Is it fit for purpose?

Almost 10 years on, is the Government's shared parental leave scheme working?

Among eligible couples, only 1% of employed mothers and 5% of employed fathers took shared parental leave (SPL) following the birth or adoption of their child, according to the UK Government’s evaluation report in 2023.

SPL allows parents to choose to share up to 50 weeks of maternity/adoption leave between them. The scheme’s original intention was to allow parents to more equally share caring responsibilities and spend more time with their new child. But almost 10 years on from its introduction, why is uptake still so low?

Lack of awareness around SPL

The Government report into SPL cited a number of barriers to uptake, including poor understanding of the policy and policy design itself; financial constraints; and workplace culture, particularly attitudes around gender.

Fulton MacGregor, Scottish National Party MSP for Coatbridge and Chryston and advocate for shared parenting, explains that having statutory SPL is undoubtedly a positive thing. But there is much room for improvement.

“The most straightforward issue to target first would be the varying levels of understanding. The report noted that a third of mothers and 45% of fathers where shared parenting leave was not taken had not heard of the scheme when their baby was born or adopted,” Fulton says.

This was the case for social worker and mother of one, Heather Shanks. “My employer at the time didn’t make me aware of shared parental leave when I was pregnant. It wasn’t until I was on maternity leave that I actually got all of my paperwork through,” she says. “It was about two months into my maternity leave when I found out about shared parental leave and, by then, it was far too late.”

Financial disadvantage of SPL

The lack of awareness surrounding the scheme is evidently one of the contributing factors to its low uptake. People can’t apply for something they don’t know exists. But Fulton explains that one of the most pressing issues for urgent improvement, recommended by parents, concerns finances.

He says: “Decisions to take up and share parental leave were often based on trade-offs between the positives of shared parenting and the projected financial loss.”

One in four mothers and one in three fathers who participated in the Government survey stated the negative financial impact was the main reason for not taking SPL. Even for those who did participate in the scheme, many did not take the full entitlement simply because they could not afford to.

This raises the question: if many parents would be left financially worse off by participating, can the current SPL policy be deemed fit for purpose?

To this, Ros Bragg, Director of Maternity Action, gives a resounding no. “Even the name is faulty,” she says. “Shared parental leave is really ‘transferable maternity leave’ as the scheme creates no additional parental leave entitlement. It simply ‘enables’ mothers to transfer all but two weeks of their leave to the father or other co-parent. The scheme relies on robbing Petra to pay Paul.”

She adds: “The current system means that pregnancy can plunge some households into poverty. The pay available is inadequate.”

Enhanced and equal parental leave

Many companies do offer enhanced SPL. One such company is insurance firm Aviva, where employees, regardless of gender, sexual orientation or how they become a parent (birth, adoption or surrogacy), are entitled to the same amount of paid and unpaid time off – 12 months of parental leave, with six months at full basic pay.

When discussing the policy, Danny Harmer, Chief People Officer at Aviva, says: “The positive impact it has on gender balance at work and at home has been transformational for our people and business.”

Since it was launched in 2017, equal parental leave has been taken at Aviva more than 3,200 times. Eighty per cent of fathers have taken the full six months paid leave and the average length of leave taken by fathers in 2022 was 23 weeks.

Like Aviva, law firm Thorntons also goes beyond what is offered within the Government scheme and now provides a generous enhanced pay package to allow employees to spend more quality time with their new arrival.

Debbie Fellows, Accredited Specialist in Employment Law at Thorntons, explains that challenging cultural perceptions around gender and parenting in the workplace could also help to increase the uptake of SPL. “There is still some work to do to make fathers and partners comfortable with taking more significant periods of leave,” she says. “Employers can assist this by creating a work environment that is encouraging and receptive to this.”

Another example is Registers of Scotland (RoS). The company offers parents up to 50 weeks off at full salary rate. RoS also prioritises actively including LGBT+ parents in their policies and communications. “It’s fair to say that ensuring the policies are written to be inclusive of all relationships could also support uptake in the future, as people are more likely to use a policy that it is clear is written to include them.”

How employers can support parents with SPL

In terms of advice for employers looking to better support their employees with SPL, Debbie says employers have a big role to play in making sure employees are aware of the support and options available. “However, in reality, often an enhancement of the statutory provisions is the only way in which most employees will see this as a benefit or viable option.”

Danny at Aviva notes that organisations can do a lot of practical work in-house to support their employees further and create a culture that empowers people to balance work and family life. In addition to equal parental leave, companies could also advertise roles as flexible from the outset and remove barriers for part-time employees by making job-shares and part-time senior roles more accessible.

Written by Sophie Campbell