Legg Mason has enhanced paid parental leave for its 785 US-based employees.
The investment management firm's new parental leave offering, which will be effective from 1 January 2018, will enable both men and women who are new parents and who have at least one year of service to take up to 12 weeks of parental leave on full pay, irrespective of whether the employee has a stay-at-home partner. Birth parents and adoptive parents will both be eligible for the benefit.
Previously, Legg Mason provided 12 weeks of fully paid parental leave for primary caregivers, and two weeks of parental leave at full pay for a secondary caregiver.
Legg Mason is also introducing a benefit that reimburses mothers who travel globally for business for any expenses related to shipping breastmilk home. This is effective immediately.
The initiatives form part of Legg Mason’s wider diversity and inclusion strategy.
Patricia Lattin, human resources chief at Legg Mason, said: “It shouldn’t matter if you are the mother or father. We felt it was important to equalise these policies. We needed to update our policies to look the way families look today.”
