Supporting pregnant women and mothers: increasing retention rates among new mothers requires more than just meeting minimal leave requirements and establishing onsite breastfeeding facilities, as the experience of an Australian banking firm makes clear.

The Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Limited (ANZ) is a major international banking and financial services organization--the largest bank in New Zealand, among the five largest companies in Australia, and one of the top 50 banks in the world. ANZ has more than five million customers worldwide and employs more than 30,000 people globally.

ANZ prides itself on creating a high-achieving culture with consistently increasing levels of employee engagement. We encourage our workers to bring their "whole selves" to work and for more than half of our employees, that means their role as a mother or father.

This creates a challenge for ANZ to find practical ways to help our people balance the twin demands of home and family One way we've responded is by developing a range of employee benefits to support the 60 percent of our employees who are female, many of whom are also mothers. These benefits, which exceed minimum standards defined by Australian law, support our goals to be an employer of choice and a highly competitive force in the war for talent.

While we still have more to do to meet these goals, we have already seen pleasing results from this approach. Over the past two years, our employees' rate of return from maternity leave has increased from 80 percent to 87.4 percent and the incidence of women in management-level positions has risen from 24 percent in 2000 to 33 percent in 2005. Organizations that monitor workforce trends have taken notice: ANZ has been named an Employer of Choice for Women and was recently honored as the "Leading Australian Organisation for the Advancement of Women" (among employers with more than 500 employees). (1)

A FEELING OF INDEPENDENCE

Australian law dictates that all new parents have the opportunity to take up to 52 weeks of unpaid leave, but despite recent lobbying, employers are not required to grant paid parental leave. In 1998, ANZ began granting six weeks of paid parental leave to mothers and fathers; in 2005, ANZ increased paid parental leave to 12 weeks, with no qualifying service period. The pay can be taken as a lump sum or as a full- or part-time rate.

One new mother at ANZ, Joanne Farrugia, said the flexibility of this payment was a great help to her. "The 12-week payment allowed us to focus all of our attention on our new arrival without having to worry too much about our finances," she said. "It was great to receive the payment as a regular income [half pay over 12 fortnights] because I felt like I still had my independence for a few months."

Other staff members were able to take longer leave because of this payment. "The new rulings meant that I was able to be off for longer, as I chose to take the 24 weeks at half pay," said one mother. "This amount paid all my loan repayments for six months, as we had just purchased a block of land and taken out a loan to build a home. Without this pay, I would nearly have had to come back to work straight away."

ANZ also has engaged the services of a professional childcare provider to develop and operate childcare centers at a number of sites across Australia. ANZ employees using these sites have special benefits such as priority enrollment.

Child care in Australia is a major concern for many parents. In August 2001, the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission commenced a comprehensive examination of the need for a national paid maternity leave scheme. The commission found that "access to affordable and quality child care is still a problem for many families with young children." (2)

The commission received 257 submissions from individuals, employers, employer groups, unions, community and women's groups, health professionals and organizations, academics, and state and territory governments. Feedback from the majority of stakeholders in the debate indicated that childcare is a "crucial area of concern to be considered alongside paid maternity leave." (3))

Many larger corporations are investing in strategies to support parents with their childcare issues. ANZ has developed a kit to provide easy access to information about childcare facilities and fees, including government assistance and rebates. The kit also contains information about childcare options, looking after children when they are sick, vacation care programs, and shift work.

EASING THE RETURN TO WORK

Pregnant women in the workplace have many issues to consider when planning their maternity leave and their return to the workplace, arranging for child care, and dealing with the physical demands of pregnancy Providing kits and information packs about appropriate leave arrangements, returning to work, possible changes to job structure (e.g., moving to a part-time role), and making use of support mechanisms in the workplace are important. ANZ also ensures that all pregnant women and new mothers are aware of opportunities to utilize the employee assistance program (EAP).

New mothers have access to breastfeeding facilities at all major sites and are able to participate in the Working Parents Group, a support group established by parents employed by ANZ. A pilot workshop has also been conducted for women planning to become parents, and this is likely to be rolled out more widely in the future.

At ANZ, employees have the option of returning from parental leave to a part-time role, with very few exceptions. For many women, part-time work helps make the transition from parental leave back to the workplace much more manageable.

"ANZ's policy of accommodating part-time work where practical was the most important to me," says employee Virginia Burgdorf. "The ability to work part time was crucial to my decision to return to work at ANZ. I would have left ANZ had this not been available."

UNDERSTANDING WHY IT MATTERS

An employee's experience with pregnancy, birth, leave, and returning to work has much to do with his or her line manager and the manager's ability to communicate and keep the employee connected while on leave. Line managers also have a big impact on the experience of returning to work. When a line manager helps create flexible working conditions, the new parent can feel more successful at work and at home.

Rebecca Davison, an ANZ employee, says her supportive line manager ensured a positive experience when she returned to ANZ from parental leave.

"My line manager has been fantastic," she says. "She had just the right balance between telling me what was going on but being mindful of the fact that I was focused on other things for the time being. While on leave, I was given access to a laptop to stay in touch. My line manager has been really flexible with which days I work and has allowed me to work from home or take time off while I transitioned my daughter into child care."

Notwithstanding these plaudits, ANZ recognizes there is still much to do to improve how we support working parents. If nothing else, however, company management has a clear understanding of why it matters, thanks to workers such as Virginia Burgdorf.

"[It matters] for several reasons, including the pressing economic need for Australia as a country to increase the participation of women in the workforce and the fact that I believe ANZ's staff should be diverse and representative of our customer base," she said. "More personally to me, though, I want my daughter to grow up with the opportunity to combine a career and parenthood if she so chooses. The more children today who have parents who act as role models and show by example that it is possible to combine a career with parenthood, the more those children will see it as their natural right to do so in the future and demand that opportunity from their employers--or, as employers themselves, provide that opportunity to others."

As of this year, parents at ANZ have been able to apply for another 52 weeks of unpaid parental leave on top of the initial 52 weeks allowed by law. ANZ will continue to look for creative ways such as this to make work and family a viable option for more of its current and future employees. *

References

(1.) Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency (EOWA).

(2.) Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. 2002. A Time to Value: Proposal for a National Paid Maternity Leave Scheme. Sydney (112).

(3.) Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. A Time to Value: Proposal for a National Paid Maternity Leave Scheme. Sydney (111).

Worlds Apart

How do the parental leave benefits at ANZ and the leave mandates in Australia compare with those of other businesses and governments?

In December 2000, the U.S. Congress asked the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the federal government's human resources agency, to research leave benefits offered by private companies and government agencies in the industrialized world. OPM's report to Congress stated the following:

" ... few [private U.S. business] establishments provide a separate entitlement to paid parental leave for birth or adoption purposes. Paid time off for maternity purposes is largely funded by temporary disability insurance and the employee's own paid leave.

Mandatory leave periods (whether partial or over the entire leave entitlement) exist in 12 of the 15 European Union states, and two countries prohibit certain types of work during pregnancy. Unlike American FMLA [Family and Medical Leave Act] policies, which permit a new mother to remain away from work voluntarily to care for her newborn child, most European countries require mandatory maternity leave periods, and several limit the kind of work that can be performed by a pregnant woman."

--Editor

Virginia Matthews is the diversity manager within the Institutional Division of ANZ. She has worked in human resources and change management roles for the past 10 years in a number of organizations, primarily those in financial services. She previously worked as a primary school teacher.