Rethinking how your organisation supports new parents

Robert Shore: Hello, and welcome to the Brightmine podcast, formerly known as the
XpertHR podcast. Brightmine is a leading provider of people data, analytics and insight, offering employment law expertise, comprehensive HR resources and reward data to meet every HR and organisational challenge and opportunity. You can find us any time of the day or night at www.brightmine.com.

Hello everyone. My name is Robert Shore, and today we’re going to be talking about parental leave. To do this, I am joined by Zeba Sayed, senior legal editor here at Brightmine. Hello Zeba.

Zeba Sayed: Hi Robert.

Robert Shore: And Becs Peedell, an in-house employment lawyer at law firm Lewis
Silkin. Hello, Becs.

Rebecca Peedell: Hello.

Robert Shore: And I should say straight away that we’re going to be discussing in detail a vanguard policy introduced by Lewis Silkin for its own staff recently.

But parental leave and pay generally is quite a complicated area and it causes a lot of frustration to a lot of people. And of course the Government has recently launched what it is terming ‘a landmark review’. So this is an area in which you might expect some statutory change in the near future possibly.

But Zeba, let’s start with where we are the moment, if we can. So, what statutory leave rights do new mothers and their partners have at the current time?

Zeba Sayed: So at the moment, all employed mothers can take up to 52 weeks of maternity leave. So for the first six weeks that’s paid at 90% of average weekly earnings, and after that it goes down to the statutory rate for the next 33 weeks, which is around £190 a week, or 90% of average earnings if that’s lower.

Fathers or partners can take one or two weeks of paternity leave, but only if they’ve been employed for at least 26 weeks by the fifteenth week before the due date. So it’s fairly derisory in comparison. You don’t get your full salary during those two weeks of paternity leave; the pay is at the same statutory rate or 90% of average earnings if
that’s lower.

Then there’s shared parental leave, which allows a mother to end their maternity leave early and share the remaining weeks of leave with a partner. This leave was introduced back in 2015. In terms of policy, it looked set to be quite revolutionary. However, the rules around eligibility and notice periods are very complex. There’s been
low take-up of shared parental leave, and I think it’s fair to say that it’s barely made a dent in changing the way that care is divided.

Robert Shore: Yeah. So quite complicated and fairly unsatisfactory. How does the UK system compare with other countries?

Zeba Sayed: So we have a really handy global comparative table on our website. This shows how paternity leave and parental leave stacks up against other countries. In Austria, for example, fathers and partners are entitled to one month of paternity leave; in France and Portugal, 28 days; and in Spain, 19 weeks. Some countries don’t offer paternity leave at all, and others offer parental leave instead of paternity leave.

Earlier this year, the Women and Equalities Committee published a report, which essentially said that statutory paternity leave in the UK is one of the worst offerings in Europe.

Personally, I feel it’s an outdated policy. It doesn’t really reflect how most families want to share care. And sadly it also reinforces gender stereotypes about who should be taking time off.

Robert Shore: Okay. So the Government, as I said, has launched a review of parental leave and pay. So it is generally acknowledged that the current arrangements are a bit unsatisfactory. What aspects of parental leave are likely to change, and when? What are the exact dates?

Zeba Sayed: Yeah. So on 1 July the Government launched a full review of familyrelated leave. They also ran a call for evidence to feed into that review, and that closed on 25 August. The review itself is expected to run for 18 months, which means that we’re unlikely to see the conclusions or any roadmap for reform until 2027.

I should point out that the Employment Rights Bill makes some small changes to family-related leave. The bill makes paternity leave and parental leave a day-one right. We expect those measures to come into effect in April 2026. We will also see a wider right to statutory bereavement leave, and there are some other changes that are promised for maternity returners and changes to flexible working requests too. But in terms of leave itself, I suppose it’s this really slow approach to reform that’s prompting organisations to take matters into their own hands, because ultimately people want change and generally expectations are a lot higher.

Robert Shore: Okay. Brilliant. So that’s set out the current situation and current expectations of what’s to change. Now let’s bring in Becs and Lewis Silkin because we have this vanguard policy. Lewis Silkin has sketched out its own path, hasn’t it, in this area by developing an equalised new parent leave policy? So Becs, can I ask you in the first place what motivated this initiative?

Rebecca Peedell: Yes, sure. The idea came from Lewis Silkin’s gender group, which is one of our several DEI groups. They asked the question why all new parents shouldn’t get the same leave and pay at Lewis Silkin regardless of gender, and I think that got a lot of us thinking. And where we kept coming back to was that actually, ‘How are attitudes about who should be doing the parenting going to change unless we go for full equality?’ So even a generous enhanced paternity leave and pay scheme still perpetuates that idea that the father or the partner’s role is as a secondary parent, if it isn’t an equal scheme. Changing views of those traditional gendered parenting roles was something we really wanted to contribute to. I think, you know, it’s an all-too-familiar story to those working in the legal sector, and I’m sure other professional services sectors too, that when mums become parents their careers sadly can stop progressing, and that means losing the skills of some great people. And we would really love to see that change.

Robert Shore: Was it easy, though, to get buy-in for…I mean, I’m sure most people would nod along to that but nonetheless, was it easy to get buy-in for this from all stakeholders?

Rebecca Peedell: Well, I think the elephant in the room with this topic is very much the cost of this.

Robert Shore: That is what I was thinking!

Rebecca Peedell: Absolutely. That’s front and centre. That’s one of the first things people typically ask me about when I talk about Lewis Silkin’s policy. And I know you want to come back to the costings a bit later so I won’t go into that in too much detail now. But what I will say here is that we were really lucky at Lewis Silkin because our stakeholders readily bought into this scheme while being fully aware of the potential cost at least. And I think this is because stakeholders at all levels of the firm could see that it was absolutely the right thing to do. In a way it was one of those kind of perfect-storm scenarios. We could see that equalising parenting was the way the sort of legal sector was headed, and we wanted to be at the forefront of that shift. We could see that the policy would be a powerful way to attract and retain the best people. And we could see that anything less than full equality wouldn’t drive that fundamental shift in attitudes that we wanted to see.

Zeba Sayed: Yeah. So Becs, it’s clear from our conversations that a huge amount of work has gone into this, and I genuinely love how you’re challenging outdated norms around parenting and more generally around workplace expectations. Can you just talk us through the policy itself and how it works alongside the statutory schemes?

Rebecca Peedell: Yep, absolutely. So, as you’ll both know – and many of our listeners will know too – historically, enhanced parental leave and pay have typically been provided by embedding enhancements within the statutory maternity, paternity, adoption and shared parental leave schemes, which makes the enhanced leave and pay easy to administer alongside the statutory entitlements.

But we didn’t want to take that approach because we thought it would just reinforce the siloed approach to leave and pay we were trying to get away from.

So, we completely retired our maternity, paternity, adoption and shared parental leave policies, and instead developed one policy that applies to all new parents at Lewis Silkin in the same way.

Zeba Sayed: I mean, that in itself is a powerful shift, and it’s quite a bold move to retire all your statutory policies and replace it with this one equal leave policy. Can you give us an overview of what the policy includes and what the entitlements are?

Rebecca Peedell: Yes. So in terms of what’s in it, the key leave and pay entitlements are that all our partners and employees, regardless of gender, can take up to 52 weeks’ leave after the birth or adoption of a child. If the new parent has a year’s service with us, they can also take 26 of those weeks at full pay. If a new parent doesn’t have a year’s service, they can still take up to 52 weeks’ leave, and they can take six of those at full pay.

In addition, so there’s something we think that sets our scheme a bit apart from other similar schemes, is that we allow for paid leave to be taken in an unlimited number of discontinuous blocks at any time over the first 52 weeks as a new parent. And as you know, the statutory shared parental leave scheme limits the number of blocks to three. And we took this approach because we thought it would be critical to the uptake of the scheme, which it has proven to be.

And another interesting feature, I think, that’s worth mentioning is that leave and pay don’t have to be shared with the other parent, where there is more than one parent, meaning that a new parent can benefit from leave and pay regardless of the leave and pay choices of their partner. And of course that’s in contrast to the statutory shared parental leave scheme which, as the name suggests, involves parents sharing the mother’s or primary adopter’s leave and pay entitlements. We know that that has also been very much key to uptake of our scheme.

So I know we’ve got a lot to fit in today, so I will just very quickly, before we move on, give a quick nod to the other noteworthy aspects of this scheme, which are that we’ve also included an additional up to 12 weeks’ leave at full pay for new parents who have babies in neonatal care. And we acknowledge that when a new parent returns from leave, of course it might take some time to reestablish themselves in their roles, and so via the policy we confirm that this will be reflected in their workload and targets when they come back.

Zeba Sayed: And that was prior to the neonatal care leave regulations being implemented. So overall a really generous and forward-thinking offering.

From an employment law perspective, how easy would you say it is to draft a policy like this? And can you comment on any particular challenges you encountered?

Rebecca Peedell: Yeah, well I quite enjoyed it, to be honest. It was a bit fiddly but perfectly doable. So I think the approach that we took was that we drafted it as a standalone policy, so sitting outside of the statutory schemes. Then we went back over it to make sure that it plugged into the statutory schemes where it needed to, to ensure that so far as possible our new parents at Lewis Silkin wouldn’t lose out on
statutory rights by participating in the scheme.

So to give you an example, there are some small variations in our policy around notification requirements and when leave can start, depending on the type of new parent, to try to make sure that statutory pay is triggered.

So I’d say that with this sort of thing you do have to do quite a bit of road testing. You’re drafting against the types of scenarios which might come up in your organisation, and tweaking the wording as a result. But ultimately you can’t think of every scenario and there does come a point where you just have to take the plunge and hope that the policy works, which ours has so far, I’m happy to say.

Robert Shore: That’s good news. So for other organisations listening that might be thinking about introducing a similar policy, what advice would you give them? Where does one begin?

Rebecca Peedell: Well, I think it’s probably most useful for other organisations to know the places where the most work will likely need to go in with this sort of project. And I think for a lot of organisations they will probably need to start with an exercise of winning hearts and minds. And how that happens will obviously depend on your own organisation, but there truly is something really powerful in the feedback we’ve had from our new parent dads and partners. There isn’t time, sadly, to go into it today but you can find it on some blog posts from some of my Lewis Silkin colleagues. And I would say have a look at those because it’s immediately obvious – and I don’t think I can overstate this – that the goodwill generated by this sort of policy is huge.

And I think there’s also quite a lot of work involved in making sure the policy works from an operational perspective in your own organisation. So just coming back to the subject of trying to make sure your policy plugs into the statutory right, sort of asking from a practical point of view, ‘Does your HR ops team know the what, the when, the how around triggering those rights?’ Because those details won’t go into the policy if you want a one-size-fits-all policy like we have. Most of that stuff will need to be juggled behind the scenes. So that is quite a lot of thinking involved in that, and planning too.

You also obviously need to think about things like how the policy interacts with employee and partner benefits schemes. There was quite a lot of work for us in that.

And then, you know, thinking about how the leave and pay can best be structured for you. You know, for example, again this question of ‘How many blocks of leave can your employees and partners take and when?’ What works for your business?

Robert Shore: Yes. So what sort of response have you had? Has there been much take-up? I mean, I think you’ve indicated before that there may have been but, you know, I think we’re talking about a success story, aren’t we? But anyway, tell us more.

Rebecca Peedell: Yeah. So the response has been incredible. It really has. And the take-up has been better than we hoped. And I think my absolute favourite part of working on this has been the feedback the firm has received from new fathers about the positive difference the policy has made to their families. You know, it’s quite personal and really powerful On the take-up question, we introduced the policy in April 2024. Since then, 34 employees have used it. Of those, 56% are female, 44% male, and we’re really proud of the fact that 100% of all eligible men who’ve had a baby or adopted have taken advantage of the policy. And that has included several senior and managing associates, as well as one of our corporate partners. And listeners might be interested to know that all men have chosen to take the full 26 weeks’ paid leave, and 40% of men have chosen discontinuous blocks of leave, with the majority of those opting for the two 13-week blocks of leave. And the first block tends to be immediately following the birth or adoption of the child, and then they return to work for three to six months, and take the second block from months six to nine, or nine to 12.

Robert Shore: Yeah. Those stats are wonderful and visionary. And how does the finance department feel about it?

Rebecca Peedell: Well, I’m just going to be completely honest and say that it has cost more than we budgeted for. We costed it using a straightforward model of looking at take-up of our maternity policy, looking at the age demographics in our workforce and then anticipating male takeup of the policy based on this. And it’s ended up costing more simply because the take-up of the policy by fathers at the firm has been higher than anticipated. But that’s exactly why we wanted the policy, so that more fathers and partners could share the parenting. So the policy is doing what it was designed to do and we’re really happy about that.

Zeba Sayed: That’s brilliant to hear, and it really just shows the impact that such policies can have in creating more balance and a wider societal shift. Becs, more broadly, are you noticing clients asking about equal parent leave or moving towards policies like this?

Rebecca Peedell: Yes, very much so. So we’ve had loads of interest in the policy. You know, lots of organisations aren’t quite ready to go there yet, for lots of reasons, but lots are. And more generally – and I think it’s something you alluded to earlier, Zeba – I do think that we will start to see a shift away from traditional employment policies centred around statutory protected groups in the coming years, towards policies which are more designed to benefit everyone. And this sort of equalised parent policy is, I think, you know, the beginning of that trend.

Robert Shore: So Becs, you shared the policy with us and decided to make it accessible beyond your firm. What was the thinking behind that step?

Rebecca Peedell: Well, from the very outset of the project we knew that we didn’t want to use the work for a competitive edge. It was about something bigger and deeper. It was about trying to help to fundamentally shift attitudes in the workplace to where the responsibility for parenting falls, because ultimately that has to be better for everyone. So from the fathers and the partners who want to spend more time with their children, the mothers who don’t want to be the ones to automatically step back from their careers, and the businesses who have happy, fulfilled staff. I think, you know, those early days of parenthood are precious, and it’s amazing the amount of goodwill that comes your way when you have a policy which opens up the opportunity to be fully part of that special time.

Robert Shore: Absolutely. So we put a link to the policy in the show notes and you’ll find it on our website, also to a great case study that Becs has written for us which sets out again steps towards adopting this at Lewis Silkin, and various other things.
So it just remains for me to say thank you so much to Becs for joining us today.

Rebecca Peedell: Thank you.

Robert Shore: And of course to Zeba.

Zeba Sayed: Thanks, Robert. And thank you, Becs.

Rebecca Peedell: It’s a pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Robert Shore: And to everybody listening to this, until next time.