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Societe Generale enhances parental leave policy in Singapore

Societe Generale has recently enhanced its parental leave policy in Singapore.

In a statement to Human Resources, Pascal Lambert, Group Country Head for Singapore and Head of South East Asia and India at Societe Generale, said: "Diversity remains an important issue for both ethical requirements and performance in Societe Generale. With our Diversity Board and strategic talent pools, we make it a priority to promote women and international profiles to positions of responsibility and senior management roles.

"While ensuring our people are evaluated based on meritocracy, we have implemented specific measures to facilitate a more balanced workplace for our female employees, namely an increase in maternity leave from 16 to 20 weeks, enhanced adoption leave, flexible work arrangements and development opportunities for female talent."

As revealed to Human Resources, the changes to the policy, effective 1 March 2019, includes an increased scope and entitlement, as follows: 

  • Maternity leave: 20 weeks of maternity leave will be offered compared to 16 weeks before.
  • Paternity and partner leave: Employees will now be entitled to 15 working days of paternity and partner leave - up from 10 working days before. This also applies to mothers in same-gender relationships who do not claim maternity leave.
  • Adoption and child surrogacy leave: Employees claiming the leave will need to self-declare as primary or secondary caregivers. Adoption leave entitlement will be aligned with maternity leave, while child surrogacy leave will be aligned with paternity and partner leave. For adoption, the age of the child in scope will increase from 12 months to 3 years.

Mukta Arya, Head of Human Resources, Southeast Asia and Head of People and Talent Development, Asia Pacific at Societe Generale, said: "Here at Societe Generale, our people are our most important assets and women are key contributors to our business. In our Singapore operations, women comprise nearly 50% of our workforce and they make up over 40% of the bank’s managerial roles with 67% of women identified for talent development programs. We recognise the dual roles many of our female employees play and we want them to succeed both at work and at home.

"As such, we want to better support and advance women’s careers by creating a culture that provides equal opportunity to all parents, regardless of gender and life goals. In addition to our enhanced parental and family care leave launched in Singapore on 1 March 2019, the bank also offers a range of flexible working arrangements (including work from home for relevant departments) to allow all our employees in Singapore to work in a way that better suits their lifestyles."

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