Parents’ pay rise ends gap
Companies are giving pay rises to entice mums back to work. Madison Reidy reports.
possible knew about the test. They will certainly be lo9oking to avoid the red faces from last month when messages accompanied by the loud alarm were sent out at 1.32am, 1.33am and 1.49am to some unsuspecting mobile phone users after Civil Defence’s Europebased provider went live rather than working in a ‘‘test lab environment’’.
Stuart-Black said the alert would be triggered inside the 6pm to 7pm window but after a warning on the nightly news new to ensure maximum awareness.
‘‘We’ve also promoted the alert
Yesterday’s volcanic alert was issued after recent fine weather allowed GeoNet to take readings over Mt Ruapehu. The carbon dioxide emission rate on Thursday was 2290 tonnes per day — one of the largest values recorded in recent years.
The lake temperature was 37 degrees Celcius, which was near the top of its usual range. Volcanic seismic tremor remained at moderate levels.
‘‘This is something that happens every few years, we get higher temperatures and higher gas concentrations, but it’s been sustained for a certain amount of time so we thought we would inform the public,’’ duty volcanologist Tony Hurst said.
‘‘It’s reasonably likely it will settle down soon.’’ AN automatic pay rise for mothers taking maternity leave is not a pregnancy pay out, firms taking the initiative say.
Aecom managing director Craig Davidson said fairness and equality had driven the engineering firm to give meritbased pay increases to mothers taking maternity leave since it was ‘‘surprised, shocked and disappointed’’ to find it had a gender pay gap among its staff three years ago.
The offer was open to all staff taking parental leave, he said.
It is one of many moves companies are making to rally parents back to work.
Z Energy general counsel Meredith Ussher noticed a gap in motherhood support when she returned to work as a part-time executive in 2015, a year after having her daughter.
Z gave her a return to work bonus equivalent to one month’s full-time pay, an initiative the company has to help parents feed an extra mouth, she said.
The fuel company now gives mentoring support to returning parents and offers part-time and flexible working options. ‘‘When you come back, it is hard… Your confidence takes a hit.’’
When mothers take maternity leave or fathers take parental leave, Z keeps them in the loop for an annual salary review and they remain eligible for bonuses.
Diversity Works chief executive Bev Cassidy-Mackenzie said six months ago, no working parents would have seen salary reviews while on leave.
‘‘Now organisations understand that talent is important… While staff are on parental leave, men and women, they make available to them salary reviews. So their salary does not stay where it is.’’
The Sustainable Business Council recommends companies automatically give an annual budgeted pay rise to parents taking leave, to avoid women’s pay falling behind when they are away.
Westpac has taken the message on board, giving an automatic annual budgeted pay rise to staff taking parental leave.
But Cassidy-Mackenzie said her organisation would not recommend automatic pay rises to parents because it made equal pay a ‘‘compliance issue’’. Giving continuous salary reviews was a better move as it kept parents involved in the company, and for companies to be diverse and inclusive, they needed to change their behaviour not just meet targets, she said.
Another strategy to reduce the gender pay gap for mothers was continuing Kiwisaver payments for mothers on maternity leave, she said.
Aecom also accrues mothers’ annual leave while they took maternity leave and offers 20 weeks of paid parental leave, two weeks more than the mandatory 18 weeks. When the Government progressively increases that leave period to 26 weeks in 2020, Aecom will still offer an extra two weeks, Davidson said.
‘‘I think there is a degree of catch-up and recognition of value that paid parental leave provides.’’
He didn’t think the Government policy lessened the initiatives in place at some workplaces. ‘‘We did not do it for glory … It is the right thing to do.’’
Cassidy-Mackenzie said the new Government policy would mostly benefit mothers working for small to medium enterprises.
‘‘There are still quite a few organisations that have not got this far. It will be a godsend to some employees in smaller businesses.’’
She disagreed that smaller companies were not offering the same parental pay initiatives as larger corporations because they could not afford it. ‘‘I do not think it is an affordability thing, it is an awareness thing. SMEs are too busy working in the business, not on the business.’’
Cassidy-Mackenzie said the way an organisation supported a mother out of work was just as important as the incentives to bring them back. ‘‘On-ramping and off-ramping are both very important… So it is not just a cold, hard door behind you and a, ‘see you in nine or 12 months’.’’
Ussher said staff with children brought beneficial skills to their job, such as time management and resilience.
‘‘We do not treat parents any differently … They are just as valuable an employee as they were when they took leave.’’