Standard Life Aberdeen has announced perhaps one of the best parental leave and pay policies in the UK with nine months’ fully paid leave for all new parents.
From January 2020, all Standard Life Aberdeen employees in the UK welcoming a child into their family will be entitled to 52 weeks’ leave, 40 weeks of which will be fully paid, regardless of gender.
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Regardless of length of service, employees can take the 52 weeks as one, two or three periods of leave, over two years from birth.
The parental leave policy includes those who adopt or have a child by a surrogate and offers additional paid leave to support parents who have a premature baby.
If a baby is born prematurely, the policy also offers additional leave to cover the period between birth and 37 weeks, to support parents in what can be challenging circumstances.
By equalising the opportunity to take paid leave for parents of all genders, the FTSE 100 listed investment company said its policy is a tangible step to ensure that becoming a parent does not limit anyone’s career potential.
Rose Thomson, chief HR officer at Standard Life Aberdeen, commented: “When you look at that holistically it’s a policy that I’m actually really excited about, and I think it will really resonate well with our employees.
“Our organisation is made up of individuals all of which have different set of circumstances. Having a family is a wonderful experience. It’s a very real experience and I think it’s taken companies a long time to wake up and recognise that there’s a way that we can do that, a flexible way that meets the needs of the employee, but also enables us to meet the needs of the business.
“And I think this policy demonstrates that we’re really out in front in terms of how we’re thinking about that. We’ve taken the opportunity to look and say, how do we really want to be moving forward? So we’re trying to make sure we’re positioning ourselves as a great employer.”
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