What employers can do to mitigate pay gaps for parents, with British Airways’ Josephina Smith
The path to becoming a parent has a potential impact on pay, career and pensions, but employers can make the difference, said Josephina Smith, reward director at British Airways (BA).
Speaking on the Using family-forming benefits to improve inclusion and employee retention REBA webinar, in partnership with Peppy on 28 February, Smith said: “The impact on pay is huge. We know that the statutory parental and maternity leave is quite minimal, so that anxiety is there but there are practical things employers can do.
“We’ve got a great pensions package at British Airways, to [the employee’s] 5% contribution we contribute 11%, which is quite market leading. If we maintain this throughout any type of parental leave, this will be a massive help to reducing the pensions gap.
“Employers also need to empower line managers to do the right thing. We can have all the rhetoric, but if it’s not showing up in practice, it becomes an issue.
“The number of times I’ve heard line managers say an employee has been off on maternity leave, so they had to freeze their career opportunities, or reduced their pay because they haven’t been here to perform. We need to tackle all of those issues we see on a day-to-day basis.”
Smith said women were disproportionately affected when it came to the parental pay penalty.
She added: “It’s great having a strategy, but if that strategy isn’t live in the business, and we’re not actually living the practice, then we are missing a trick.
“Employers can support employees more than just on the monetary side, and instead actually celebrate the fact people are starting a family, which is a great thing.
“One of the things we do at BA is allow people to work four days to a five-day salary. But we can do more, we can always do more and improve.”
