>Divorce leave scheme backed by Tesco, Asda and NatWest
>Catherine Baksi | Jonathan Ames, Legal Editor
>Friday January 27 2023, 12.01am GMT, The Times
>Tesco, Asda, NatWest and the country’s most senior family judge are supporting a scheme that gives time off to parents who are splitting up.
>Under the Positive Parenting Alliance’s scheme, employers will amend human resources policies to state that separation is similar to a family death or serious illness.
>Participating employers, which also include Metro Bank, PwC, Unilever and Vodafone, as well as four law firms, will provide leave or flexible working to enable staff to manage things such as collecting children from school. They will also provide access to support services, such as counselling.
>The alliance consists of a group including Relate and Only Mums & Only Dads, which campaign for families going through divorce and separation.
>The scheme was revealed at an event in parliament yesterday as research was published suggesting that family breakdown can have a big impact on performance at work. A survey of 200 workers by the alliance showed that 90 per cent of respondents said their work was adversely affected when they divorced, and 95 per cent reported that their mental health at work also suffered.
>About 75 per cent admitted that they were less efficient at work and around 40 per cent said they had taken time off as a result of their separation. Another 52 per cent feared they could lose their job or thought about resigning and 12 per cent stopped work altogether.
>Sir Andrew McFarlane, president of the family division of the High Court, hoped that other employers, including the civil service and NHS, would adopt the scheme. He said that supporting parents to separate without going to court was one of the targets he wanted to achieve during his time in office.
>He said that employers should be “treating separation as a significant life event, like bereavement or serious illness”. The judge added that bosses must recognise that separation was a “big thing” for their employees and that they needed “time, support and tolerance” to deal with its effects.
>Mustafa Faruqi, the head of employee relations at Tesco — the UK’s largest private company, employing about 300,000 people — said that the supermarket business had a “responsibility to influence the lives of lots of working people in a positive way. We have 50,000 parents and carers who work in Tesco and we hope to make a really positive difference to those people.”
Carol Frost, the chief people officer at Metro Bank, said the scheme would “enable us to be fully equipped to support colleagues experiencing this huge life event”.
>Anne Hurst, a senior executive at PwC, said the “big four” consultancy recognised that “separation and divorce can have significant emotional and practical impacts on our people”.
>She said the firm was committed to “providing support and resources to our people through parent networks, access to specialists through wellbeing apps, and everyday flexibility to help parents manage arrangements like school drop-off and pick-up”.
My mum would never have to go to work if this was a thing.
Well I wasn’t thinking about divorcing my wife but work’s a bit stressful right now and a holiday would be nice.
3 comments
>Divorce leave scheme backed by Tesco, Asda and NatWest
>Catherine Baksi | Jonathan Ames, Legal Editor
>Friday January 27 2023, 12.01am GMT, The Times
>Tesco, Asda, NatWest and the country’s most senior family judge are supporting a scheme that gives time off to parents who are splitting up.
>Under the Positive Parenting Alliance’s scheme, employers will amend human resources policies to state that separation is similar to a family death or serious illness.
>Participating employers, which also include Metro Bank, PwC, Unilever and Vodafone, as well as four law firms, will provide leave or flexible working to enable staff to manage things such as collecting children from school. They will also provide access to support services, such as counselling.
>The alliance consists of a group including Relate and Only Mums & Only Dads, which campaign for families going through divorce and separation.
>The scheme was revealed at an event in parliament yesterday as research was published suggesting that family breakdown can have a big impact on performance at work. A survey of 200 workers by the alliance showed that 90 per cent of respondents said their work was adversely affected when they divorced, and 95 per cent reported that their mental health at work also suffered.
>About 75 per cent admitted that they were less efficient at work and around 40 per cent said they had taken time off as a result of their separation. Another 52 per cent feared they could lose their job or thought about resigning and 12 per cent stopped work altogether.
>Sir Andrew McFarlane, president of the family division of the High Court, hoped that other employers, including the civil service and NHS, would adopt the scheme. He said that supporting parents to separate without going to court was one of the targets he wanted to achieve during his time in office.
>He said that employers should be “treating separation as a significant life event, like bereavement or serious illness”. The judge added that bosses must recognise that separation was a “big thing” for their employees and that they needed “time, support and tolerance” to deal with its effects.
>Mustafa Faruqi, the head of employee relations at Tesco — the UK’s largest private company, employing about 300,000 people — said that the supermarket business had a “responsibility to influence the lives of lots of working people in a positive way. We have 50,000 parents and carers who work in Tesco and we hope to make a really positive difference to those people.”
Carol Frost, the chief people officer at Metro Bank, said the scheme would “enable us to be fully equipped to support colleagues experiencing this huge life event”.
>Anne Hurst, a senior executive at PwC, said the “big four” consultancy recognised that “separation and divorce can have significant emotional and practical impacts on our people”.
>She said the firm was committed to “providing support and resources to our people through parent networks, access to specialists through wellbeing apps, and everyday flexibility to help parents manage arrangements like school drop-off and pick-up”.
My mum would never have to go to work if this was a thing.
Well I wasn’t thinking about divorcing my wife but work’s a bit stressful right now and a holiday would be nice.