Big firms refuse to publish their parental leave policies: MNHQ's campaign

[AnnaCMumsnet]

As you may know, we launched our Publish Parental Leave campaign encouraging companies to publicly state the maternity, paternity and adoption leave and pay that they offer.

We've now researched all of the FTSE 100 companies and just 23 publish their parental leave policies. In many cases it is easier to find out about the Christmas hampers and kickboxing classes they offer than how many weeks pay and leave you would get if you became a parent. How useful

Many of the FTSE 100 say they offer ‘generous’ policies, but don’t go into any more detail, making it difficult for any one who wants to work for them to make informed decisions about finances and career development.

In a Mumsnet survey, 82% of parents and prospective parents said they are reluctant to ask potential employers about parental leave policies because they worry it would make a job offer less likely.

That's why we're calling on the government to add parental leave and pay policies to gender pay gap reports. How do your companies measure up?

The company I work for have nothing visible outside the company, and finding the policy takes some digging internally - its not in the employee handbook or the document number referenced. But then they only offer absolutely stat minimum ML

Company I work for offers enhanced pay for six months, then it’s SMP for three months and unpaid for three. Same if you share leave. Parental leave for partners is twice weeks on full pay.

We also get flexi working hours and can work from home. But this is dependant on line managers discretion and can vary widely between departments, as some managers are pretty crap.

Should say two weeks.

All of ours is clearly set out in the staff handbook.

@frazzledasarock can you find out the policies before you get the staff handbook, so before you start working at your company? We're encouraging employers to make the information available before you are a fully signed up employee so you can make informed choices about whether or not you want to work there and so you can plan your financial future if you were to change jobs.

Yes, there’s always a hr rep present at interviews. I was actually given a brief outline of the benefits in my second interview including maternity benefits etc.

To be honest I don’t know if they still do this.

The benefits have gotten better since I joined a decade ago.

I work for a University that’s just moved to offer 6 months’ full pay, eligible from day one. There’s also reduced and stat after that.

I used worked for a university 2 years ago who published (and still do) every single one of their parental policies online. It was one of the main reasons I wanted to work for them, to work for a company who was able to support me in my personal and professional decisions, in turn I gave them my all.

Most companies who don't advertise their parental policies I believe do so because they think people will take advantage or take the job and go on maternity as soon as they're eligible for the benefits.

Whilst I think what you're doing is great, I do wonder if you are successful if it will make some employers not want to offer such good packages.

My company offers the minimum on everything. It's not possible to find this out until after accepting a job. It's under 'parent friendly policy ' in the contract, ironically.

I’m pretty sure my company doesn’t make this information available - but I’ll raise it as I think we should.

The government has already announced a consultation about this so I'm not sure how it's a mumsnet campaign

The consultation is about making it mandatory for employers with more than 250 staff to publish their parental pay and leave policies on their websites. Announced several months ago.

Presumably you go to a new company for the job; assume its statutory and then anything else is a bonus once you've already established your role there? You wouldn't just try to (& then he offered) a job just for the maternity/parental/adoption pay? It's a little big term, career based decision.

I remember receiving my contract with the handbook and it included mat pay. At the time, dc were not on horizon but i was pleased to k ow the policy. Should absolutely be easily available.

I work in a predominantly male-occupied profession and my company are trying to actively recruit more women into the role. The initial training and entry costs to the profession are substantially upwards of £100000. Unfortunately they offer only SMP while at the same time not offering a break in the training loans paid by the employee. Our union is attempting to get them to see it is impossible to pay back a £100000-plus loan while taking home only £145 per week. More info here.

My company offers 12 months on full pay and no waiting period, which seems to be a bit more generous than the market consensus - but, to play devil's advocate, I can see why they would be reluctant to publish it.

I requested confirmation of the policy in writing from HR before taking my current job. It felt punchy but I also would have been happy to stay at my previous employer so I wasn’t worried about losing the offer. My firms policy in the US is published on their website but the policy in the UK isn’t (the US arm of the company is substantially larger so the website is very US-centric).

cdn.networkrail.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Family-friendly-policy.pdf

Published under our transparency culture.

Mine is on the Firm’s intranet, but there is no way to find out before you join (unless I assume you specifically ask, which I would have been unwilling to do). This is a global firm, and the policy is fairly generous once you’ve been there a certain number of years, but it was a source of anxiety taking the job, as I knew I wanted to have children and didn’t want to be left high and dry during mat leave!

I am self employed but when I was employed it was only available by asking HR which I wasn't keen to do as I was project-based and worried they wouldn't give me the next big profile project role if they thought I was trying to conceive (which ironically I wasn't, I just wanted to know).

I work for asda in the people department. This information is difficult enough to get once you actually work for them

Along with being banned from discussing salary with your colleagues. Nor can you see their pay bands.

Funny really as they seem quite proud of the gender pay gap decreasing. But dint8really break that down.

Why doesn’t Mumsnet crowdsource maternity leave policies?

I work for a FTSE100 that has just upgraded their mat leave policy to 6 months full pay, four weeks of 80% hours for 100% pay on return, and coaching on return. I’m clearly not going to name my employer on here but would happily contribute to a database of crowdsourced information.

I got a friend who used to work at my company to ask one of her friends about maternity leave policies before I joined. There’s no way I would have asked during the interview process.

I work for a FTSE100 company who don't publish their policy. I was given their policy amongst all the other HR info when I was offered a job, so I could make the decision whether to join them accordingly.

I do worry that they don't publish because the policy is very generous and may not be sustainable going forward, as it is tough within the industry right now.

However I'm not sure that publishing a policy necessarily indicates a good company to work for, there are definitely two companies from the twenty three that are known to treat returning mothers negatively, to the point of legal action.

It is obviously very difficult to provide honest information to prospective employees without getting stuck with libel issues, but websites like Glassdoor are possibly a better way of gauging whether companies are the right places for mothers or not.

Perhaps a better way of looking at this would be to try and find out what percentage of returning mothers are still at the same company a year or two after their return?

In my company you don’t even get the information on the intranet - you have to specifically ask HR for it! It’s so awkward.

wow, I'm honestly amazed by this

Surely people would want to know all this before they even apply? I suppose that's what they are doing - filtering out the candidates who want to know.

I don't have children so the thing I always check is sick pay and care for elderly parents. I don't think I've ever applied anywhere that didn't say this in advance. Very poor.

Mumsnet can you start a campaign to support the pregnancy and maternity bill that is going through parliament at the moment?

The bill is a proposal to make it illegal to make women redundant from the moment they notify employers they are pregnant until 6 months after they return from maternity leave.

I've seen no reference to the bill on Mumsnet which I'm really surprised about. It needs all the public support it can get

I work in HR for one of those 23 that do publish, go us 😂