New Delhi: Women employees at Deutsche Bank India will now have a reason to feel good as they will now get paid maternity leave of 26 weeks similar to that of Tata Group which offers maternity leave of up to 27 weeks.
According to a report in Times of India, woman employees at Deutsche Bank can avail of the 26 weeks maternity leave with full pay.
Madhavi Lall, MD & HR head, India, Deutsche Bank, told TOI, "The new policy aims at strengthening our commitment to gender diversity. We base our policies around the needs of our employees.”
A critical feedback we got from our women employees was that maternity leave of up to 26 weeks would be more suitable and work perfectly for them because creches don't take children who are less than 6 months. So the new policy change gels with that as well," Lall added.
With the overall gender diversity at 32%, the total women employee strength at Deutsche Bank India is 3,830.
Legally, the requirement on maternity leave is of three months but few comapnies like Hindustan Unilever, HCL Technologies, Accenture, Microsoft, Flipkart and Snapdeal, for the benefit of their women employees, have increased the number of maternity leave.
For women employees it is very difficult to return to work after three months and then again go on unpaid leave. And if this gets extended further, the women employess start opting out of the workforce.
Women and Child Development Minister Maneka Gandhi also suggested that there should be change in number of maternity leave and it should go up to 26 weeks but this suggestion has not been implemented in most of the comapnies.
Saundarya Rajesh, founder & president, Avtar Group, a diversity & inclusion talent strategy consulting firm, told the newspaper, that those comapnies which offer maternity leaves of more than six months are among some of the best companies across the world.
There is also the need of return to work programmes for women, she added.
Rajesh said, “It is very important for companies to offer a whole basket of benefits around maternity so that the performance ratings of women employees returning from maternity can be retained back.”
“A number of women employees tell us that it is because of such practices followed by their organizations that they decided not to leave the workplace,” Rajesh further added.
