Groundbreaking Aviva policy will create an inclusive culture
AVIVA employees expecting babies must feel like Christmas has come early. The insurance company recently announced a new group-wide policy that gives all employees the same amount of paid parental leave, regardless of gender, sexual orientation or how they became a parent (birth, adoption or surrogacy).
Employees will get 26 weeks’ full basic pay with no eligibility criteria relating to service length or earnings threshold.
If both parents work at Aviva, both will get the entitlement and they can take it at the same time.
The new policy was announced as part of Aviva’s strategy to create a diverse and inclusive working culture in which barriers to career progression are removed.
Mark Wilson, group chief executive officer, said: “I want to live in a world where the only criteria for success is someone’s talent, not their gender. Treating parents equally will make this happen.
“We want Aviva to be a progressive, inclusive, welcoming place to work. It’s good for our people and it’s also good business sense.” I’m impressed. Really impressed. Shared parental leave was introduced in April 2015.
It entitles men and women to split pay and leave following the birth of a child.
The mother must take the first two weeks to recover from the birth but thereafter the remaining 37 weeks of pay and 50 weeks of leave can be shared between the parents as they see fit.
However, the take-up has been very low.
Research by a commercial law firm EMW Law published in September this year, reported that in the year to March 2017 only 8,700 parents took shared parental leave.
In other words, it is still women who are taking time off after a baby is born.
There are lots of reasons for this.
Women want to have time off with their babies after they are born. In most discussions I’ve had with women, whether in a social or professional capacity, about shared parental leave, at least one woman has always commented that there is no way on Earth she is sharing any leave with her partner because she wants this time herself.
Culturally, it is still far more acceptable for women to take time out of their careers to raise children. Watch the comedy Motherland on BBC Two to see how men looking after children are generally viewed.
But by far the biggest reason is finances. Women often earn less in the first place, so their salary is the easiest for a family to forgo.
But additionally and significantly, companies have traditionally offered enhanced maternity pay to women but not to men.
This benefit for women, which on the face of it is a good thing, has operated to reinforce the stereotype that it is women who look after babies and not men.
Which in turn reinforces making it culturally more acceptable for women to take time off than men.
Aviva has around 30,000 employees worldwide and their new policy is going to make a difference.
The availability of paid leave for men will, not surprisingly, increase the number of men who take it.
And the more men we see pushing prams around playgrounds and parking them up outside coffee shops, the more this will become part of our culture, just as it is in Scandinavian countries, which have a longer history of paid leave for fathers.
The impact will be greater if other large employers follow Aviva’s example. And they should.
Anyone wanting a career in insurance and also a family at some point must surely be putting Aviva at the top of the list of companies they would like to work for.
In any event, companies which only offer enhanced maternity pay for women should reconsider this.
Since shared parental leave was introduced, my advice to employers has been to either offer enhanced pay to all parents or offer it to none, as offering it to women only would be discriminatory.
There have been some conflicting Employment Tribunal decisions on this, but this month the Employment Appeal Tribunal will hear the case of Ali v Capital Customer Management, concerning a new father who was only allowed to take two weeks’ leave on full pay when female staff were entitled to 14 weeks’ enhanced leave.
I anticipate that the EAT will uphold the Employment Tribunal’s decision that the arrangement was indeed discriminatory.
Other large employers offering enhanced maternity pay but not parental leave may want to follow Aviva’s example and give their employees an early Christmas present now.
Bethan Darwin is a partner with law firm Thompson Darwin.