Retailer Marks and Spencer has made a significant investment in its employees by improving its maternity, paternity and adoption benefits, far exceeding the legal requirements.
Starting in April 2024, the chain has introduced six weeks of paternity leave at full pay and has doubled its maternity and adoption leave to 26 weeks at full pay.
What are the UK legal requirements?
Paternity entitlement
In the UK, employees are currently legally entitled to two weeks’ paternity pay. There is no legal requirement that these two weeks be paid at full pay. The requirement is to pay eligible employees statutory paternity pay (currently £184.03 per week) for these two weeks.
Maternity and adoption entitlement
For maternity and adoption leave, the law requires employers to pay eligible employees at the rate of 90% full pay for the first six weeks, dropping to £183.04 per week (or actual earnings if lower) for a further 33 weeks after this.
What to consider before you increase your employee benefits
Great benefits are a surefire way to attract and retain employees. But before you dive in and enhance statutory payments in these areas, you should be careful to protect yourself:
Consider including claw-back provisions so that the benefit (or a proportion of it) becomes repayable if an employee doesn’t return to work (or only returns for a short period following leave). Terms need to be agreed in advance with employees as a change to the contract of employment (even if the enhanced payments themselves are only referenced in a policy).
Claw-back terms must be reasonable so should only cover a fixed and fairly short period following a return to work or should reduce incrementally over time.
For example:
- 100% of enhancement is repayable if the employee leaves without returning
- 50% if the employee leaves within 6 months
- 25% if they leave within 6-12 months
It would also be reasonable to disapply the claw-back if the employee’s employment comes to an end by reason of redundancy.
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