Occupational Shared Parental Pay - what is it? How does it affect your planning?

Today's blog will look at how the policies of both you and the other parent/ adopter can affect how you should plan your shared parental leave.

Occupational pay (sometimes called enhanced or contractual pay) is something that an employer can offer employees on top of statutory pay. They don't have to, and the default position if they don't have a policy or have a policy but don't mention pay - is that shared parental pay will be paid at the statutory rate only.

Mothers/ Primary Adopters Occupational Pay

Most teachers receive occupational maternity pay. Usually this looks like the first 4 weeks of statutory maternity pay (Which is set by the government at 90%) being topped up to 100%, two weeks at the statutory only rate of 90% and then 12 weeks of occupational pay at 50% paid on top of SMP. This varies across academies and local authorities - with some offering pay up to week 40! The critical thing when planning your SPL is that you can not assume that this pay will carry across to shared parental leave. It doesn't automatically.

Most schools offer occupational maternity leave, but statutory shared parental leave - and as occupational pay is a benefit not a right, they are well within their rights to do this. If this is the case you must plan your leave accordingly - only curtailing maternity leave when you have made the most of occupational pay. The policy either won't mention pay at all, or it will say something along the lines of "any shared parental pay will be paid at the rate set by the government".

Some employers do offer occupational shared parental leave (OShPP)- which gives you greater flexibility. If this is the case you need to read the policy carefully (and never be satisfied with being told verbally that you get OShPP, you must get it in writing from HR if it is not in the policy in case you later need to rely on that if paid wrongly!). Over the ten years that we have been working with teachers we have read thousands of policies, and come across several ways that schools can offer OShPP. These are the keythings that you need to look out for:

1) What pay do they offer? This should be detailed in the policy. Often it will say that it mirrors the occupational maternity scheme, and that any pay already taken as occupational maternity pay would be deducted from what is available. A very small number of schools out there actually offer better pay on SPL than on maternity leave - in which case you may be better swapping earlier than usual - this is very rare though and I would recommend signing up for support if you think this may apply as it can be complicated! The pay offered can also be less than OMP, again it can then be more complex to work out exactly when is the best time to swap over.

2) Are there any extra conditions? Some common ones to look out for are them stating that the weeks available are counted from the start of maternity leave. This would mean that, let's say you curtailed your maternity leave after 8 weeks for the 6 week summer holiday, when you start SPL you have had 8 weeks of materntiy leave, but 14 weeks have passed since the start of your leave period in total, so they would only pay you the remaining 4 weeks of occupational pay. Your statutory pay would continue as normal and they can never stop you accessing all 39 weeks of that.

3) Do they require any extra paperwork to claim it? Something we see quite often in the policy is that to access OShPP employees must write to their employer and confirm that they will return for a minimum of X months (often 6) after SHPP and that if they don't they would have to pay back OShPP. You would need to add this confirmation into your cover letter explicitly when booking your SPL.

If you're unsure about what your policy offers, our support packages A and B will check over that for you and plan the leave in the way that works best for you, your dates, and your policy.

The Partner/ Father/ Secondary Adopters Occuaptional Pay

Again, over the years we have read hundreds of these! Outside of teaching there is a huge variety on what employers offer - from statutory only, to a years full pay! For the sake of this article I will refer to partner, but this can include fathers who are not partners and likewise secondary adopters.

What type of leave are they offering?

If your partners policy does offer extra pay the first thing to establish is what type it is. Many private sector employers now offer much more than 2 weeks of paternity leave at full pay. Paternity leave is completely separate to shared parental leave, so if your partners employer offers 6 months of fully paid paternity leave - that is great, they can use that and you can use shared parental leave separately to maximise pay from holidays.

We've also seen an increase in employers offering their own occupational leave schemes, outside of SPL and Paternity leave - new parent leave, family leave and so on. These also do not count within any allowance for shared parental leave and can be viewed as a separate allowance. (If you are unsure, ask HR - is this shared parental leave or something else?).

What conditions are attached?

If they do offer OShPP then you need to establish how much, and what the conditions are. For example we come across several policies offering 26 weeks of full pay, which sounds amazing, but then there are some catches. Commonly - "less any matenrity leave taken by the mother" , this will apply when worded like that regardless of whether you work for the same company. So if the mother has taken 20 weeks matenrity leave before returning for a school holiday, the partner would only benefit from 6 weeks of fully paid shared parental leave.

They may also require you to take it within a set time frame - e.g. within the first 6 months. Or,in a set number of blocks. With SPL you always get three notices to book leave each,but as OShPP is a benefit rather than a statutory right, they can require you to take leave in one block only if you want to acess the enhanced pay.

A common requirment is that the partner must be claiming SHPP in order to acess the enhanced pay on top - so the mother/ primary adopter would have to allocate some of the 39 weeks of statutory pay to their partner. This is very common, though not always the case.

You will also need to check how long they require you to return to work for in order not to pay it back, and whether they require a declaration regarding you intend to do that at the time of booking.

These are all possible scenarios, but the key thing is to read your policy carefully and not just the headline figures on pay - these can sound great initially - and they may well be - but often require careful planning to make sure you take the leave in the way that gets the best pay all round for your family - considering both policies. If you book leave and have gotten it wrong, you may end up in the horrible position of thinking you were going to get full pay, only to be told that you aren't eligible because of one of the factors set out above, or something else withint their policy. At that point it is too late - you must make sure these things have been checked prior to booking and taking your leave.

Our support packages A+ and B+ include thoroughly checking your partners policies, drafting their forms and supporting with their employers as well as yours if difficulties are encountered along the way. We enjoy working with couples to look at creative plans to maximise leave and pay for both of you- ultimatley giving you more time together as a family!