Brisbane law firm policy backs parents

The Federal Government may have introduced Australia’s first paid parental leave policy recently but some companies are already one step ahead.

Brisbane legal firm Shine Lawyers last month introduced a policy which provides 18 weeks fully paid parental leave, as well as a 20 per cent wage increase to help cover the cost of child care when employees return to work.

The company’s parental support program also helps new parents find childcare such as nannies or daycare and offers an intranet site so they can stay in the loop with their workplace and colleagues.

Shine’s workforce is dominated by women and staff retention is good for business, says the firm’s national legal partner Lisa Flynn.

She says the price of parental leave does not outweigh the cost of finding and training new staff. Australia finally caught up with other western nations when the Federal Government announced it would invest $731 million over five years to deliver a paid parental leave scheme for the first time.

From January 1, next year eligible parents will receive 18-weeks paid maternity leave at the minimum wage $543.78 a week.

More than $3 million will be used to promote the scheme so business owners, managers and employees all understand their rights and responsibilities.

Federal Treasurer Wayne Swan says the scheme will help the country meet its workforce participation challenges created by our ageing population.

It will now be more feasible, he says, to balance work and family commitments.

Flynn, who recently had her first child, knows how hard it can be to juggle work with parenting. Without Shine’s policy, she would have been forced to choose between her family and her income.

“From the firm’s perspective, the support scheme is achieving a really important objective in keeping valued employees working for the firm during the early years of raising children,” Flynn says.

“I do think we, as a nation, should be supporting people going back to work and bonding with their children.”

Under the Government’s new scheme, employers will not be required to administer payments until July 1, with parents able to claim the payment from the Family Assistance Office in the intervening period if their employer is not yet participating in the scheme.

The six-month phase-in scheme helps employers manage the transition to the new arrangements and came after concerns were raised by employers, payroll software developers and tax practitioners about the additional costs of upgrading IT systems in the middle of a financial year.

Professor Donna Berthelsen, of the Queensland University of Technology’s school of early childhood, says many European nations like Sweden have long valued working mothers.

“They want women to have skills and employment for social and financial reasons,” she says.

“They have up to 18 months off (and) when the children are 18 months to two years old, they start in a preschool system.” Berthelsen says the inequalities in employment rates and pay between men and women are much higher in Australia than other countries.

More than 30 per cent of Australian women aged 15-64 are unemployed and more than 40 per cent of women with a child less than three years old are unemployed, according to an Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development study.

It also found men were paid 17.5 per cent higher on average than women throughout their lives. And a recent Treasury research paper confirmed long-held suspicions that a rise in child care costs leads to working mothers dropping out of employment, cutting their hours and reducing their formal child care.

The research found if gross child care prices increase by 1 per cent, the employment rate of married mothers with young children decreases by 0.3 per cent and the hours they work decreases by 0.7 per cent.

Apart from Government initiatives to help working mothers, Berthelsen says Australians need a mind-shift.

“People in Australia think it is better for the mother to stay at home with their children instead of working, but this might not be the case,” she says.

“This sort of debate we have in Australia is not an issue in many European countries.

“I don’t think children suffer ill consequences from early childcare.

“It is much better financially to keep people in employment.”