EY has long been a proud leader on paid parental leave, offering up to 26 weeks of paid leave for all new parents. But it’s taking a step backwards on its offering by amending its policy to include penalties for team members who take more than 12 weeks of paid leave and then resign within one year of returning to work.
While the employer has the right to make this change, any step backwards in the one key area where Australia has been making real progress on workplace gender equity is disappointing.
The firm, which employs 8,000 staff in Australia, has just announced changes to its paid parental leave that will require employees to repay eight weeks of their paid parental leave if they resign within a year of taking the benefit. The firm is also changing its eligibility requirements, with staff now required to have worked with the firm for at least six months before being eligible.
Staff were informed of the changes via an internal memo sent on Thursday night by the firm’s regional deputy chief executive and Oceania people and culture leader, Jenelle McMaster.
The changes come after years in which large professional services firms like EY and its key competitors, Deloitte, KPMG, PwC, and Accenture, have steadily expanded what they offer new parents. Indeed, Women’s Agenda has long seen our audience respond positively to these incremental enhancements to the paid parental leave scheme, and we’ve seen the PR machinery firms deploy messaging about these kind of enhancements to the wider public.
But these latest changes to a paid parental leave policy that was once celebrated did not come with a press release, at least not to Women’s Agenda.
While EY will still offer up to 26 weeks of leave to all new parents via a policy that goes beyond the majority of Australian employers, the announced penalty signals that it’s willing to forgo a small part of its leadership to ensure employees don’t “game” the system.
It won’t only have a detrimental effect on how it competes for talent, with EY’s family-friendly policies being a key aspect of its recruitment marketing, but it could also impact parents directly. The threat of a penalty could add stress for those who, for whatever reason, struggle to successfully transition back to work after having a child. Further, it could lead to higher rates of “presenteeism” with staff staying in jobs solely to meet the one-year cutoff: a situation that’s bad for everyone, including the bottom line.
But EY says the announced penalty is reasonable given the investments it makes in training and developing staff.
McMaster told staff on Thursday that the intention is to introduce a “clearer structure for parental leave” and one that provides “greater consistency and predictability, while maintaining support for parents.”
The change notes that staff who take at least 12 weeks of paid parental leave and resign voluntarily within a year of returning to work will be “required to repay eight weeks” of that leave.
Last year, we reported men taking more primary carers leave than ever before as a key positive across corporate Australia, with the Workplace Gender Equality Agency reporting a 3 per cent uptick in the rate of men taking this leave, and twenty per cent of all primary/universal parental leave. It’s an achievement (albeit small) that reflects government changes, a cultural shift, and the increasing improvement of policies by large employers like EY to better support parents.
It would be a shame to lose momentum on the aspects of workplace culture that are improving — not just at EY, but at its competitors’ firms and across Australia. So often, these firms set the standard for family-friendly workplaces, and their fight to one-up their competitors can lead to broader outcomes for working parents.