Combined parental leave gets 63pc support from parents or parents-to-be in FTSE 100 firms
Substantially more parents are in favour of taking shared parental leave than had been previously estimated by the government, according to a report published yesterday by law firm Linklaters.
According to the study – based on the answers of 250 parents or parents-to-be working in FTSE 100 firms – 63 per cent would be interested in taking up the new right, which comes into effect on 1 December. The results fly in the face of the government’s own research, which forecast take up at between two and four per cent.
Simon Kerr-Davis, senior employment lawyer at Linklaters, told CityAM: “The key reason we did this survey was to try to give employers an indication of the likely take-up rate of this new right. Our research implies that there’s a much broader appetite for this right than perhaps might have been expected. I knew the government figure was an underestimate, but I was certainly surprised at how far off it was.
“The second reason was to find out what factors would drive people to take the leave and we found that the key factor was whether sufficient finance was available to employees,” he added.