Shared parental leave – great idea or just another administrative headache and potential for discrimination claims?Interesting article from Personnel Today about shared parental leave that comes into force April next year.
vivoHR applaud the ideal of allowing families to care for their young child in whatever way works best for them but yet again we find ourselves with the potential for employers being unable to do right for fear of doing wrong!
Those who are generous enough to offer enhanced maternity pay may face discrimination claims if they don’t offer the same to fathers who are taking the shared parental leave option.
The argument appears to be that the simple option is therefore to just offer that same enhanced pay to mums & dads taking shared parental leave…but that doesn’t take into account the potential cost of doing so.
So – will companies just remove enhanced maternity pay benefits in order to avoid any problems?
Although given the very low take up of the current extended paternity leave rights maybe this isn’t actually a major concern?
We’ll keep an eye out for more guidelines & what companies are opting to do over the next year in preparation for the implementation date.