Business Impacts

Well, we will now have paid maternity leave from Jan 2011. It is good to see that the Federal Government is to pay the costs (and hopefully tax benefits to employers who will have to administer the leave payments), but I have had difficulties in researching impacts to businesses in Europe of staff absent from the workplace for an extended period of time.

I was the manager of a tecnical department in a large Australian corporation who had a policy of up to 12 months unpaid maternity leave, which they were very happy to make available. When 3 of my key technicians (out of a team of 6) all took maternity leave at the same time, some major issues surfaced.
1. Reallocation of Workloads
Employers have set employee levels for departments, so obviously leave takers cannot be replaced. Short term contractors may be sourced if skilled resources are available. Generally not available for short contracts, so the workloads of the resources on leave need to redistributed to remaining team members. Needless to say, those on leave were not very popular.
2. Loss of Seniority
This became a concern for staff on leave when they found that their peers had increased in seniority during their leave, while their seniority level had stagnated, or even reduced. Although not all leave takers took this (technical) demotion poorly as they understood that they had not attended courses for changed technology, some took this issue very hard.
3. Hidden Discrimination
After discussing issues being encountered with maternity leave with peers in other corporations, I found that hidden discrimination is practiced against job applicants in certain age brackets, especially in technical roles. I also found that, providing you dot the "i's" and cross the "t's", it is virtually possible to prove that somebody of a given age group has been discriminated against. This may be checked by looking at the number of Female Managers of high skill technical departments, and the numbers of female senior technicians in corporations, compared to their male counterparts.

To overcome the issues I experienced, I negotiated with 2 of the technicians to return to work early solving some of the problems. The technicians decided that they would become part time, and job share a position (50% each per week). This enabled me to employ another full time team member. The 3rd team member had difficulties accepting that her peers had increased in seniority during her abscence, and when her demand to be increased in seniority to the level of her previous peers was rejected (she would have required extensive retraining) through to executive management level, she resigned. Another FTE (full time employee) was recruited.

Although time will tell, I suspect that forcing businesses, especially small and medium, to allow maternity / paternity leave will impact the employability of 25 to 35 year olds. This will not be direct discrimination (this is illegal), but will result in an increased level of casual, part time, and contract emplyment for this age group. Especially as contract work would enable employers to recruit on a 3 month contract, then just not renew the contract.