While maternity leave for female staff is common, increased paternity leave has for sometime been looked at increasingly favourably by many organisations and has been gaining ground rapidly.
In a bid to relieve pressure on working parents struggling to balance careers with families, MUFG (Mitsubishi UFJ Finance Group) Japan’s largest bank and one of the world’s largest, operating in more than 50 countries, has decided to let male bankers in the UK take as many as six weeks of paternity leave.
Staff at the bank will be granted extra time off to care for children and elderly parents, and be able to make use of a nursery to reduce costs. The package of perks will be rolled out across the 3,300-strong UK workforce and forms part of the bank’s efforts to strengthen its culture. MUFG told staff the measures would also help to encourage greater equality in caregiving as well as help the bank retain more diverse talent.
Male employees were previously able to take only two weeks of fully paid paternity leave. Managing director and co-chief human resources officer of MUFG Emea, Karen Owen said: “At MUFG, we recognise balancing a career and having a family can be a challenge. We are committed to supporting our people as they navigate their personal commitments as well as growing their careers.” Extended paternity leave will be available from 1 April 2024 for UK employees. MUFG will also offer “parental transition coaching” to all Emea (Europe, Middle East, Africa) employees taking six months’ leave or more from the same date.
This includes one-to-one sessions for parents and the managers to support a successful move back into the office.
MUFG also said it will increase the amount of time off UK workers can take to care for dependents. Staff will be entitled to 10 free “backup” sessions – up from six – to provide at home care for elderly or adult dependents or childcare when their usual arrangements fall through, effective immediately.
It will also offer a tax-free nursery benefit to bring down child-care costs during the June annual benefit period.
MUFG is the latest in a line of banks to offer more time off to working fathers, who historically have been given a fraction of mothers’ paid leave. NatWest has one of the most generous paternity-leave packages, allowing male bankers to take a full year off when they become a father, with six months on full pay.
But rival bulge bracket banks (the banks that control the allocation of securities to investors) have also bumped up paid leave for fathers, with Deutsche Bank and JPMorgan last year extending paternity leave for UK staff to 16 weeks. Standard Chartered and law firm Clyde & Co are among the firms in London’s financial district (known as the ‘City’) that have gone a step further and introduced equal paid leave for mothers and fathers.
However, some financial services businesses have been forced to trim benefits as cost pressures bite. Abrdn plc (formerly Standard Life Aberdeen plc) has told its employees it will cut parental leave from 40 weeks to 26 weeks starting this October. It is also doing away with a policy that allowed for a phased return from parental leave on full pay over three months.
Childcare costs have risen significantly in the financial district firms. Live-in nannies and au pairs are an expensive luxury, with annual salaries in London topping £45,000. Full-time nursery for a child under two costs £14,800 a year on average, according to figures compiled by AJ Bell’s Money Matters Campaign. (The writer is our foreign correspondent based in the UK)
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