Employees may approach you to discuss Shared Parental Leave and are encouraged to do so early to give as much time as possible for planning and preparation of their leave.
Before the meeting
Review any paperwork they may have submitted including time-frames, blocks of leave and holiday entitlements etc, the University cannot refuse continuous requests for leave and must consider discontinuous requests, therefore, planning for leave should form part of the meeting.
The HR Employment Services Team will be available to offer policy advice.
Reading the policy, guidelines and frequently asked questions beforehand will give you the overview of the entitlement, eligibility criteria and paperwork the employee needs to fill out.
Approach
| Do's | Don'ts |
|---|
| Initiate a productive environment |
Hold the meeting somewhere that you will be disturbed |
| Ensure you have enough time with the employee |
Rush the conversation |
| Review options, time-frames and practicalities |
Dismiss options without considering them |
| Explore eligibility criteria, refer to policy, have a follow-up meeting if necessary |
Make any assumptions without fully exploring the information |
| Agree on next steps, formalise leave arrangements or agree to reconvene |
Automatically discount discontinuous leave |
What next
Your employee may have a very firm view of what they want to do and may have submitted all their paperwork to you during the meeting. Alternatively, they may be discussing options with you without committing to SPL at this stage.
If your employee has a firm view, you will need to review all the paperwork and leave details, if your employee is requesting continuous leave, this needs to be agreed and the paperwork scanned and submitted to HR via UniCore as soon as possible to initiate the pay and acknowledgement letter.
If your employee has requested discontinuous leave, this must be considered (see quick guides to discontinuous leave section). Once a decision has been taken, please confirm to HR to confirm via letter to the employee 14 days after the paperwork was submitted.
For employees who haven’t made up their minds yet, you could agree to reconvene within a few weeks to assess whether any decisions have been made.
Paperwork
It is important that the HR Department receive all notification documentation in good time; and any paper based applications should be scanned and submitted to UniCore via the HR Helpdesk (hr@nottingham.ac.uk). Alternatively, the employee may provide this to you electronically, copying in the HR Department.
Your employee can also submit their applications and paperwork directly to HR using the relevant on-line application forms.