Would additional paternity leave be such a burden for companies?
March 16, 2009
This time last year I wrote about proposals to revolutionise parental leave rights so that fathers would be entitled to take up to 6 months paid additional paternity leave (APL) instead of the mother taking additional maternity leave (Maternity Leave for Men! 25th March 08). I think this legislation is a really important step in family-friendly rights as well as helping to create more equality for women; through the destruction of the myth that employing women will cause later employment problems when they get pregnant and take loads of time off (see Alan Sugar’s famous comments from last year).
Lord Mandelson’s call to postpone any new legislative changes to avoid any further financial burden on companies in the recession means that although this change was due to be introduced by the end of the current parliament, it looks like it might not happen at all or for a long time if Lord Mandelson’s recommendation is adopted.
I’ve just been reading an article in which the pros and cons of introducing the change are examined, and I may be being naive, but some of the comments about why it would be difficult to manage the new laws in organisations seem a little unreasonable if not completely unfounded.
The first difficulty raised in the article is the need to gain confirmation from the mother’s employer that she is returning to work at the end of ordinary maternity leave so that the father can take over the allocated additional leave, and perhaps this would add another level of administration; but would it be that much more that it justifies not having the provision at all? Surely it’s a matter of a few template letters and forms that are sent out by a certain date, and if the other employer does not confirm within a scheduled timescale (an appropriate amount of time to enable the employer to arrange cover for the father), then the father simply cannot take the leave?
Another argument is that it is likely that people taking paternity leave will take a shorter period that women generally take for maternity leave, which will be harder to find cover for. How is this any different to when people suddenly go off sick for a couple of months; which comes with no warning? Companies manage to cope with this; normally with temporary secondments and other short term cover arrangements, which can actually be really good for the development of other staff if handled well. Again, whilst this may be tricky, I don’t think it’s beyond the realms of possibility that even small companies cannot be creative enough to cope.
I think the most strange comment in the article I was reading was from a (male) HR consultant who said:
“No one is suggesting people don’t take paternity leave, but APL just adds to the weight of the problem. A specialist role could mean knowledge of the company is really important, so just having one person missing can be absolutely critical, and very often complete projects grind to a halt.”
Hmm… doesn’t that apply equally to having one woman missing when she takes maternity leave? The comment above implied that it is only men that hold ‘specialist’ or ‘critical’ positions, and therefore companies that manage to find cover for women would not be able to do so for men. This simply confirms to me the reason we need to be giving men the same parental leave opportunities that women have; so that women can prove they can and have been managing the same career opportunities as men. The more fathers that take additional leave, giving their partners the chance to return to their career; the more women will break the glass ceiling and move into more senior roles, which will lead to even more fathers taking APL because their partners will be the higher earners. And that’s really what this legislation is all about; giving families flexibility to manage their work patterns in the most financially beneficial way, although it stretches way beyond that into equal opportunities and diversity in the workplace as well.
I’m open to alternative arguments on this subject; if you think that changing the law to allow APL will be a nightmare for organisations, get in touch with your views.
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