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Stuart Gentle Publisher at Onrec

Leading HR tech company offers employees unlimited year-long paid parental leave

Reward Gateway unveils unlimited paid parental leave for new mums and dads during the first year of their child’s birth or adoption.

Reward Gateway, the world’s leading employee engagement company, has unveiled a new way of supporting its employees around the world through a new parental leave benefit.

Reward Gateway has ditched the traditional maternity and paternity policies and moved to a gender neutral approach which gives all primary carers, regardless of gender, unlimited paid time off during their child’s first year of birth or adoption. This gives employees the choice, flexibility and financial support to decide what’s right for them.

In introducing this benefit, Reward Gateway not only joins the ranks of some of the UK’s most generous brands offering lengthy paid parental leave - such as Unilever, the company behind over 400 brands including Dove and Hellmann’s, which offers mothers 39 weeks fully paid leave - but is also leading the way in supporting gender-neutral paid parental leave.

This pioneering new benefit is being introduced as part of a broader global benefits package, which was announced at a quarterly all staff business update, and will be implemented over the next few months.

Debra Corey, Reward Gateway’s Group Rewards Director who joined the company from PageGroup and Merlin Entertainments Group started the year by carrying out a review of the company’s global benefits. This began with the creation of five core benefit principles which were used to conduct a ‘health check’ of all company benefits. The goal was simple, to create a package that embodies Reward Gateway’s values, is competitive in each market, and takes into consideration the new principles of fairness, balance, choice, and delivers something they call ‘wow moments’ but is still easy and simple to use for all employees of the business, regardless of location. 

A key element of this new package is choice. Options such as ‘choose your package’ and ‘wellbeing choice’ offer yet more flexibility to their employees around the world regarding paid time-off and wellbeing. Employees will get 35 days paid time off (an increase from 30) with the added bonus of being able to increase or decrease their salary by buying or selling five days. These round out a very competitive and creative benefits package which also includes an all-employee share programme, staff lottery, a free book benefit, wedding and new baby bonuses, and free healthy breakfasts and drinks to name a few. All these benefits are available to employees company wide, from Australia to Macedonia.

Debra Corey said, “At Reward Gateway, we are committed to providing our employees with benefits which deliver against our new principles. We used the review to make sure that every benefit ticked each and every box. Our updated parental leave policy is an example of how we changed a benefit to align with these principles. We want all our employees, regardless of gender, to be able to spend time with their children, safe in the knowledge that their role will be there for them when they’re ready. As a parent myself, I’m incredibly proud that Reward Gateway is implementing this.

“Paid parental leave is an important contributing factor to help reduce the gender pay gap, get more women into C-Suite positions and strike a healthy work life balance.”

One employee wrote in after the company announcement to say “I can honestly say that myself and my partner are still both lost for words following the announcement last week. I cannot express how thankful I am to work for a company that has changed and impacted our lives in such an incredible way. Not only has Reward Gateway taken away many worries, reversed some tough decisions we had to make, but you have given me an irreplaceable 12 months at home with my first child."