Norman Lamb was the speaker at Steeles Law breakfast I attended this morning and he gave an overview of what he felt the key issues were for business relating to red tape and what he was working on relating to his key areas. I have a great deal of time for Norman and he does understand many of the issues affecting business but I am still concerned that decisions are being made without really understanding the impact on business.
An example was in the Queens Speech this week relating to fathers being able to share parental leave to care for babies. Officials said current rules on maternity and paternity leave were “outdated” because they presumed that women will do the “vast majority” of caring for infants and a spokesman for the Department for Business said: “Parents should be able to choose their childcare arrangements for themselves.” However there were few details about how the new flexible parental leave arrangements could work. Possible options include allowing mothers to return to work and transfer up to nine months of a year’s parental leave to fathers. The devil as ever will be in the detail.
As employers we do support maternity leave even though the cost to the business, especially small businesses, can be significant especially the hidden costs of recruitment and training. There is also significant impact on the uncertainty felt by the business and the person covering the post whilst they wait to see if the mother does in fact return to work.
From what Norman said this morning this new regulation is to help balance the work place and enable women to get back to work quicker as they are a valuable resource. Now I am not going to argue with that last point, but it will mean that not only will employers have to arrange maternity cover when their female workers take time off, which they understand and have learnt to cope with, now their male colleague will also be taking time off. However whereas the majority of women take 9 – 12 months maternity leave their male colleagues are likely to take less from a few weeks up to 9 months making it a real problem to find cover. Will fathers have to give the same length of notice was mothers do? What if half way through mothers change their minds and you have given a maternity contract to someone else? How is a business meant to plan around that sort of arrangement!
If you are a small business any time taken by an employee hits your productivity and subsequently your bottom line. When managers are fighting to keep their businesses on track, this type of new regulation is just not helpful but more than that we need to understand how it will work.
What are your views?
