QBE's parental scheme sees 300% uplift in men sharing the care

Last year, QBE became the first general insurer in Australia to adopt a gender-equal, flexible paid parental leave scheme – Share the Care – with the aim of making parenting, career breaks and flexible working business as usual for both men and women.

One year after implementation, the insurer has announced that the policy has resulted in a 300+ per cent uplift in male employees taking paid parental leave, with men now representing over a quarter (27%) of parents in the organisation accessing paid parental leave.

This is a major increase from the 12-month period prior to the launch of Share the Care, where just 10% of QBE parents accessing parental leave were male. Australia-wide, statistics show that less than 5% of men across the country elect to take primary carers leave.

Vivek Bhatia, CEO, QBE Australia Pacific, said that the first-year results are reassuring that gender-equal policies, like Share the Care, are one way to address and work towards gender-equality within corporate Australia, and in the home.

“I’m delighted to see that our gender-equal parenting policy has delivered the results we hoped to see, in particular the impact for our male employees who now have the flexibility to access leave in a way that meets their unique needs and enable them to play an important role in the wellbeing of working families,” said Bhatia.

“When you look at our workforce as a whole, the fact that over a quarter of those now accessing paid parental leave are men is a truly encouraging figure.

“We’ve taken the step to normalise caring and flexibility for all families and sent a strong and overdue message that we can only achieve gender equality in the workplace when both men and women have equal opportunities to thrive in their career, and at home.”

Key highlights over the period since the policy was launched include:

• A 300+ per cent uplift in the number of men taking paid parental leave.
• Male representation of employees taking paid parental leave has increased significantly from one in 10 (10%) to over one in four (27%).
• The number of men accessing the 12-weeks paid parental leave in a full-time block has doubled.
• The game changer has been the ability to access the paid parental leave allowance flexibly, for example taking two days of parental leave a week, which has seen male participation thrive.

Bhatia added that the introduction of equality within paid parental leave policies is instrumental in breaking down career barriers for women and enabling men to take a more active parenting role.

But more than that, it’s not enough to just have a policy and not work to embed this into the organisational culture.

“We understand there are barriers that prevent men from taking paid parental leave, which in turn impacts on women’s career trajectories once they become a parent,” said Bhatia.

“We have encouraged our senior male leaders to role model this initiative and show others it’s ok to prioritise family.

“All parents play a critical role in family wellbeing and we’re proud that Share the Care has enabled more working families to be present in those important early years”. 

Moreover, CEO of Parents At Work, Emma Walsh, established the Advancing Parental Leave Equality Network (APLEN) urging employers to adopt a gender-equal paid parental leave scheme to increase the number of fathers taking leave and working flexibly.

Walsh said that QBE’s significant uplift of men accessing parental leave since the new scheme is evidence that fathers do want the opportunity to share the care and if they are supported to take leave, they will.

“When we normalise and de-stigmatise ‘sharing the caring’ within workplace culture, employees have an equal opportunity to meet work and family demands”.