UK law firm TLT has today announced a significant enhancement to its family leave policy as part of the firm’s progressive and inclusive working approach.
The policy, which takes immediate effect, will see an increase in maternity, adoption and shared parental leave entitlement up to 16 weeks’ paid leave and 16 weeks’ half pay. TLT has also increased paternity leave to 4 weeks’ paid leave – a doubling of the previous offering.
The enhanced policy also provides 4 weeks’ paid parental bereavement leave, as well as offering parents or carers of disabled children paid leave to attend hospital appointments.
In addition, the introduction of a ‘ramp down, ramp up’ approach will enable those transitioning to and from family leave the chance to reduce their hours to 80% in the 4 weeks preceding leave and 8 weeks returning from maternity, adoption and shared parental leave without an impact on compensation.
The new policy also removes the qualifying criteria of one year’s service for enhanced provisions.
Helen Hodgkinson, chief people officer at TLT, says: “At TLT we believe that having a career and a family aren’t mutually exclusive. By providing family-friendly benefits that are directly linked to feedback from our people, we are removing barriers and providing support which will allow us to retain and recruit the best people.
“Earlier this year we announced a significant, long-term shift in our working practices to create a fully flexible and inclusive work environment. The enhancements made to our family leave policy go hand in hand with this progressive approach and put TLT firmly into the upper quartile of family leave provisions among legal services employers.
“Our ramp down, ramp up approach in particular is rooted in specific organisational barriers and we hope that this, along with our increased paternity leave, will allow even greater flex in who can be a full-time care-giver to a child and go some way to improving gender equality at home and in the workplace.”
John Wood, managing partner at TLT, adds:
“We understand the long-term advantages of providing a flexible and inclusive workplace and the importance of having policies in place that boost equality in the workplace and at home.
“To this end, we have kicked off a two-year multi-million pound investment programme to deliver a digital and physical workplace that supports choice, inclusion and sustainability which will empower our people to be at their best, ensuring that we can continue to build on our momentum and deliver for clients.”
TLT has over 140 partners and employs around 1,200 people.
TLT was named Law Firm of the Year at The Lawyer Awards 2021.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here