Zomato leads the way. What other firms should learn about parental leave

Setting a new precedent for policies that champion employee rights in the Indian corporate sector, food aggregator and delivery service giant Zomato has introduced 26-weeks (182 days) of paid leave for all new parents in its ranks, with increased flexibility to use it as needed.

“For women across the globe, we will be offering 26 weeks paid leave, or will follow the government mandated policy, whichever is more. We will be offering exactly the same benefits to men as well. There won’t be even an iota of difference in parental leave policy for men and women at Zomato going forward,” Zomato founder Deepinder Goyal said in a statement on Tuesday, June 4.

The new leave policy will also apply to same-sex parents as well as adoptive parents. The company will follow the government mandated policy in places where a longer period of leave is declared by the state.

According to the new policy, new parents will also be given an endowment of $1000 per child, Zomato said. Employees who have had a child in the past six months (from the time of announcement) will be eligible for these benefits of parental leave and endowment, Business Standard reported.

The need for an umbrella law

In July 2015, e-commerce major Flipkart made news when they announced their new ‘Adoption Assistance Program’. Encouraging work-life balance, the company pays Rs 50,000 to employees as adoption allowance towards legal, agency, and regulatory costs arising out of the process. They were soon followed by Microsoft India and a cluster of multinational corporations.

But intermittent and non-uniform private policies are not enough.

Since maternal mortality in the country remains considerably high, the government must step in to mandate similar policies of paid leave for both parents at all firms, extending its implementation in the informal sector as well.

Three months of maternity leave is mandated by Indian laws across organisations under the Maternity Benefits Acts, 1961. However, no such provision exists for new fathers, making Zomato’s policy a historic first for Indian men.

Saying that unequal leaves for men and women lead to a lot of imbalance at the top positions in the corporate sector, Goyal also advocated the need for a blanket law in the country.

In 2009, the act was extended to adoptive mothers employed in government service for the first time, but only if the adopted child is less than one year. Under this law, all Indian mothers were made eligible for maternity breaks ranging from 135 days to 180 days.

But no such law exists to allow men to take leaves at par with women that will facilitate them in rendering parental duties.

Improving postpartum healthcare with social support

Zomato’s policy will not only allow fathers (or a partner) to spend more time with their new-borns, but as studies have shown, it will also offer mothers extra support during the critical postpartum period when they are healing physically and mentally.

In 2012, Sweden enacted a law that allows fathers to take up to 30 days, as needed, in the year after birth, while the mother is still on leave. A study shows that the presence of another adult caretaker at home, for the first six months after giving birth at least, led to a 26% decrease in the mother’s reliance on antidepressants, anti-anxiety prescriptions, and antibiotics, compared with those who gave birth just before the policy went into effect.

The fathers’ presence can avert the need for more serious medical care by enabling mothers to sleep, seeking preventive care, or getting antibiotics early in an infection. This is a need of the hour, given new research findings that throw light on the energy and effort that goes into a human pregnancy, which is nearly at the limit of physical human endurance.

That’s not all; the Swedish parental leave policy is unique insofar as it grants 480 days (64 weeks/16 months) to be shared between both parents of either sexes (180 bonus days for twins), at 80% of their salary (with a cap); fathers must take at least five of those 16 months. The days don’t expire until the child is eight years old. 

Compared to Sweden and India, Britain introduced shared parental leave in 2015, allowing parents to share up to 50 weeks of leave—37 of which are paid for—to care for newborn children.

How Zomato’s policy abets gender justice

Besides the obvious health benefits, such laws would also level the playing field for women who have to deal with the hazards posed by the maternity hiatus and a ten-year baby window to their career trajectory and prospects.

A study by Pew Research Center also found that women, more than men, have to adjust their careers when the needs of the family collide with work, thereby contributing to the gender wage gap, while narrowing the pipeline that feeds top-level jobs.

Cultural standards dictate that children need mothers’ care more, which makes returning to work doubly harder for women after giving birth. Economic, cultural, and technological changes have further piled on new pressures onto mothers today.

But progressive work laws encouraging fair sharing of leave (and therefore parenting responsibilities) between men and women can debunk such typified gender roles.

“I believe that young parents should be able to make a choice of how to care for their children. And that a myopic view of primary care-giving not only alienates one half of our workforce, but also creates circumstances that lead to fewer female leaders within organisations, the community, and the nation,” Goyal said on Tuesday.

Towards a better work-life balance

With longer work days and commute times, more nonstandard work schedules, and greater work stress, it is more difficult to be a parent today than in the past. Mismatched needs at work and at home limit parents’ time for children, a squeeze that is felt increasingly by working parents across the world.

There exists a body of research that found paid leave and flexible workplace policies benefitting employers, as it allows them to recruit crucial talent and then retain it, thereby reducing turnover. Despite this, the US remains the only developed economy which does not have a mandated paid leave. Given its standing in the international diplomatic community, this sets a bad example for other countries.

Also read: Abortion ban bills show how US is trying to restrict women’s rights

Nonetheless, a new law went into effect last year allowing workers in the city of New York to use paid family leave to care for anyone they personally define as family, regardless of whether that relationship falls into socially-defined, biological categories.

Many countries including New Zealand and Japan are also moving towards a 4-day work-week, while Sweden is testing out a 6-hour working day in light of widespread burnout and stress, noting how spending time with the family is not only critical to children’s development but also for employees’ mental health and productivity.

Also read: Explained—New Zealand’s Wellbeing budget and how it wants to change the measure of progress

Equal paid leaves for men, women, and trans parents are rightfully a workplace issue as much as a human rights one. So a culture shift must necessarily accompany a change in policy, and that is as relevant in India as anywhere else.

Also read: You may now breastfeed in the Taj Mahal

The food Samaritan?

After receiving huge backlash over firing the delivery agent for eating out of a customer’s food parcel, Zomato has been involved in a number of other campaigns keeping their employees’ needs front and centre, and in an effort to co-create an inclusive community around their service.

Last month, it arranged an electric vehicle for a differently-abled man to earn his livelihood by delivering food for the company.

In light of the ongoing heatwave, it has also urged customers to offer their agents a glass of water for their service.

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Prarthana Mitra is a Staff Writer at Qrius