three. I mean, I left wherever I was. I got into town. I made it to the gym. I was going 100 miles an hour. I'm sitting in the top of the gym, kind of watching the game. The game starts. My husband came running in the door, right? This is life with kids, like trying to make it to their sporting events. And she had a catastrophic accident. Somebody ⁓ she had gone up to, and this is very freaky and weird and not normal, had gone up to ⁓ hit a ball. And a girl in volleyball, there's a net and there's a

Max Tedaldi (18:57)
Yeah.

Monica Anderton (19:14)
the girl on the other side of the court stepped over the line massively and you're not allowed to do that and when Chloe came down from like a vertical 10-foot jump you know hitting a ball very hard she hit her leg fell on the floor

Max Tedaldi (19:21)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Bye.

Monica Anderton (19:29)
And it was catastrophic. She had a compound fracture of her leg immediately. And all I know is the coach got out to the floor. It was very quiet. She went to a Catholic high school. We were playing a Catholic high school. Some very great people. Not that they're Catholic. Just it was just good people. And the coach is looking at me like, you need to come here now. And usually when they're hurt, you just sit there, right? You you just kind of plow through. And she was like.

Max Tedaldi (19:47)
Yeah, yeah. ⁓

Yeah.

Monica Anderton (19:57)
you know, and everybody's looking at me and John's looking at me and we go down. Anyhow.

Max Tedaldi (19:58)
Bye.

Monica Anderton (20:02)
We go into the office and the coach said, it's really bad. Even though this is really gory, the bone wasn't sticking out of the leg. You could tell immediately that the leg was in bad shape. And I, this child of mine has been working since middle school in the high school. She played, you know, high school volleyball. played off season club, lot of millions of hours. And I thought, my goodness, you know, the principal's there, the athletic coach is there, you know, the entire

Max Tedaldi (20:10)
Yeah.

Monica Anderton (20:32)
community was there for us. We get her in an ambulance. They're already calling the trauma center. They're calling another hospital in Atlanta where we have an orthopedic doctor that the school is associated with. That doctor called the hospital. She ended up at a trauma one hospital. But the thing was that that community support was incredible. Well, at the same time, my work support was incredible. They were just like, we, you know, take all the time you need. What can we do? How can we help? Or what's going on?

And

I think it's in those moments, you know you have a wonderful support system and you know that you work for people that care because hopefully you're in environments that resonate and are a caring culture. But it's when major things like that happen that the community comes together that it kind of shines through. And it was the school community, it was my work community. She was fine, it was traumatic. She has a titanium leg.

Incredible the principal the athletic coach, know my boss and they were all coming to the hospital because she of course had surgery the very next morning at Krakatown to put this thing in

And the hardest thing for us was how do we call the college that offered her a scholarship? Because I thought, my gosh, all these years, she's going to lose this dream. And the coach, here we go again, right? Wonderful person said, can you just send us the x-rays? They were clean breaks. And he just said, we're fine. We'll see her in the summer. We'll see her. And so it's a weird story. And it was very traumatic. And there were a lot of other bumpy stories along the way.

Max Tedaldi (21:58)
Okay. Yeah, you can. Love it. Love it.

Monica Anderton (22:09)
but that one was just school back to family to support systems. Sometimes it's not maybe your direct family, but it's your friend, it's your schools, it's your work. They're all part of your community and sometimes they're all helping you raise your kids.

Max Tedaldi (22:21)
Yeah.

Yeah, and I'm curious in that moment, right? Obviously you're focused on what's happening to your daughter. Do you feel torn? Do you feel like you are in the back of your mind?

thinking like, yes, I'm so glad that I'm here for my daughter, but like, what's happening at work? Am I going to miss, know, are there meetings I'm gonna miss? Are there people that are going to miss me? I feel like most people I think have a little panic in that moment of just feeling torn in two directions. Yeah.

Monica Anderton (22:45)
Yeah.

Yeah.

It's guilt. You feel guilty, right?

And then, you know, I think in a world that you weren't totally comfortable, you might think, my gosh, I'm going to lose my job, right? It's everything. And, you know, I was in a pretty big job. I'm an executive and, you know, I have a lot of people responsibility for me. So it's that balance of right now in this moment, my child needs me and my boss is saying, focus on your child and we've got you. And I had a team that said, focus on your child. We've got you and you don't come back if you don't need to for a week or two.

because we had to do PT and she had to, you know, it was just a whole bunch of stuff. It was a long recovery, but it was, I think it's a panic and it's okay to be not okay. You know, I've said that so much since COVID. It is okay to not be okay and it's okay to meet people where they're at, but I think it's that active dialogue. And no, we're not licensed medical professionals, but listen, I can get you one. I can get you somebody that can help you. And I have a benefits platform that if you got an issue, I think

Max Tedaldi (23:29)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Monica Anderton (23:52)
I could refer you to someone. So ask us for the help because I can't help you if I don't know but I certainly once again don't want you out there working on equipment or doing a very you know intense job and hurt yourself because you're so distracted worrying about whatever is that's going on.

Max Tedaldi (24:04)
Yes. Yeah.

Yeah.

I love that. Well, Monica, thank you so much for joining us. We had a blast with you. I think my biggest takeaway for HR leaders and employees listening is that flexibility looks different in different industries. But I think that if you are looking, you will always find people that are interested in doing the right thing and people that are interested in supporting you. And so the only way that they can help you is by having a conversation and leading with honesty. So thank you guys all so much for

listening and let's get back to work.