Paternity leave - how did your employer react?

NoreenOMS

HI, my husband returned to work last week after 4 months paternity leave- I took off the first 22 weeks. We were worried what the reaction would be when he announced his plans to his work, as he was going to be the first father to do this in his firm- but the response was very positive and they were very supportive.

onlyroz

Sparrow - I agree that it is hard to live off SMP when you are used to earning a large salary. However, that is irrelevant to this discussion. A couple will decide between themselves who should take the bulk of the parental leave, and cut in salary, when they have a child - that might be the mum and it might be the dad. This thread is about how a company "copes" when it is the dad that chooses to do this.

You cannot say that a dad earning £100k will *never* want to take extended paternity leave, and companies need to have contingency plans in place to cope with this eventuality. Brushing it off and saying that it'll never happen is just not good enough.

moniuhna

I am 17 weeks pregnant and have been wondering with my husband how to organise our first year after the baby is born. As we earn pretty much equal amounts, it makes sense to us to share the leave (so I would take first 6 months and he would take the following ones).

When my husband told his HR (a large, international IT company) about our plan, they were very surprised and replied that it's impossible as it is WOMEN who have maternity leave, and he can only take 2 weeks and MAYBE around month from his holiday entitlement. They also said something like: "Imagine if every dad dad wanted to take so many months leave for the baby, how would this business look like?" :shocked:

I told him to show an article from direct.gov about additional paternity leave and when he did it the HR manager was very baffled and said: "I don't know if we support that, I have to ask our director". It's been a while ago and he still hasn't got any answer...

My question is: CAN they just say that they don't support this?? Is that even legal? It's an American company but my husband works in London so I think UK laws apply to him, right?

onlyroz

moniuhna wrote: »

I told him to show an article from direct.gov about additional paternity leave and when he did it the HR manager was very baffled and said: "I don't know if we support that, I have to ask our director". It's been a while ago and he still hasn't got any answer...

My question is: CAN they just say that they don't support this?? Is that even legal? It's an American company but my husband works in London so I think UK laws apply to him, right?

I think this is the law - and I'm surprised that the company hasn't heard about the change. This is the sort of thing that HR staff would have gone on courses about. I used to work for a large US software company, and I know that the HR staff were kept up-to-date with changes in legislation. In fact it was the HR dept that told me they had to carry on paying my childcare vouchers - I would have been none-the-wiser.

http://www.maternityaction.org.uk/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/additionalpaternityleaveandpay.pdf

TheConways

I'm pretty surprised a large company doesn't have procedures in place to monitor and enact this sort of legislation.

I would get your husband to request the details for the person responsible for parental leave - they should have someone managing this. You have a right to it, assuming your husband is an employee (ie, he's not self-employed, as occasionally happens in IT companies).

To answer the question, "will he be looked less favourably on for promotion" - my colleague had four months paternity leave, and soon secured an early promotion. If he manages his time well, and focuses on quality of work, not quantity of hours, It should not affect any career prospects (assuming you don't work for dinosaurs)

Taadaa

My DH works for a government department.

He informed his line manager that he would be taking his two weeks paternity leave and two weeks from his annual leave entitlement after the birth (EDD 24th Oct).

His line manager was baffled. 'Why do YOU get paternity leave? You aren't having a baby!' DH said 'Well actually, we are legally entitled to request a swap after a certain time period if we want to, so I will be taking it!'

Knobs everywhere apparently.

lostinrates

onlyroz wrote: »

I think this is the law - and I'm surprised that the company hasn't heard about the change. This is the sort of thing that HR staff would have gone on courses about. I used to work for a large US software company, and I know that the HR staff were kept up-to-date with changes in legislation. In fact it was the HR dept that told me they had to carry on paying my childcare vouchers - I would have been none-the-wiser.

http://www.maternityaction.org.uk/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/additionalpaternityleaveandpay.pdf

My husband sworks for the british branch of a us company and we find them shocking at keeping up with hr details and totally inflexible about things like salary sacrifice to pension for tax planning. It just seems to fry their ystem to consider it.