DRINKS giant Diageo has taken another step towards achieving gender equality in the workplace by overhauling its benefits package to give all employees the right to six months’ paid leave when they become parents.

By law, female employees are entitled to maternity leave of 52 weeks and male staff to up to two weeks of paternity leave, with women entitled to a minimum of 90 per cent of salary for six weeks followed by £145.18 for 33 weeks. Statutory paternity pay is also £145.18.

Diageo already paid above the statutory minimums, with female workers receiving full pay for 16 weeks while male workers received full pay for one week of paternity leave.

Under the new scheme, both male and female employees will be able to take a full year off, with both receiving full pay for half that time. The same terms apply whether staff become parents biologically, via surrogacy or through adoption.

The firm’s chief HR officer Mairéad Nayager noted that the change is being made to help create a more inclusive and diverse workforce.

“True gender equality in the working world requires fundamental changes to a broad range of working practices, including a shake-up of the policies and cultural norms around parental leave,” she said.

Around two-thirds of Diageo’s 4,500-strong UK workforce is based in Scotland, where the company is behind big-name whisky brands such as Johnnie Walker, Cragganmore and Talisker.

Much of the Scottish workforce is male, which has resulted in the business reporting a larger gender pay gap in Scotland than in the UK as a whole. In 2017 it said an inability to attract women into manufacturing roles that require shift working was largely to blame for a 16.7 per cent gender pay gap in its Scottish operations. That figure rose to 18% last year, meaning the firm’s median male worker in Scotland earned 18% more than its median female worker.

South of the Border, where Diageo employs a large number of females in mainly office-based roles, the pay gap is 12.6% in favour of women while for the whole of the UK it is 5.4% in favour of men.

In addition to updating its parental leave policy, the company has sought to foster diversity by encouraging more females to take on traditionally male-dominated roles. In 2017 it hired its first female apprentice coppersmith, with 18-year-old Rebecca Weir joining Diageo Abercrombie in Alloa.