Ikea to grant 6 months paternity leave: After 'Maternity Bill', dad-friendly firms in demand

Like maternity leave, father's hiatus will soon be paid by some dad-friendly employers. Last year, Deutsche Bank (DB) started offering six months childcare leave to fathers, if they happen to be primary caregivers, across Asia Pacific. Taking cue from the bank's revolutionary step, many other private companies have started de-linking parental leave from gender.

Furniture retailer Ikea will grant six months of paternity leave to its employees in India. Ikea's parental leave policy will not only include mothers but also, fathers, surrogate and single parents and for adoptions. The employees will get full salary and other benefits. 

Are private companies in India becoming more 'daddy friendly'?

A study does reflect that. According to AVTAR Group & Working Mother Media, 86 per cent companies have introduced paternity policies at workplace as an aid for Young working mothers. An average of seven days paid paternity leave is the most sought.

This is a major step towards breaking gender stereotypes.

Leading the way, Deutsche Bank (DB) had last year circulated an internal notice to the employees stating, "the new parental leave policy centres on the caregiver's responsibility, rather than tie parental leave to gender, and replaces what was previously called maternity/paternity leave. It also covers surrogacy and adoption and aligns it with parental leave entitlements. Deutsche Bank employees who are new parents can choose to either be the primary caregiver or the non-primary caregiver within the duration of the parental leave. Employees who are non-primary caregivers can continue to take 10 working days paid leave after the birth of their child or adoption of a child below 7 years of age".

To help build gender equality, Ikea introduced a parental policy that includes giving paternity benefits to male employees. "Gender balance and equal opportunities form the base to create a great place to work for all — men and women", Ikea said. In order to achieve its commitment of a 50/50 gender balance, Ikea is also putting in some unique actions like day care centres, long-term training and development plans that allow employees to have career paths even while having and raising a family, among others. 

Cummins has recently revised its policy. "Earlier, we offered five days of paternity leave, but given the changing social fabric and the way we are hiring millenials, we revised the existing policy to 30 days," says Vikas Thapa, Vice President, HR, Cummins Group India."

India's E-commerce giant Flipkart offers 10 days leave to new dads.

There are other companies too that are father-friendly. They are as follows:

Facebook India: 16 weeks

Cisco Systems India: 12 weeks

Google India, Star India: 4 weeks

Syntel, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Microsoft India, Hindustan Unilever Limited, GSK Consumer Healthcare: 2 weeks

Flipkart, Godrej, Intel India, Asian Paints, PayPal: 10 days

NIIT, Accenture: 1 week

Infosys, PWC India: 5 days paternity leave

Lack of Interest amongst the political class

Last year, Women and Child Development Minister Maneka Gandhi said that paternity leave will have little impact in India, where men do not even avail their existing leave entitlements to share the responsibility of child care.

According to Maneka Gandhi, "paternity leave can be considered only if, once the woman goes back to work after her 26 weeks of leave, we find that men are availing their sick leave for a month to take care of the child. Let me see how many men do that. I will be happy to give it but for a man, it will be just a holiday, he won’t do anything."

Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Bill, 2016

The Parliament on Thursday passed The Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Bill, 2016 that will benefit about 1.8 million women in India. This measure takes India to the third position in terms of the number of weeks for maternity leave after Canada and Norway where it is 50 weeks and 44 weeks, respectively. While the bill has given many women reasons to cheer, it has left others with a heartburn. 

The Maternity Bill allows even a male employee to take his child to a crèche, if it is far away from the mother’s workplace. However, the opposition party demanded that the government include a non-discrimination clause in the bill so no person is discriminated against in employment for having availed any parental benefits.

Sushmita Dev of the Congress Party said since amendments raise the period of maternity leave to 26 weeks from the present 12 weeks, it could act as a deterrent for the private sector to employ women workforce.

"The innovative thing to do would be to bring in paternity benefit," she said. She said such a benefit can also be extended to single fathers who adopt a child.

Pritam Munde (BJP) said a father also has equal responsibility towards the child like a mother and paternity benefits would help a couple to raise their child together as majority are now nuclear families. Ratna De Nag (TMC) too made a case for paternity benefit and said her state government in West Bengal is already providing paternity leave for 30 days.