Parental Leave Policy

Our family leave policy covers maternity, paternity and adoption leave, shared parental leave, parental leave (where each parent can take up to 18 weeks of leave for each child, until they turn 18), emergency time off for dependants and compassionate leave. Where we have enhance benefits, there are described below.

Maternity, Paternity and Parental Leave

Our maternity, paternity and adoption leave policy applies to you equally whether you are a soon-to-be mum or dad of a biological, surrogate or adopted child, and whether this is your first child or you are adding to your family. We will support you before, during and after your parental leave to help you manage your transition into parenthood as smoothly as possible.

All our employees are entitled to statutory maternity, paternity and adoption leave regardless of how long you been with us.  Employees who have been with us for a year before their qualifying week are eligible for the enhanced benefits described below.

As Opportunity Green grows, we commit to keeping this policy under review with a view to extending our support even further.

Enhanced Time off

Whether you are the birth mother, adoptive mother, father or partner we want you to have the opportunity to care for and spend time with your child. Opportunity Green therefore offers 12 months off for both the birth / main adoptive parent and the partner. You can take your 12-month entitlement at any time within 24 months of the birth or adoption, splitting your leave across the 24 months if you prefer. We strongly encourage all fathers / partners to take at least 3 months off within the first 12 months. We offer 10 Keeping in Touch Days, to make sure that you have the option to keep up to date with what’s happening at work as much (or as little) as you like.

Enhanced pay

We offer 26 weeks fully paid parental leave for all qualifying parents, followed by 13 weeks statutory pay and 13 weeks unpaid leave. Because we know how important future financial security is when you start a family, we will continue to pay your standard 10% pension contributions throughout your 12 months’ leave, based on your usual salary.

Flexible return

Annual leave accrued while you are on parental leave can be used to help you to transition back into work in a flexible way. For example, you may wish to return on two or three days a week for a few weeks while you and your child settle into your new routine. We would encourage you to speak to your manager about how else we can support you to return to work after such a momentous change in your life, including for example flexibility to attend nursery settling in sessions.

Compassionate Leave

Our compassionate leave aims to allow our employees the time off they need following the loss of a loved one – usually a parent, partner, child or grandparent – but it could also be someone else who was close. We know that everyone will be affected by these situations differently, and that people will grieve in different ways and so we want you have the space and time needed to ensure your wellbeing.  

There are no legal requirements for employers to pay compassionate leave nor are there any requirements about the length of time off, with the exception of the loss of a child. In this case, parents who suffer the death of a child under the age of 18 years old or a child is still born after 24 weeks of pregnancy, have the right to two weeks off.

Opportunity Green offers enhanced compassionate leave to ALL employees, regardless of how long you have worked with us. This is up to two weeks (8 days, given our 4 day working week) of paid compassionate leave, although we also encourage you to talk to your line manager if you need more time than this.