Policies that support our people, whatever life throws at them

This year, we overhauled Spaceship’s leave policies to create a unique framework designed to support our people — whatever life throws at them.

We did this because we wanted a leave framework that both trusts our people, while providing guidance in terms of what leave can be taken in different situations.

In thinking through how we wanted to achieve this, we considered an unlimited leave model. However, we came to the conclusion that ‘unlimited leave’ is somewhat of a misnomer. Employee leave is never truly unlimited. In fact, these types of leave models can result in poorer outcomes whereby the onus is placed on individual employees and managers to decide what leave is appropriate in different situations. This is neither fair nor equitable.

So we started with our core leave policies where we added ‘life leave’, ‘learning/volunteer leave’, ‘space days’ and ‘swappable public holidays’ to boost our annual leave provisions:

• Life Leave provides five days of leave for the purpose of life admin, family time, moving house, getting married, caring for a new pet, spending time with a new grandchild. It can also be taken on birthdays and between Christmas and New Year. This is non-cumulative and can only be taken if an employee has an accrued annual leave balance of less than 20 days.
• Learning/Volunteer Leave provides five days of leave for the purposes of studying or volunteering.
• Space Days are company-wide days off at the end of each quarter for employees to “get some space”.
• Swappable Public Holidays provide the option to work on a public holiday and trade that day for another day in the same calendar year — an important change to show our commitment to diversity.

Next, we created a progressive parental leave policy that provides 16 weeks of paid parental leave, which is gender-agnostic, does not distinguish between primary and secondary carers, and can be taken at any time during the first two years of birth, adoption or fostering. We also included four additional weeks of paid recovery leave if the employee gave birth, as well as guaranteeing to pay superannuation at the full time rate during parental leave (whether paid or unpaid) for up to 12 months.

We then moved on to ‘personal & special circumstances’ leave, and we thought about the times in life when things don’t go to plan. It occurred to us that everyone’s life is different, and the need to take time off work will ultimately depend on a person’s unique circumstances.

So we thought about this from first principles. If we’re willing to create a parental leave policy which supports new parents, don’t we also want leave policies that support someone who has to care for an elderly parent? Or for someone who has suffered a tragic loss? Or for someone who has had a serious illness or injury? Or for someone to take a mental health day to recharge so they can bring their best self to work?

Principally, we want to be there for our people whatever the situation, and this is why unlimited leave models are appealing; you simply trust your people to take what they need. But we wanted to achieve this while also avoiding some of the downsides associated with unlimited leave models. So we set out to create a framework which:

1. Shows we are there to support our people — whatever life throws at them.
2. Provides tangible guidelines on what leave is available under a range of different situations.

To achieve this, we landed on a model which establishes five categories of personal & special circumstances leave, with upper limits set relatively high — particularly when you consider what is mandated under the Fair Work Act.

These include:

• Personal Leave — two weeks of paid personal leave that accumulates from year-to-year as per the Fair Work Act, with encouragement for employees to utilise this leave for reasons that include, but are not limited to: sick leave, carer’s leave, mental health leave, menstrual leave, menopause leave, fertility treatment leave, pre-adoption leave, gender affirmation leave, or to deal with an emergency.
• Personal Leave ‘Boost’ — up to four weeks of non-cumulative paid leave per year to ensure that personal leave can be utilised for a variety of reasons such as those listed above.
• Family & Domestic Violence Leave — up to four weeks of non-cumulative paid leave per year for family and domestic violence leave.
• Compassionate Leave — up to four weeks of paid leave per permissible occasion, which includes paid leave for pregnant employees who have a miscarriage within the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, and for non-birthing parents whose partner has a miscarriage, termination or stillbirth at any stage of pregnancy.
• Miscarriage Leave — up to 16 weeks of paid leave for a pregnant employee who has a pregnancy-related illness or whose pregnancy ends after 12 weeks because of a miscarriage, termination or stillbirth.

By setting these limits relatively high, we are showing we trust our people to take what is appropriate for their circumstances, while providing guidance that isn’t present in unlimited leave models.

As an example, if an employee has a long-lost distant relative who passes away, it’s unlikely they will genuinely need to take any compassionate leave, let alone four weeks. But on the other end of the spectrum, if someone experiences an awful situation where a partner or child passes away, four weeks is unlikely to be sufficient.

So while we trust our people to take what is genuinely needed within the thresholds, Spaceship will always be there to support our people in times of need, which may include offering more paid leave than what is outlined in this new framework.

Like anything, there is a cost to these measures, and the higher the leave entitlements, the higher the potential exposure to system abuse. But to our thinking, the benefits of our people knowing Spaceship is there for them far outweighs the costs/risks.

In sharing our new leave framework and the thinking behind it, we hope it inspires other employers to adopt similar structures to ultimately make work a better and more supportive place.