Maternity leave can become an arms race for organisations competing for great talent.
One law firm offering 12 weeks paid maternity leave? Another will up theirs to 14 weeks. One accounting firm pushing 16 weeks paid leave with a whole bunch of other sweeteners? Another will go to 18 weeks and throw in a nanny for when you return to work too.*
But one company has taken the arms race to a whole new level.
While improving employment incentives for women, Aurizon is putting the focus on its male employees.
The rail-based transport service is offering new incentives designed to encourage men to take on responsibilities as the primary parent at home.
Its new ‘Shared Care’ program offers ‘half-pay’ for a partner to take leave to stay at home and care for a child in its first year, allowing the mother to return to full-time work. To access the program, male employees need to take 13 weeks leave during their child’s first 12 months, while their partner returns to full time work. He could also take a 50% salary to take on care for 26 weeks.
Meanwhile, female Aurizon employees who return to full time work in the first year after her child is born, and who have a partner whose taken on full time care of their child in that period (and takes leave without pay from his employer to do so) will receive 150% of her salary, also up to a maximum of 26 weeks.
The package can by accessed if one or both parents of the child are Aurizon employees, and covers all families including same sex couples and single parents.
According to Aurizon managing partner Lance Hockridge, it comes after thinking of ‘out of the box’ ways to push the dynamics on childcare in Australia. “At its core this is really about reducing the potential career and financial impacts women face after extended unpaid parental leave and subsequent part-time employment,” he said.
He believes the program is the first of its kind in Australia, and we can’t think of many employers who are offering anything like it. It’s a game-changer, an initiative that will really change the conversation parents have regarding who will go back to work and when.
It’s also a particularly attractive policy for new recruits.
Policies that aim to equalise sharing responsibilities will ultimately help more women stay in the workforce and on the leadership track. They help to remove some of the added obstacles women face in their careers.
As Julie McKay points out today, women spend an average 311 minutes each day on unpaid work compared to the 172 minutes spent by men.
It seems much of the discrepancy comes after having children. When you take six to 12 months off work after having a child, as many mothers do, certain tasks that become routine during this period can continue to be part of your routine once you return to work. In short, you can get very good at managing unpaid, necessary tasks when you’re at home alone with tiny people to feed, dress and entertain.
Giving more men the opportunity to take some months off immediately after having a child could see such unpaid work more evenly distributed for years to come.
But offering such policies will only be as good as how well we can encourage men to use them.
As Prue Gilbert recently pointed out, one in four men say they’ve been discriminated against for taking paid parental leave. She also highlights one study that found 59% of working dads would choose part time work if they could still retain a meaningful career, but 36% also believed their leaders would look down on them.
Gilbert suggests that more workplaces should set targets for men taking meaningful parental leave. Offering them great incentives to do so, like Aurizon’s example, would help in seeing those targets reached. But ultimately leadership is needed to end the stigma associated with who gets to use such policies.
Being a parent is a shared responsibility. It should also be an opportunity both men and women get to pursue.