Policy updates offer greater support to staff
Three University policies have been updated to provide enhanced support to staff.
To support new parents, the University has amended the Paternity Leave and Shared Parental Leave policies to offer staff more choice. The Alcohol and Drugs Policy has also been updated in support of the University’s Gold Healthy Working Lives Award.
Shared Parental Leave (SPL)
Shared Parental Leave (SPL) lets new parents choose who spends time looking after their child. The University previously offered enhanced shared parental pay for leave taken in the 24 weeks after a child’s birth/placement after adoption. Now, leave with enhanced shared parental pay can be taken up until 52 weeks after the child’s birth or adoption.
The revised Shared Parental Leave policy is effective from 1 June 2018. However, staff will be able to retrospectively amend their leave arrangements back to 1 April 2018 in order to benefit from the changes. If you wish to take SPL or change existing SPL arrangements, please contact your HR team for more information.
To see how other employees have benefited from Shared Parental Leave, read their experiences of shared parental leave here.
Paternity Leave
Paternity Leave can be taken as a two week block or as two separate weeks in the eight weeks after a child’s birth/adoption. The University has increased paternity pay from one week’s full pay and one week’s Statutory Paternity Pay to two weeks’ full pay.
The revised Paternity Leave and Pay policy is effective from 1 June 2018. However, leave arrangements can be retrospectively amended back to 1 April 2018. This means if you took a second week of paternity leave on or after 1 April 2018, you will receive the difference between one week of statutory pay and full pay in your June salary.
If you recently took one week’s paternity leave, and now want to take a second week of paternity leave (and you are still within the eight week period since your baby’s birth/placement), you can now book a second week’s paternity leave at full pay by completing a paternity leave form. For more information, please contact your HR team.
Alcohol and Drugs Policy
The Alcohol and Drugs policy has been updated in support of the University’s Gold Healthy Working Lives Award.
The policy covers the University’s expectations relating to alcohol and drugs at work and explains what action the University will take where alcohol or drug misuse has been identified.
Where staff recognise they have a problem with alcohol or drugs, the policy explains how to access support from Occupational Health. For more information, please see the policy here.