Poll: 22% do not have the resources to offer life leave to employees

Employee Benefits poll: Around a fifth (22%) of Employee Benefits readers do not have the resources to offer a life leave benefit to their employees.

A straw poll of www.employeebenefits.co.uk readers, which received 37 responses, also found that 19% believe their organisations would be interested in providing life leave as an employee benefit, designed to support work-life balance.

This compares to 22% who do not think their business would offer life leave, 5% who feel that the extra time off is too costly and 32% who do not know whether their organisation would be likely to introduce life leave for staff or not.

Life leave is already part of the benefits package at Molson Coors Brewing Company, which introduce the policy in July 2019 for its 2,000 staff based in the UK and Ireland.

The policy enables employees to take up to two weeks of paid leave for significant personal situations, such as settling in a new pet, moving house, studying for exams or making the final preparations for a wedding.

It has been designed to empower staff to improve their work-life balance and overall wellbeing as part of the organisation’s wider Moments that Matter programme, which strives to create an industry-leading approach to work-life balance.

The paid life leave initiative is being offered in addition to employees’ existing 31-day annual holiday entitlement, plus five bank holidays and three Christmas bank holidays, and is separate from other leave policies, such as sickness absence or compassionate leave. Line managers will action individual requests on a case-by-case basis.

Phil Whitehead, managing director, UK and Ireland at Molson Coors Brewing Company, said: “There are often things going on in our lives which we would normally use annual leave to sort out, but this eats into actual downtime. We wanted to change that and give our people the ability to take care of what matters in their life without running down holiday days.”