180 Kiwi businesses have signed up to be transparent with their parental leave policies
From small to enterprise-size organisations, government organisations, and not-for-profits, the ‘NZ Parental Leave Register’ launched with publicly available parental leave information of 180 NZ employers – including eight of NZ’s largest 10 employers – when Kiwi parenting and money platform Crayon launched the first of its kind website in NZ last week.
Design agency Rush was the first organisation to hop on board the initiative. Heather Polaschek, head of people and culture told HRD: “I knew it was important to get on the first wave because I thought it was going to be big. The gender pay gap registry (MindtheGap) has been really big and I feel like this will be the same – it will be something you need to be on.”
Polaschek believes that organisations have an obligation to be transparent about their policies, however she also points out that the registry is great for your employer brand.
“If they want to be seen as diverse and inclusive, if they want to tap into talent markets, they’re going to get really left behind if they don’t get involved with these really cool initiatives,” she said. “A lot of this wellbeing and diversity and inclusion space, we shouldn’t just be talking about it we should be showing through action.”
Benchmark against other employers
The register aims to give employers and policy makers the facts they need to benchmark NZ’s parental leave policies and ensure parents can balance both jobs.
NZ Parental Leave Register and Crayon Founder, Stephanie Pow said: “This is the first register globally to have verified information at this level of detail - for example, not just how much paid parental leave an employer offers, but the eligibility criteria to qualify for it. For the 100,000 Kiwis who welcome a child each year, this will provide the information they need, up front, to best prepare for their family’s future.”
More work to do
Polaschek believes there’s more work to do and organisations have an obligation to get involved where they can. However, she also says that it could be intimidating for organisations which don’t have a policy at all and see big corporates offering 26 weeks. However, they should get involved where they can.
“It’s not about competition and comparing and competing, it’s about transparency and understanding it’s the right thing to do,” said Polaschek. “New Zealand businesses are on the right track but there’s still plenty to do, we’re a long way off Scandinavia.”
“NZs parental leave has been on a pretty cool evolution in the last six to eight years. It’s had that nice balance of the government showing that commitment by increasing the number of weeks, and that means businesses are having to do more and more as the government does.”
“I think the transparency of the register will show there’s lots of different options and, just doing something that you can, for your business, is a good thing.”
