London Stock Exchange Group will offer 26 weeks of parental leave globally

The London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) is upping its parental leave to 26 weeks, as part of a broader effort to make benefits more equitable across its employee population.

LSEG, which is headquartered in the UK, employs 25,000 workers across 65 countries, with more than half based in the Asia Pacific region.

Parental leave was previously partly determined by the local laws and regulations in place where LSEG employees were based, Jennifer Thomas, the firm’s global head of equity, diversity, and inclusion, said. The company had offered 12 weeks of parental leave to US employees, whereas UK employees got 26 weeks of maternity leave, and two weeks of paternity leave.

Starting in July, all LSEG employees who’ve worked for the company for at least a year will be offered 26 weeks of parental leave, no matter where they’re based, Thomas said. The leave is gender-neutral, meaning it applies to all parents. If employees live in a region where local laws allow for more generous leave, LSEG will honor those policies.

Equity at a global scale. LSEG has grown significantly since it acquired financial market data firm Refinitiv in 2021, absorbing almost 18,000 additional employees. Over the past two to three years, LSEG has been thinking more deeply about what its equity, diversity, and inclusion offerings should look like, Thomas said.

“What we’ve been really trying to think about is the fact that we’re a global business…represented pretty much all around the world,” she said. “And so, what does equity look like at a global scale?”

The ultimate goal of the new parental leave policy is to make LSEG “a great place to work,” as well as help employees “integrate their personal lives with their work lives,” Thomas said. While parental leave only applies to a subset of their employee population, the hope is that offering such a benefit may encourage leaders to have “open and transparent conversations” with their teams about what’s going on in their lives.

Zoom out. Designing benefits that can be offered equitably across a global workforce has become a higher priority for employers in recent years, according to a fall 2023 WTW survey published in January. Seven in 10 employers had a “global minimum standard in place for employee benefits,” according to the survey, up from 36% in 2019.

“Global minimum standards are one way to signal an ambition for employee benefits to be inclusive,” Nigel Bateman, managing director of integrated and global solutions at WTW, said in a statement. “Employers are also focusing on how their benefits align with their purpose, convey their values and enhance how they are perceived as an employer.”