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?

My company offer the statutory minimum. They are constantly trying to get Best Companies status and encouraging us to fill in the survey. Every year I complete it and mention their derisory maternity offer but nothing ever changes. My 'babies' are at high school now but I'll never give up.

As pinegreen says, ask forums posters to provide details of the policies of the companies they work for. Then rank them publicly - that'll bring publicity and likely improve them.

The company I work for has a poor parental leave policy and absolutely refused flexible hours despite saying publicly (to new staff via their recruitment website) they were very flexible.

We need a website that publishes leave policies and that allows employees to discuss and review their leave experiences with that employer.

Namechanged for this but here is my company's

www2.deloitte.com/uk/en/pages/careers/articles/family-friendly-policies-professional.html#

I work in a professional services firm in London and they're so behind the times in terms of parental leave - maternity leave, in particular. I scheduled a meeting with our HR to ask what they're going to do about it. They asked me to put together a matrix of what other companies offer. I was able to get some information from friends and contacts as to what their company offers them, however, it was very hard to do a desktop study looking at top FTSE 100 companies. However, I did manage quite a large example of companies.

My company offers 6 weeks at 90% and then SMP for 26 weeks, with the last 3 months of the year unpaid, which is still in the dark ages. They already have a problem with retaining and attracting top female talent, which is one of their top priorities, but ridiculous maternity leave policy and pay such as our current rate will do nothing to impact on this.

Within my team, I've had so many women leave purely down to this policy - other companies attract better parental policies and pay. We have yet to get into the 21st century, however, we're top of our industry in other ways. Just shows what they prioritise.

My company don't publish it anywhere online. But it's crap - 6 months full pay if you've been an employee for two years and RTW after that period, OR just your statutory entitlement if you want to take more than 6 months mat leave! Most people want to take more than 6 months maternity leave so it's not a popular option anyway.

@Pogmella is your uni in the South West?

I work for a medium multinational and I didn't know the maternity policies before I joined, and no way would I have painted a big ' baby maker' sign on my back by asking in interview. I fully support this Mumsnet campaign. I also support a PP suggestion that MN should campaign around this with the Pregnancy and Maternity Bill (which focuses on making it illegal to make a woman redundant when she's pregnant, but could also make it mandatory for companies to publish their mat policies). Can this be posted in the very busy Feminism Chat (Women's Rights) board? This would get loads of traffic there I reckon.

The company I work for has been very vocal about their parental leave in the media, 14 weeks. Maternity is industry standard.

I have just recently gone through this when starting a new job. My previous company had a very generous maternity package so I was a bit worried about leaving that.

Turns out I get 6 months full pay in my new role followed by 3 months SMP, which is fine. I would, however, have liked to know that before. I would never have asked in my interview as surely that screams ‘I’m going to bugger off for a year’.

Fully support this campaign and think this info should be freely available!

Hi, MNHQ here

We wanted to update you on our Publish Parental leave campaign. We've now written to all 77 FTSE100 companies who don't currently publish their parental leave policies publicly.

Eight (including M&S, Barratt Homes, National Grid and Sainsbury's) have said they'll actively review their policies, and two (ITV and LandSec) have committed to publishing in the near future.

This is a really fab result from just one set of emails (don't worry, we're going to be following up with those who've been non-committal too...).

We've also been tweeting them too so do follow us on @MumsnetTowers if you'd like.

And, if your companies don't currently publish their parental leave policies then you might like to encourage them to do so. You can send them more details about the campaign. It really is a small cost-free change they can make to support working parents and parents-to-be.

Thanks