Partner Article

Shared Parental Leave: Majority of companies not enhancing SPL

Shared Parental Leave (SPL) came into force over the weekend, so now couples will be able to share 12 months of leave after the birth of their child. The aim is to help women return to the workplace and allow men to have more involvement in caring for new babies.

One of the main decisions that employers and organisations have to make is what they’re going to do when it comes to pay; either to enhance SPL or not, and if they should change existing provisions for maternity or paternity leave.

In a joint benchmarking study, My Family Care and Workingmums.co.uk collated and compared the maternity, paternity and shared parental leave benefits of 200 companies and organisations in the UK. Completed by HRDs from a whole spectrum of industries, ranging from legal to banking and finance, higher education and retail, the study has revealed that while most (80%) enhance maternity pay, 45% plan to offer enhanced shared parental leave. Similarly, the majority say they are not going to change their maternity or paternity pay rules with the launch of SPL – with 44% of companies coming to this decision based on the knowledge of their staff, without asking for their employees’ thoughts or feedback.

Ben Black, Director of My Family Care, the company that helps businesses introduce family friendly ways of working says: “Some companies see this as an opportunity to enhance Shared Parental Leave and put themselves ahead of their competitors when it comes to benefits. However, many companies are still unsure about what to do and are opting to wait and see what interest they have from their staff. It is also fascinating that so many companies take the ‘carrot and stick approach’ where many impose restrictions in terms of length of service in order to access benefits and have a minimum time back in the workplace or offer bonuses or include provision for childcare costs on return to work.

“This legislation is one of the most ground-breaking legislations to affect working families in recent times and only time will tell how popular it proves to be amongst employers and employees alike. Of all the HRDs we asked, 43% said they have received questions from their employees around SPL showing there is a real appetite to find out more.”

In an analysis of the different sectors, higher education and the public sector are found to be the ‘most generous’. The more traditionally male orientated sectors, especially industrial and manufacturing enhance maternity leave to a lesser extent while service based industries such as legal and banking, which have also been historically seen as less than female friendly, enhance their maternity leave to retain the female talent they’ve invested heavily in. There was a direct correlation between those enhancing SPL with those already committed to maternity and paternity benefit enhancement, namely higher education, public sector, banking and finance, legal, charity and technology and telecoms.

One of the main challenges that companies say they face with the introduction of SPL this month is educating managers and keeping them engaged in supporting their working parents This was closely followed by the issue of communicating the complexity of the legislation to employees.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by My Family Care .