Diageo North America (U.S., Canada and the USVI), will offer 26 weeks of paid parental leave for all parents, regardless of gender and whether they become a parent via birth, surrogacy, adoption or foster care.
It’s part of an ambitious new family leave policy Diageo is rolling out worldwide as part of its effort to create a fully inclusive and diverse workforce.
The new global policy offers all female employees in these markets a minimum of 26 weeks of fully-paid maternity leave.
Diageo is also setting a global minimum standard of four weeks fully-paid paternity leave in the majority of markets.
In additional to North America, a significant number of Diageo’s businesses are moving to 26 weeks fully-paid paternity leave including Thailand, Philippines, Singapore, Spain, Netherlands, Ireland, Italy, Russia, Colombia, Venezuela and Australia amongst others.
The company said it hopes the policy will support employees to experience the joy of raising a young family, while continuing to thrive at work and ensuring women and men are supported to have time with their new child, regardless of where they live and work.
The new policy will go live in most countries at the start of Diageo’s new financial year, July 1, 2019, with further countries to implement the policy over the course of the year. The full details of each country-specific policy, application to non-wholly owned subsidiaries and the timing of its roll-out will be shared in due course and is subject to local legal and regulatory requirements.
Diageo’s commitment to creating an inclusive and diverse working environment has been recognized by the Bloomberg Gender Equality Index in 2019. In 2018, Diageo was named by Thomson Reuters as the 4th most inclusive and diverse company in the world. 40% of Diageo’s Executive Committee and 44% of Diageo’s Board are women.
In 2018, Diageo North America was named to Working Mother Magazine’s 100 Best Companies for the 10th consecutive year and Diversity MBA’s “50 Out Front for Diversity Leadership”. In 2019, the business received a perfect score in the 2019 Corporate Equality Index.