Volvo Car India on Wednesday announced “Family Bond” -- its gender-neutral parental leave policy. This policy, in sync with Volvo’s global directives will now allow male employees to avail up to 24 weeks (120 working days) of parental leave at 80 per cent of total salary.
Women employees will continue to avail 26 weeks of fully paid maternity leave as per the Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Act, 2017, the company said in a statement.
The policy applies to all regular salaried (on-roll full-time) employees in India who have completed a minimum of one year employment with the company. This includes all mothers and fathers, same sex parents, parents to adopted and foster children or through surrogacy. There are no limitations on age or marital status, it said.
“Volvo has a heritage of being an employee friendly company. We believe that both partners should share the joys of parenthood and be available to each other while bringing up children. Oneof the essential features of our new parental policy is that male employees can spread this privilege over a three-year period," Jyoti Malhotra, Managing Director, Volvo Car India, said.
With this policy Volvo encourages even more employees to take parental leave and make parental leave for both parents the new ‘norm’, the company added.