Partner Article

ACAS outlines antenatal and adoption leave rights

Every year the non-departmental public body receives roughly 39,000 calls from concerned employers and employees about parental leave guidance and issues. Due to this, ACAS have recently published a new guide explaining in detail antenatal and adoption leave rights for employees.

Pregnant staff are now also entitled to time off for antenatal appointments. Many employers are yet to be aware of the new leave rights introduced in October 2014 for surrogates, adopters and partners. ACAS has also published a guide on surrogacy explaining how employees could qualify for leave rights and pay.

The new parental leave guide published by ACAS includes tips that both employers and employee taking leave should be aware of when filing for a leave request:

Employees looking to adopt a child are entitled to paid leave. The main adopter is entitled to take paid leave of up to 5 appointments and their partner is entitled to unpaid leave of up to 2 appointments. Time off for each appointment is capped at six and a half hours for employees. Fathers, Partners and civil partners of the pregnant employee are entitled to unpaid leave to attend two antenatal appointments. Pregnant employees are entitled to paid time off for antenatal care. Women having their first baby can have up to 10 antenatal appointments, but will need to show documentation confirming their appointments.

Employees seeking parental leave should give 21 days’ notice to the employer; this may need to be in writing. To take parental leave after a birth or adoption, employees should give 21 days notice before the beginning of the expected week.

Many employers are unaware that they may be following out of date practice. Policies should be checked and updated in line with new laws and employment legislation. HR4UK’s online HR employment system is designed to help businesses keep on top of their people management policies. This is the UK’s first and only cloud based employer HR system that keeps all contracts up to date 24/7, backed up on a secure server, so that employers never have to worry about losing important data or contracts.

It has been recorded that businesses can cut down on HR and employment costs by up to 80% with the online personnel system. Additionally, the system provides an audit trail that will act as evidence to show that businesses have fulfilled their employer obligations under the Workplace Pension laws; eliminating the risks companies can face from the many ways in which an employee can make an Employment Tribunal claim against them.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Peter Abraham .