Parental Leave. Are the rules confusing? Your thoughts please!

[Vickimumsnet]

We've been getting our heads around parental leave in the run-up to this year's Family Friendly awards. It's taken a lot of reading and cross references to make sure we have covered all the entitlements - Ordinary Maternity Leave, Additional Maternity Leave, Ordinary Paternity Leave , Additional Paternity Leave and then Parental Leave and Dependents Leave for emergencies. We think it's all pretty confusing and we would love to know what you think. Was your employer great at explaining what you are entitled to? Do you think it's easy to understand how to share maternity leave? All your thoughts would be really interesting.

Our HR department is split into processes and advice. Those on the process side of things seem to do a really good job. Those on the advice side usually do a good job, but when I went on mat leave they ballsed it up. I sorted out my own printout as they couldn't seem to decide if I got the full lot of pay or not. I read up, argued my case, was granted full pay. Went on ML, didn't get paid. It took ages to get them to admit I had entitlement, then the processes side took over and all my pay got corrected really quickly. They also messed up my annual leave when I came back, again processes side fixed it, but it meant I suddenly had to take off best part of a month just as I was settling back in.

Parental leave however, isn't a problem. They seem to be fairly clued up on that all over. My manager is also happy for me to call in to take annual leave if DD is suddenly ill, so I'm not stuck having to take it unpaid.