Managing employee maternity or parental leave

In 84% of Czech companies, some employees took maternity or parental leave in the past five years. Some companies try to stay in touch with the employee, which helps to an extent in solving complications related to the interruption of employment. Other strategies include inviting the absent employees to participate in meetings, enabling access to corporate email and the company intranet, or allowing the employee to work from home or part time.

About the study

Within the project ‘Family, employment, education’, company research was completed in 2007, which, among other aspects, focused on issues related to employees taking up maternity leave or parental leave and therefore leaving their workplace for a certain time period. The representative survey covered a sample of 1,019 companies, chosen on the basis of quota sampling, in the private and public sectors. In the case of small enterprises, the respondent was generally the director or company owner, while in large companies the financial, human resources or deputy manager completed the survey.

The project was carried out by Masaryk University (Masarykova univerzita) in the southeastern city of Brno, in cooperation with the Research Institute for Labour and Social Affairs (Výzkumný ústav práce a sociálních věcí, RILSA) and the Centre for Empirical Research (Středisko empirických výzkumů, STEM). It was conducted within the framework of the national research programme ‘Modern society and its transformations’ (in Czech), which was subsidised by the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs (Ministerstvo práce a sociálních věcí, MPSV).

Maternity and parental leave

The employer must provide the option of maternity or parental leave to employees taking care of a child up to the age of three years. During such leave, the state financially supports the employees; however, the employer is obliged to retain the job position that the employee held prior to their leave. Partly due to the lack of flexible forms of work in the Czech Republic and due to the insufficient provision of childcare facilities for those aged up to three years, most women in particular take this leave to its full extent.

Complications for companies and organisations

In the five years prior to the survey, some employees had taken either maternity or parental leave in 83.9% of the companies surveyed. For about 30% of companies, this fact did not represent any problem and 50% characterised the ensuing complications as marginal. However, for 20% of the survey respondents, the work absence due to maternity or parental leave constituted a big or substantial problem.

Some 28.6% of companies considered that complications in searching for a substitute for the employee on maternity or parental leave were a crucial problem. In addition, 17.8% reported issues related to the employee’s qualifications being lost or becoming outdated. Moreover, 21.5% had difficulties in finding a suitable job for the employees after their return and 21.3% experienced problems in terminating the employment contract with the substitute staff. Similar problems were found among companies of different size or economic sector.

Keeping in touch

Various strategies can prevent complications related to the departure of an employee on maternity or parental leave. Companies most frequently mentioned attempts to stay in regular contact with the employees (64.4%) and inviting them to participate in corporate working sessions and meetings (63.8%). Less than 40% of companies mentioned providing information on changes at work, access to corporate email or the company intranet, or allowing the parent to work from home or part time.

The larger the company is, the less it stays in contact with its employees on maternity or parental leave (see table). On the other hand, smaller companies lag behind in the use of flexible forms of work, such as homeworking or part-time work. Differences can also be found among economic sectors: the greatest contact with the employer during maternity or parental leave is found in the education sector whereas contact is least common in manufacturing. There is considerably less contact in the private sector than in public institutions and non-profit organisations.