Shared parental leave and pay

I-W

I understand since April 2015 maternity leave can be shared between parents however is this at same rate of pay?

My company offers very generous maternity leave, 26 weeks full pay but for shared parental leave only two weeks full pay and the rest at 90% or statutory rate (whichever is lower).

Is this legal and normal practice? Seems to go against the principal of shared leave.

DomRavioli

It's perfectly legal - it stated that leave can be shared, not at what rate (SMP is the norm, I think around £130 a week but the gov.uk website will have the exact figures). It is also pretty commonplace, for those who do offer shared leave.

Not sure how it goes against the "principle" of shared leave.

shiny76

Can't say whether it's legal or not. Presumably your employer has had legal/HR advice.

As for normal practice, I'd imagine it's still very common that companies offer enhanced maternity leave but not matching benefits for shared parental leave (SPL).

However, I'm fortunate enough to work for an enlightened employer that offers the same enhanced benefits to men as women for SPL. Therefore my missus is taking the 1st 3 months off (then returning to work) and I'm taking the following 3 months off and then returning to work.

If there was (sexual discrimination) legislation to give fathers the same enhanced pay etc as women then it may work against the new family. Companies could reduce their offers to that that they offer to the fathers.

If you're the mother-to-be you could take advantage of your companys generous benefits and then the father could take SPL after that? If your the father then perhaps take solace in that you are being offered more than a few years ago

jtr2803

It's legal because your company are paying YOU enhanced pay, they have no obligation to pay anyone else that benefit.

Around 92% of smp is recovered by companies from the government so cost implications are minimal when looking at smp.

26 weeks full pay is a massive benefit, I think I'd be grateful for that and worry about using spl for the smp period afterwards.

Kynthia

Both my OH and I work for tge same employer. It's public sector with a generous enhanced maternity pay. Yet they too will only pay SMP if we went on shared parental leave. So if the situation arose we would be worse off until the enhanced pay time period ended.

I think it's a shame there isn't a way of splitting the time off so that we could each cover different days of the week instead of it being all one of us or the other.it can be hard being a home every day yet I didn't feel recovered enough to return full time with a long commute for most of the maternity leave period.

LannieDuck

A number of couples I know have split it so that the woman takes the first section of time off work (with enhanced pay), then the man takes over at ~6 months, when the woman's SMP drops to approx the same as paternity pay.

DrivingMissDaisy

Wouldn't it make sense for you to do 26 weeks at enhanced pay and then him for the rest at standard SMP ? Also, I believe it is legal since the employer is only obliged to pay SMP. Anything over is for staff retention

rpc

DrivingMissDaisy wrote: »

Wouldn't it make sense for you to do 26 weeks at enhanced pay and then him for the rest at standard SMP ? Also, I believe it is legal since the employer is only obliged to pay SMP. Anything over is for staff retention

It is arguably not legal because it indirectly discriminates based on gender.

The problem is that maternity leave is one thing, shared parental leave is another and so you can have two different benefits for the two different types of leave. If both men and women receive the same SPL benefits then that could be perceived as lawful.

It's a fairly murky area, who knows what it will settle down to be.

I-W

Thanks for the replies.

Unfortunately OH is self employed so is only able to claim statutory maternity pay. And also couldn't actually take long off without losing all business (sadly the reality is people won't wait around for 6 months to a year). So in our situation it would have been ideal for me to take an extended time off, unfortunately we can't afford this at statutory rate.

I understand that it's legal as still offered the time off however I thought the whole point of the change in law was to encourage parents to share the leave so the woman wasn't always the one to stay home (with potential career disadvantages). However surely for many parents if the man taking the leave would be a significant financial hardship the woman will still be pressured into taking it?

Not sure what we will do in our situation.

LannieDuck

Agreed with everything you've said. The change in the law has definitely made it easier for parents to share the leave... but it hasn't gone as far as it needs to, as your situation demonstrates.

I'd love to see us get to the point where either parent can choose to take the childcare role without financial penalty. (As a corollary, I think this is also the way to improve equality for women in the workplace.)

onlyroz

We were in a similar position after the birth of my daughter in that I earn more than my husband and it would have been better for him to take the bulk of the parental leave. At the time he wasn't entitled to any more than the basic 10 days.


In the end I took four months maternity leave. I was also allowed to carry over 10 days holiday from the previous year, and my husband was allowed to do the same. After the initial four months we each alternated a week's holiday for the next two months - each using up 10 days of carried over leave and then 10 days of that year's annual leave. Our daughter started nursery at 6 months.


Could you do something like this?


Also, does your partner work from home? Would they be able to keep the business ticking over, e.g. by doing half hours, for a few months - and possibly use a childminder for a few days a week to enable this?