Danish bunker supplier Bunker Holding Group has extended its paid parental leave allowance to 20 weeks for all of its 1,600 employees across 34 countries.
This was introduced in order to boost the time parents can spend with their newborn child and to bring stronger workplace equality between genders.
As well as receiving full pay during the parental leave, employees will continuously receive pooled bonuses from the offices in order to minimise the cost and increase the incentive to take leave in full.
According to Bunker Holding Group, which employs 43 UK workers, the revised parental leave policy will particularly benefit male employees, encouraging them to take parental leave, as they will no longer experience a pay cut while having extended time off with family.
This builds on the recent efforts of Bunker Holding’s sustainability reporting, increasing its commitment to not only the environment but also its diversity, equality and inclusion agenda, which it outlined in a report published in September.
Pernille Græsdal Beck, executive HR business partner, group HR, at Bunker Holding, said: “The bunker industry being a rather conservative industry, parental leave has historically been viewed as maternity leave. At Bunker Holding we have set out to change this, and seeing as 72% of our workforce is male, this new policy is going to benefit a lot of new fathers, who previously may not have felt they could prioritise family at the cost of office time.
“However, not only the men will benefit from this new policy, as they can spend more time with their baby. Our goal is this will promote equal opportunities for female workers as well, as increasingly their male counterparts in the office too will enjoy an extended parental leave away from their work life.”