Professional services organisation PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) has introduced family-friendly benefits for its 45,000 US-based staff, including paid parental leave and family care leave.
The new benefits, which are effective from 1 July 2018, allow eligible new parents to take up to eight weeks of paid parental leave within the first year of their child’s birth, adoption or foster placement, with an additional two weeks of paid leave also available for parents who are expecting more than one child on the same date. A further six weeks of paid leave is available for eligible employees who are the primary caregiver for a child newly placed for adoption or born via a surrogate.
Employees are also able to implement a phased return to work after parental leave. This enables new parents to work 60% of their contracted hours at full pay for four weeks immediately following a paid parental leave absence.
The new family-friendly benefits additionally include paid family care leave, which enables eligible caregivers to receive four weeks of paid leave in order to care for certain family members who have serious health conditions.
Currently, employees can take up to six weeks of paid parental leave. Approximately 72% of the organisation's fathers have used this amount of parental leave and mothers at PWC in the US take on average 21 weeks of leave overall, including short term disability, parental leave, holiday and unpaid leave.
The organisation announced the new benefits via its Twitter account yesterday (5 April 2018), tweeting: “It’s a fact: regardless of gender, all [PWCers] now get [eight] weeks of paid #parentalleave.”
Jennifer Allyn, diversity strategy leader at PWC, said: "At PWC, we're always looking for opportunities to support our people in innovative ways. When it comes to parents, we recognised that the transition back to work after a leave can be challenging. That is why we introduced a new option to phase back on a part-time schedule at full time pay. This benefit will give both mothers and fathers more flexibility to ease back into their careers after a new child joins the family.”
