My Family Care is an organisation set up to support employers and companies to find effective ways to support their working mothers, fathers and carers. The organisation offers training and support for employers.
My Family Care has carried out research to coincide with the first anniversary of the introduction of Shared Parental Leave (SPL) which was introduced on 5 April 2015.
SPL was introduced to give parents more choice and flexibility in caring for their children during the first 12 months after their birth. Parents can split 52 weeks' leave, receiving some payment for 39 of those weeks. That is on top of the two weeks' statutory paternity leave available to fathers.
My Family Care surveyed 200 businesses and over 1000 parents and found that only 1% of eligible men took advantage of SLP and 55% of women surveyed said that they would not want to share their maternity leave.
The research found a number of reasons for this low take up including: financial affordability, lack of awareness, and unwillingness from women to share their maternity leave. 80% of both men and women agreed that a decision to share leave would be dependent on their finances and their employer's enhancement of SPL.
But, while take up is still low, the research found that men are interested in taking SPL in the future, with almost two thirds (63%) of men who already have young children, and are considering having more, saying it was likely they would choose to take SPL.
A government assessment suggested 285,000 working fathers would be eligible to take the leave, but only 2% to 8% would do so.
The research has highlighted the fact that this important benefit to families is still not being taken up and part of this may be due to its complexity.
If you are an employer and you would like to more widely publicise the availability of SPL to your employees but do not know how it will apply, contact us.