The Polish branch of the German company Henkel has just announced that since the beginning of the year, their employees can take an additional eight weeks of fully paid parental leave. This leave is available to anyone raising a child, regardless of whether they are a biological, adoptive, foster or social parent, regardless of their gender or the gender of the other parent. Regardless of the formal or informal nature of the relationship with the other parent or single parenthood.
Additional 8 weeks of parental leave for Henkel employees
To be entitled to fully paid parental leave, a Henkel employee who is a parent must meet two conditions. The first is to run a common household with the child and live together for at least half the month. The second condition is to financially support the child or be the main financial support for the parent with whom he or she shares care of the child.
If a parent is entitled to parental leave based on generally applicable legal provisions, such as in the case of adoptive or foster parents (with the exception of professional foster parents), Henkel will match the parental allowance to 100% of the parent's salary for 8 weeks.
In addition, if both parents work at Henkel, each of them is entitled to a separate 8 weeks of leave, which they can take simultaneously. The Henkel program covers all children born, adopted, fostered or taken into care by our employees in Poland after December 31, 2023.
We want to ensure that every parent receives and uses 8 weeks to build close bonds with their child during the critically important time of early parenthood. This is a good step towards maintaining a healthy work-life balance
– says Karolina Szmidt, HR Director and CEO of Henkel Polska.
According to the Share The Care Foundation's report “Dad on parental leave”, only 3.7 thousand Polish fathers took parental leave in 2022. The situation was improved by the European Union's work-life balance directive, as 19 thousand fathers took parental leave in 2023.
Companies in Poland are increasingly offering overtime leave. There are proposals to change childcare leave
Poles are one of the busiest nations in Europe. More and more companies are noticing this and are providing longer holidays than required by law. For example, a Polish company Three years ago, Spadiora shortened the working week to four days and gave its employees the opportunity to take unlimited vacation.
Many companies, like Henkel, are specifically focusing on expanding parental leave. This group includes Ikea, Nestle, NatWest Group Polska, Procter and Gamble and Aviva – lists pulshr.pl.
The Social Affairs Council also notes the problem of too short parental leave. In May, the body presented President Andrzej Duda with four new ideas regarding social policy towards the family. These included, among others, the idea of extending leave for parents of more children to care for them.
– We recommend that parents of more children should have their leave extended to care for them – said the chairman of the Social Affairs Council. It would look like this: with one or two children, it would still be two days to care for them, with three – three days, then the number of days would increase to a certain limit, which would be four or five days. According to the Social Affairs Council, this would be a good solution for parents raising more than two children.