Shared parental leave

[gebs]

Hello, apologies if this is in the wrong topic, but wondered if anyone had any experiences of shared leave? Basically I was planning on having the full year off, but my husband had suggested taking 50 weeks so he can have an extra two weeks off straight after his paternity leave to have a total of 4 weeks off at the beginning together. When I mentioned this to my employer they said this wasn't possible to both be off at the same time, however when trying to arrange his pat leave, his policy suggests you can take shared leave at the same time as my mat leave? I didn't question my employer at the time, but I'm planning to speak to hr tomorrow. I just wondered if anyone had done anything similar and could share experiences? Tia!

I’ve not done it but your employers are wrong. You can both be off at the same time.

Yeh im certain you can have it off at the same time

I've just started maternity leave and I checked the parental leave policy before I left and yes you can definitely both take time together by reducing your overall 52 weeks.

Yep you can definitely be off at the same time. Me and my DH did exactly what you're planning. I was the first in my organisation to request it and HR didn't have a clue what they were doing and I got the same response as you. I got some good resources on the ACAS website to educate them!

This is reassuring, thank you for the replies! I really hope we can sort it out and have a chunk of time off together like we want 🙂

My husband and I were off together for three whole months so you definitely can be. However, there may an issue around rates of pay which might be confusing them. I think some (most?) employers say that both parents cannot both receive the initial high rate of pay, therefore they might interpret this as you can’t both be off together at the start. I was the first person at my work to take it and only a handful had at his, so I think employers are still finding their feet.

That's good to hear, I actually rang the person in hr I had been dealing with and they were pretty adamant that we couldn't be off together still, but I explained what I'd seen online and in my dh's toolkit and to be fair to her, she said she'd do some research into it as well, I sent the gov links and my dh's policy so we'll see what they say later in the week. It's quite a large company so I am surprised no one has done shared leave before.

If it's the money side that is the issue then I'm not expecting it to be paid (as my last three months are unpaid, so giving two of those weeks to my dh would be unpaid anyway?) but I genuinely think no one has made the request before which is the issue. Hopefully it's not been left to late to sort out because of being misinformed when I first inquired.

I wrote my company's shared parental leave policy and I'd still have to research it if someone put in a request! It was fairly complicated compared to mat leave etc. We haven't had anyone use it yet. I'm sure once they've looked into it properly they'll be able to give you the right info.

Don't forget you will accrue holiday while you're off (unless a teacher whereby it works differently I think), so worth finding out how your company deals with that. We have people tagging on paid holiday leave before they come back to work to either extend their leave or reduce the amount they take unpaid.

I work in HR and you can definitely do this. It’s fairly complex to understand from an admin point of view so this is probably why they are not clear but do pursue with your employer.

Your leave would cease after 50 weeks but you will no doubt have accrued annual leave.

You can take shared leave at the same time, policy changed in 2015. The issue is some versions of sage payroll cause issues which make it look like you can't. It took me three months to sort this out with our employer, me and the OH both work for the same company so you'd think it would have been simpler. ACAS are just as useless when trying to contact them about it and they initially agreed with my employer but I had done all my research and knew I was right. Got there eventually but it's just a pain. Like you my OH took an additional two weeks, he will also be taking five weeks when I go back to work x

Just in case anyone is interested / has similar issues, my hr came back to me, apologised they'd got it wrong and it's all in the process of being arranged now! I must be the first person in the company since 2015 to have made a shared leave request! Thank you all for your replies x