How much maternity leave should you offer?

As a business, you have two options available to you for maternity leave. The first choice is you can provide only the basic minimums required by law (Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993). The second choice is to provide a paid maternity leave option. Whether you choose the first or the second, the length of time you provide off work can vary.

In an unpaid maternity leave situation, the law requires that an employee can claim up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave with job protection. Under these guidelines there are strict rules and mandates that apply. As a business you can choose to cap your maternity leave at that full twelve weeks or you can increase it to a length of time suitable to you. Remember, the law requires job protection for those 12 weeks. Job protection means that you as an employee are guaranteed your job back or one that is equal in pay, responsibilities, and benefits. As a company you can choose to then allow your employees to take additional weeks off without pay and continue job protection or you may not.

If you are looking at providing a paid maternity leave benefit to your employees the length of paid time off can vary from 3 weeks to up to a full 12 months. Most countries provide between three months and one year of FTE paid leave. Ireland falls right at the middle of the paid-leave scale, guaranteeing about 21 weeks of FTE paid leave. Sweden provides the most FTE paid leave: 47 weeks. Eight other countries offer at least six months of FTE paid leave: Norway (44 weeks), Germany (42 weeks), Greece (34 weeks), Finland (32 weeks), France (29 weeks), Canada (28 weeks), New Zealand (28 weeks), Spain (27 weeks), and Japan (26 weeks). Six countries have between four and six months of FTE paid leave: Italy (25 weeks), Portugal (25 weeks), Ireland (21 weeks), Denmark (20 weeks), and Belgium (18 weeks). Four countries guarantee some paid leave, but fewer than four months: Austria and the Netherlands offers approximately 16 weeks; the United Kingdom has 12 weeks, and Switzerland, 11 weeks of FTE paid leave. Finally,
Australia and the United States grant no paid leave whatsoever.

The length of time you are willing to provide paid - should be determined by the amount of time you are able to cover in costs. You also need to consider if you are going to provide a different amount of time off for the different types of parental leave definitions (adoption, foster care, and vaginal birth or cesarean section births). If you are going to vary the time off for the different leave definitions you need to have them clearly defined as company policies.

The other options available to you when looking at the amount of time you can provide is how you are going to cover the costs. If you are being granted monetary payouts from federal funded programs you might limit the time more than if you provide an employee pay-in program. An employee pay-in program means that employees have an option to opt-in and provide a specific percentage or dollar amount to a parental leave bank. Then when the employee needs to take the time off they can draw monetary payouts from the bank. Obviously with such a program you will need to put specific guidelines and definitions in place, however, it can help in subsidizing the large costs of a paid maternity leave program.

In the long run, when a paid maternity leave program is provided it brings with it some added benefits of employee job satisfaction, an increased percentage of employees returning to work after an absence, increased employee loyalty and greater employee job productivity and effectiveness. If a direct correlation exists there, one might assume that the greater the benefit (more time off for greater pay amounts) the greater the benefits as defined above.