Shared Parental Leave and Pay – Employers Guidance

You can find a technical guide here from the Department of Business, Skills and Innovation – for employers to consider when implementing policies on shared parental leave and pay. As this is an exceedingly complicated area you may need it!

The Guide includes:

• Summary
• How it works
• Eligibility criteria
• Ending maternity or adoption leave and pay to create shared parental leave and pay
• Knowing whether your employee qualifies
• How much leave and pay can be taken?
• Arrangements for “booking” leave and pay
• Employees who change their plans
• When leave and pay can be taken
• Frequently Asked Questions

Here is a sample from the Guide:

How it works

Shared parental leave is designed to enable working parents to share leave and to take time off work in a more flexible way. This will allow both parents to be at home together if this is what they choose.

Only an employee can take shared parental leave. Employees and other workers who are classed as employed earners for Class1 national insurance liability, such as agency workers, can take statutory shared parental pay. For an employee to be eligible for shared parental leave or an employee or agency worker to be eligible for statutory shared parental pay, both parents need to meet certain qualifying criteria.

It may be taken in a single continuous block, or may be taken in smaller blocks of leave (a minimum of a week at a time), interspersed with time at work (in contrast to maternity leave which has to be taken in a single continuous block).

In some circumstances, only one of the parents will qualify. However, if both parents meet the eligibility requirements, shared parental leave can be shared between the parents who can alternate periods of work and leave or be at home together.

Your employee needs to give you proper notice of any periods of leave and/or pay that they want to take. An employee can only give 3 notices to take leave, unless you agree to more. There are no restrictions on the number of notices for statutory shared parental pay, but pay will usually be notified at the same time as leave.

As an employer, you do not have to agree to lots of periods of leave – the maximum number of separate blocks of leave that your employee can take will be 3, unless you agree to more.

You can read The HR Kiosk’s advice about it here.