Flexi-hours in India, Denmark's 52-week paid absence: Look at parental leave policies across the world

Parental leave is becoming the norm across the world but regressive workplace cultures in some countries prevent employees – both fathers and mothers – from taking time off work to be with their new-borns.

Experts argue that paid leave benefits families in coping with the lifestyle changes that a baby entails. It also increases their likelihood of re-entering the workforce. In many countries including India, flexible time-off policies adopted by companies like Zomato and Microsoft, have emerged as a means of attracting talent, especially those in early-career roles.

While the U.S. is the only major economy not to offer paid leave to either parent, other developed countries in Asia and Europe offer parental leave. Suriname and Papua New Guinea also don’t have paid leave for new parents.

However, despite legislation mandating paid leave in some countries, employees do not take time off from work owing to unwritten company policies that discriminate against those opting for leave.

Firms that stress on putting the welfare of the company above everything are more likely to have new parents reporting to work after dropping off their infants in day-care centres.

Earlier this week, Shinjiro Koizumi, a Japanese politician, announced that he would temporarily step back from his duties as a public servant to take care of his son. New fathers are afforded paternity leave in Japan, but data collated by the New York Times found that only 6 per cent of eligible men working at private companies in Japan availed of it in 2018.

A recent study by Kate Weisshaar of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill found that parents who took leave upon the birth of a child were more likely to be spurned by future employers. It tested employee perception by dispatching three different types of employee profiles for open positions at private companies.

One set of CVs was of people who currently held jobs, the second was of people who were laid off and currently unemployed, and the third was of employees who were on leave to take care of their children.

The CVs of stay-at-home parents fared worse than that of applicants who were unemployed. It was also found that fathers on paternity leave were less likely to be shortlisted than mothers.

The findings highlight the stigma attached by HR professionals and head-hunters to parental leave, with employees opting for it being viewed as unsuitable candidates for promotion or employment.

There is, however, a strong economic case for compulsory paternal leave. The wage gap between the sexes has widened over the years, partially due to the handicap women have because they are expected to take time off from work to take care of babies alone.

Men use this window to further their careers and gain an edge over their female counterparts. The gap in remuneration could be chipped at if men and women received equal paid leave, and this could also result in more women in corporate boardrooms.

A new research paper by economists at the National Bureau of Economic Research found that generous parental leave policies did not have any economic impact on the balance sheets of companies. The study, which drew on data from Denmark – which offers 52 weeks of paid leave to new parents –, concluded that such generous deals did not affect corporate performance. However, the cost of paid parental leave to the government was not considered.