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The Workplace Gender Equality Agency recently released its annual update on the state of workplace gender equality. It revealed the average total remuneration gender pay gap dropped to 21.7 per cent in 2023. While small, it’s still progress – the biggest shift since 2014.
What we can’t ignore from this report, and what we know from our parental leave coaching, is that the number of men taking paid primary carer parental leave has barely shifted. The report shows there’s only been a 0.6 per cent increase from 2022. Why is this the case?
Put simply, we have more to do to help organisations be ready for dads to take parental leave in Australia.
Giving fathers flexible access to parental leave can make a big difference, study finds.
As a practitioner in this space, there is so much more to do culturally and holistically within organisations. While the uptake – albeit minor – in dads taking more parental leave is great, we need the structure to be built and the scaffolding to be there before it’s successful.
To enable this, organisations need to invest in manager training to upskill their leaders to handle the complex psychosocial hazards and risks that arise in the parental leave transition.
Job demands are a huge risk factor in many new parents leaving or dropping out of the workforce altogether. So often, we see parents returning to work and being offered flexibility, but that often comes with conditions like doing five days of work in four days (and getting paid 80 per cent for the privilege).
This is a different situation to an actual agreed compressed work week, where the role and job demands are considered and altered accordingly. The reality is, you can’t perform in the same way at the same pace, especially at a high level.
Managers with dads who wish to come back part-time or work flexibly need to ask: what will we do about his job demands and role clarity when he returns? What supports do we have in the team, so he can protect his boundaries around on his day off? What’s in place to ensure he feels accepted for his parental leave? How are we changing the KPIs to reflect their current capacity?
Employees want to know that there’s a culture of support. That could mean flexibility, it could mean clear pathways to promotion, or it could be something else entirely. It’s going to be different for everyone.