More employers now starting to offer leave to grandparents
LOS ANGELES: When Vicki Elias’ granddaughter Frankie was born earlier this year, her employer Investa gave her a week of paid leave to care for the new addition.
Frankie is Ms Elias’ eighth grandchild, but this was the first time she had not had to take annual leave to help with childcare. Investa introduced a grandparental leave policy in 2019.
In addition to a week of paid leave that can be taken flexibly up to two months after the birth or adoption of a grandchild, Investa – which employs 224 staff – also offers employees up to 12 months of unpaid leave to help care for their grandchild. That can be taken within two years.
Ms Elias took her grandparents’ leave over a five-week period and said it had been a fantastic opportunity to bond with her granddaughter and help her daughter get back on her feet.
“It meant she was able to rest up. I sent her for coffee with friends and walks and I also helped with making meals and taking a bit of the burden off her,” Ms Elias said.
Investa joins a growing list of companies to have signed up to be certified as family-friendly workplaces in the past 12 months.
Seventy-three of Australia’s largest employers, including Commonwealth Bank, Deloitte, QBE, ING, Medibank, KPMG and HESTA, employing 283,000 people, have joined the initiative by workplace advisory group Parents at Work and UNICEF, which was launched last year to lift workplace standards for families and carers.
About 15 per cent of companies in the scheme have promised to introduce grandparental leave policies and one in four will offer kinship care policies for indigenous employees.
A report released today on the program’s first anniversary reveals parental leave is becoming less gendered and more flexible. Three-quarters of organisations now promote gender-equal access to paid parental leave.
Although the report highlights progress on parental leave policies, it said there was still more work to be done and said more support was needed to meet the needs of carers. Australians pay some of the highest childcare fees in the world, according to UNICEF.
The report says: “More than 50 per cent of organisations do not measure outcomes of benefits or know that family-friendly benefits pay for themselves – a missed opportunity to determine ROI.”
Nicole Breeze, from UNICEF, said the COVID-19 pandemic had shone a light on just how challenging it could be to juggle caring responsibilities with workforce participation and career advancement at a time when cost of living pressures were growing.
Family-friendly workplace policies were a key lever to assist boosting workforce participation and career advancement for women, she said.
Parents at Work chief executive Emma Walsh said parental leave policies were becoming more inclusive and flexible and that a number of companies now offered paid leave provisions for things such as IVF, surrogacy, adoption and miscarriage.
“They used to be quite tight, so generally could only be taken in the first 12 months. It had to be taken in a block and was largely set up for the primary carer, women,” she said. “We’re really starting to see organisations push the envelope around family inclusivity and that’s really encouraging.”
Ms Walsh said family-friendly workplace practices could enhance talent attraction and retention and reduce employee turnover.
Almost one in five (18 per cent) employees considered resigning in the past six months due to lack of flexibility and seven in 10 would take another job if it offered more flexible hours, the report says.