A benefits survey showed that the benefit had influence on 55 percent of employees 40 or younger deciding whether to remain in the federal government. Image: miniartkur/Shutterstock.com
By: FEDweek StaffOf federal employees who use paid parental leave, about a tenth of women and about a quarter of men do not use the full 12 weeks available, often for career-related reasons, GAO has said.
It said that use of the benefit, which began in October 2020, has about matched expectations of 3 percent of employees using it per year, with 4 percent having used it from that point through mid-2022. The benefit allows substituting paid leave for reasons related to the birth, adoption or foster placement of a child as a substitute for unpaid leave for those same reasons available under the Family and Medical Leave Act.
Of those taking the leave, 96 percent did so for the birth of a child with the remainder split evenly between the other two purposes, although there were some differences by demographics, the report said.
Further, while 92 percent of women who used the leave used the full 12 weeks, only 76 percent of men did so, commonly due to “not feeling that they could be away from job responsibilities” that long, concern about “the impact on their career advancement,” and because “their coworkers and supervisors did not support their use of all 12 weeks of leave.”
In addition, there were variations in rates of use among agencies, which OPM officials told GAO “may reflect differences in agency culture or the nature of the agency’s mission. They said that their ongoing and planned research may help them understand the causes and if there are any sustained disparities in paid parental leave use that need to be addressed.”
Some of the findings of the report, requested by Congress in a spending bill, reflect information previously released from the 2022 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, which contained additional questions on the topic, and from a 2021 survey on federal employee views of their benefits.
For example, the viewpoint survey showed that higher-level employees had a higher rate of use for adoption and foster placement while wage grade employees also had a higher rate for foster placement. And the benefits survey had showed that paid parental leave had a “great” or “moderate” influence on employees deciding whether to remain in a job with the federal government for 55 percent of federal employees aged 40 or younger.
GAO said that OPM has been conducting a closer look at the use of paid parental leave across employment and personal categories and plans to release that analysis soon.
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