Businesses are making modest progress in communicating details of parental pay and leave to candidates, research has found.
More than a third of companies (37%) now publish policy details, including pay and duration of parental leave. In 2020 only a quarter (24%) did so and in 2019 less than a fifth (18%).
The increase indicated that, as pandemic restrictions loosen, employer awareness of the need to be transparent on parental benefits is increasing.
However, this leaves nearly two-thirds of employers still not publishing basic details of family friendly policies including parental pay and leave, according to Executive Coaching Consultancy, a specialist in improving gender diversity.
The findings published in a report called The 2021 Parental Fog Index: Cross-Industry Report, come from the third yearly benchmark by ECC of the transparency of parental benefits for the Times Top 100 Graduate Employers, as published on their websites.
ECC’s research found that companies were making more efforts to position themselves as family-friendly.
Among the 63% of companies who did not disclose these details, the number who provided no clear details of parental benefits fell to 26% from 44% in 2020. The remaining 37% simply provided generic details, up 5% from 2020.
The study, which placed employers into five categories of visibility, rated 11% of employers in its top “beacon” group, up from 9% last year. A further 26% of businesses reached “fully visible” status. In addition to publishing full details of parental policies, these employers actively marketed their support to working parents as core to their employer brand.
The companies awarded beacon status this year were:
- Accenture (up from fully visible in 2020)
- British Army (up from fully visible in 2020)
- Civil Service
- Deloitte
- EY
- Grant Thornton
- KPMG
- Linklaters (up from visible in 2020)
- Lloyds Banking Group (up from fully visible in 2020)
- PwC
- Unilever
Geraldine Gallacher, CEO of ECC, said that by choosing to be completely transparent about parental pay and benefits when recruiting new employees, the beacon organisations were sending a strong signal that they were places where people would be able to progress their careers after starting a family.
However, 37% of businesses were rated as “visible” – these are businesses that talk generally about parental support without providing details. About a tenth (11%) were rated “foggy”; these said they supported working parents but didn’t say how, and 15% received an “invisible” rating because they provided no evidence of support. For these firms the publication of parental policies including pay and duration of parental leave would see them gain “fully visible” status.
Among companies rated as foggy were Astra Zeneca, Bank of England, McDonald’s, Samsung, Sky, and Dyson.
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Those given invisible status included Aldi, American Express, Boots, Channel 4, Huawei, Penguin Random House, and Tesla.
Gallacher said that the recruitment market favoured employees and the pandemic had changed parents’ expectations. She said the gap was widening “between top employers that actively market their family-friendly credentials and those that are still leaving candidates in the dark about pay and benefits for working parents”.
She implied that parents would be more motivated and confident about switching employers in the months to come: “Those that found it easier and more enjoyable to manage parenting while working from home don’t want to return to the treadmill, juggling work expectations that don’t accommodate their parental responsibilities.
“Employers that understand this are working hard to actively market their family-friendly credentials.”
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“Employers that don’t speak directly to the needs of working parents appear tone deaf to calls for workplaces to be more family friendly and are putting themselves at a disadvantage in an increasingly competitive job market.”
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