Personnel Policy for Employee Engagement

¶ … Policies and Parental Leave Across the Globe

TIME OFF POLICIES

Paid time off (PTO) requires less effort and time from management, and also results in lower costs to maintain. This is primarily because the employer does not need to track the personal, sick, and vacation days for each individual employee. Without having to keep to different numbers of permitted paid days off, employees may be more likely to take paid time off when they are sick. This can mean that more employees are well for longer periods or in absolute numbers during the year, and that illnesses like the flu or other highly contagious disease don't infect large swaths of employees, a situation that can impact the bottom line. To discourage preventable absenteeism, companies can cash out the unused paid time off at the end of the year, or allow employees to contribute the amounts due to their retirement plans (Lindemann and Miller, 2012).

Employers can encourage employers to utilize their paid time off by instituting a use or lose it policy that identifies a date certain when the paid time off expires. This encourages employees to take what amounts to vacation time, which leaves them more rested and more productive. Alternately, an employer may determine that paid time off can accumulate for a number of years in order to accommodate longer vacation periods. This concession may be offered to senior staff as an additional perk and provide an incentive that employees who have not been with the company as long, can look forward to an incentive for company loyalty.

PARENTAL LEAVE

In Denmark, parental leave is 52 weeks duration with a maternity subsistence allowance. Prior to the birth, the mother is entitled to four weeks of maternity leave (barselsorloven). Following the birth of the baby, the mother is entitled to 14 weeks leave and the father is entitled to two weeks (Ray, et al., 2009). Any remaining time left of the total leave can be divided according to the individual wishes of the parents.

A full salary is given to public sector employees during their maternity leave. Private sector employees are entitled to maternity benefit that is less than that of public employees and is subject to negotiation between the employee and the employer. For those parents who are employed in the private sector, maternity maintenance is available from the municipal office in their place of residence. Claims for maternity maintenance are made to the local municipality within eight weeks following childbirth.

According to the Equal Treatment Act, employees are protected from unfair differential treatment and from dismissal from their job when exercising their right to absence or when they are absent in accordance with the Act on Benefits in the Event of Illness and Childbirth or as a result of pregnancy, maternity leave, paternity leave or adoption.