Volvo Cars gives all employees six-month paid parental leave, Auto News, ET Auto

Stockholm: Swedish automaker Volvo Cars mentioned Tuesday it would give its forty,000 staff members throughout the world the suitable to 6-month compensated parental depart in a bid to improve gender equality and bring in talent.

As of April 1, staff members who have labored for the carmaker for at least a single 12 months will be entitled to the advantage at 80 per cent of their salary.

Workers can choose these months anytime they like throughout the first a few decades following the start of their child.

The policy is based mostly on Sweden’s countrywide parental depart policy, a single of the most generous in the environment with 480 days to be shared by both of those moms and dads at 80 per cent of their salary up to a ceiling of about $4,five hundred (3,800 euros) a month.

“Most essential is that we offer the similar to both of those moms and dads, and we want to persuade extra adult men to choose the prospect to choose their parental depart,” Hanna Fager, head of Volvo Cars’ human means, advised AFP.

Other Swedish organizations have formerly introduced compensated parental leaves for their throughout the world staff members, like songs streaming business Spotify which in 2015 introduced a 6-month parental depart with comprehensive spend.

Ikea also introduced comparable programmes in 2017 in India and the US.

Volvo Cars, which mentioned that about seventy five per cent of its staff members were adult men, has been testing the policy in a pilot scheme given that 2019 for income personnel in Europe, the Center East and Africa, in which forty six per cent of candidates were fathers.

Fager mentioned compensated parental depart was rare in the automotive field but also geographically.

“We have a large amount of people today in China and the US and this will be a massive advancement in comparison to what is presented there now,” Fager mentioned.

“Of class this will charge dollars but … we see this as a extensive expression expense,” she mentioned, introducing the business anticipated “constructive results, that we bring in extra various skills, (and) that we also become a extra attractive business.”

Volvo mentioned the initiative would involve all legally registered moms and dads, like adoptive, foster treatment and surrogate moms and dads, as nicely as non-start moms and dads in similar-intercourse partners.

The group mentioned it wished to “create a culture that supports equal parenting for all genders.”

“When moms and dads are supported to equilibrium the needs of work and relatives, it helps to near the gender hole and enables everyone to excel in their careers,” main government Hakan Samuelsson mentioned in the assertion.