APPENDIX 24
Letter to Clerk of the Committee from
Penguin UK (PL 32)
PARENTAL LEAVE
INQUIRY
I recently met with Harriet Harman MP to discuss
the implementation of the forthcoming Parental Leave legislation
and agreed to let the Committee know of Penguin's experience as
an employer with more than twenty years experience of operating
a range of family friendly policies. I have enclosed a summary
of our benefits for your information. We employ 750 employees
in the London area, operating out of two sites—a publishing
office in Kensington, and a distribution centre near Heathrow
Airport. We are owned by the Pearson Group
As you will see, amongst the benefits we make
available to our employees is maternity leave of one year, six
months of which is paid, six months unpaid. We also give two weeks
paid paternity leave for "new" fathers and operate a
compassionate leave policy which enable our people to take paid
leave to help with domestic emergencies, childcare breakdown,
family illness etc. All of these are operating successfully in
helping our employees to better achieve the work/life balance.
We particularly want to draw the Committee's
attention to our experience with the unpaid element of our maternity
leave. The vast majority of employees return to work after the
birth of their child—since January 1998, 5 per cent of our
total workforce availed themselves of maternity leave. Of these,
the majority took the paid portion of leave only, with just 5
people taking any unpaid leave—only one person took the
full year's leave.
To ensure any statutory Parental Leave entitlement
is fully utilised and realises the philosophy of aiding the majority
of families to balance their work/life responsibilities, taking
the leave should not detrimentally affect them financially.
From the employer's perspective, the answer
is not simply to transfer the burden to the employer by imposing
an obligation to pay employees for this leave. The overhead costs
of employing people are steadily increasing, with the increase
in NI costs earlier this year just one example. Certainly for
Penguin, if there were to be an obligation on us to pay employees
for the new parental leave, it is likely we would reconsider our
package of family friendly policies to ensure the overhead costs
on our business associated with these benefits did not escalate.
For instance, the salary cost of our compassionate leave policy
alone in the last 18 months is approximately 0.5 per cent of our
payroll, with 10 per cent of our workforce availing themselves
of the benefit. Our maternity leave cost Penguin around 3 per
cent before taking account of the costs associated with covering
the jobs of the maternity absentees.
I hope the experience we have had at Penguin
is of interest to the Committee in its work on the Parental Leave
inquiry.
14 July 1999
| 
