Fathers to receive a year paid paternity leave?
In normal situations, father’s generally receive a few weeks maternity leave after their partners give birth. However, for those lucky men working for Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin company, they will now be receiving a full year’s paternity leave with 100% of their pay!
Branson goes by the rule of, ‘If you look after your employees, they will look after your business’ and he is certainly making the most of that.
The Government introduced a new policy letting partners share up to 50 weeks of leave and 37 weeks of paternity pay in April. But statutory wages are still only the lower of £139.58 or 90% of an employee’s average weekly earnings. That incentivises the higher earner, which is still usually the father, to stay at work.
This is what inspired Virgin Management to announce that it will offer staff who take shared parental leave up to a full year’s pay.
For those of you who don’t work in either London or Geneva for Virgin, here’s what shared parental leave will mean for you:
- An estimated 285,000 new couples will be eligible to share leave each year, according to the government
- Leave can be taken in one lump or split into sections, with periods of work in between. This pattern must be agreed with an employer with eight weeks notice.
- Parents will be able to take their time off at the same time or separately
- 37 of the weeks taken off can be paid at £139.58 per week, or 90 per cent of average weekly wage.
- The time spent off has to be taken between the baby’s birth and first birthday, or within the first year of adoption
CLICK HERE to find out if you are getting the work – life balance right!
