Empowering New Parents With Enhanced Parental Leave
10th Oct 2022
What is enhanced parental leave?
Enhanced maternity and paternity leave (enhanced parental leave) encourages new parents to take more time off work to bond with their new child and support the family.Why do companies offer enhanced parental leave?
Being a new parent is exhausting; from giving birth to the lack of sleep and adjusting to a new home environment. As an employer, increasing your gesture of goodwill makes it more likely for an employee to return to work after their period of leave, whilst feeling a little more refreshed.
Not only does it help to improve employee retention and reduce the associated recruitment costs, but it also makes you more attractive to new candidates. Employers confirm the benefits of offering enhanced parental leave outweigh those additional costs.Flexible companies offering enhanced parental leave
We’ve spoken directly with Flexified companies that offer enhanced parental leave as part of their benefits package to find out more about what this means for them and their employees.INSHUR
Flick West, People Experience Coordinator at INSHUR says:
“We offer all new parents 13 weeks fully paid enhanced parental leave to help support them through their amazing journey. Our policy also includes adoption and surrogacy and applies to all of our INSHUR employees regardless of gender or geographical location.
In addition to our generous parental leave policy, to help ease our teammates back into work we pay their full salary while they work 30 hours a week for their first four weeks back. We also accommodate flexible working patterns to help support their families around balancing work and family commitments.
She also talks about her personal experience being a parent herself:
“I am so grateful to INSHUR for all of the support they have given me during my maternity leave. Not only were they very understanding and supportive whilst working throughout my pregnancy (it was the height of summer and I was uncomfortable to say the least!), but the offering of the 13 weeks full pay took financial pressures away from me and husband at a time when we were becoming new parents and were experiencing a lot of changes/challenges. Having that financial burden taken away, meant my husband was able to take more time off to bond with our daughter without the financial strain. It also made me feel valued as a member of the team as they showed they appreciated my hard work by rewarding me when I needed it most. I have recently returned to work and am happy to be back with the team :)”And here’s what other employees at INSHUR had to say about how enhanced parental leave has impacted their time at home.
Rich (Product Owner)
“Having that period of extended leave was priceless! It allowed me to focus my attention and energy on our new arrival and supporting my wife in a way that wouldn’t have been possible with only a couple of weeks off. I was able to support the night feeds for three months and give my wife some time during that day to recuperate and look after herself. Also, the bond that I was able to form with my son, being able to spend 24 hours a day with him for three months, has created a closeness that would not have developed until much much later had I been working.”
Patrick Gessner (No Fault Manager)
“It is so important for Maternity/Paternity for both parents to not worry about their jobs but focus on their families during an exciting but stressful time. At INSHUR, there is a very generous Maternity/Paternity leave where you can actually focus on family time. When my son was born in January, I was encouraged to take Paternity time which has created a strong bond within our family. Taking time throughout the year to spend with my son has been amazing and actually lets me experience watching my son grow up.”
Freya McDonnell - People Operations Associate says:
“Whilst we like to think of nPlan as one big family, we now also have quite a few little families within our big family! Here are 3 awesome things we do to support them:
- Workplace Nursery benefit - nursery fees can be through the roof, taking up a massive chunk of parents’ salaries; that’s why we’re signed up to the Workplace Nursery Benefit, saving parents at nPlan thousands of pounds on nursery fees each year through tax and NI savings
- Truly flexible working - fitting a family around work can be tough but here at nPlan, with truly flexible working, you can fit work around your family, whether it’s the nursery pick up or swimming lessons - you can schedule your day around them! Pretty cool right?
- All the babygrows - Babies get through a lot of laundry! That’s why we offer these cute little baby-grows to all new additions to the nPlan family
We know company benefits are important and often searching for a new job can be frustrating when you are unaware of a company’s culture and values upfront. For utter transparency, company benefits are clearly listed on company pages and job descriptions on Flexa, so you can see what a company offers before you even apply.
