The review, announced on 1 July 2025, forms part of the Government’s broader ‘Plan to Make Work Pay’.
This article outlines the key elements of the review into parental leave and what employers should be doing now to prepare, particularly those operating in shift-based production environments.
What is the parental leave review?
The review, jointly led by the Department for Business and Trade, and the Department for Work and Pensions, will assess the effectiveness of the current statutory framework for all types of leave including:
- Maternity and paternity leave
- Shared parental leave
- Adoption and neonatal care leave
- Statutory pay entitlements
Why is there a review?
Working family structures have changed since the 1970s when the Employment Protection Act 1975 was passed, which established the right to maternity leave for some mothers.
Numerous amendments have been made subsequently to widen statutory rights to other groups of parents and reflect the realities of family life in society. The result has been a complex web of legislation with various annexures wrapped around the original law.
There has been pressure on the government from lobbying groups to review this body of legislation and the announcement to have a landmark review is welcomed by charities and campaign groups. The review is seen by those groups as an opportunity to modernise the law and align it with contemporary family dynamics and workplace realities.
A more streamlined and inclusive system could reduce administrative burdens and legal risk, while also improving employee satisfaction and retention.
Employers should be prepared to help employees navigate both transitional and long-term changes and for this, they need to upskill their HR teams and people managers on the legislative changes once fully announced.
What will be reviewed?
The Government has set four objectives to assess the suite of parental leave and future reform:
- Maternal health
- Economic growth through labour market participation
- Best start in life
- Childcare
These objectives suggest a broader policy ambition, not just to improve parental leave, but to reshape how work and family life intersect in the UK.
Considerations for employers
Employers should begin reviewing their internal policies and practices in anticipation of potential reforms. Key areas to assess include:
Eligibility and communication
Are your employees fully informed of their rights from day one? With the possibility of day-one rights for paternity and unpaid parental leave, employers must ensure that onboarding and HR communications are legally compliant and transparent.
This is likely to be an easy fix for employers providing they are on the front foot with changes and adapt their internal family leave policies and procedures accordingly.
Flexibility in scheduling
Can your shift patterns accommodate extended or staggered leave? When parents return from leave, can your shift patterns accommodate requests made for flexible working – to adjust the days, hours or place of work?
Employers in manufacturing must consider how to balance operational continuity with increased flexibility. This includes preparing for a likely rise in flexible working requests upon return from leave. As the food and beverage sector operate with tight production turnaround times and typically in shift patterns, any ‘flexibility may be rigid’; whilst employers may be able to accommodate ‘shift hopping’ they may not be able to accommodate changes to shift times on an individual basis very easily.
Whilst one solution may be to back fill gaps in shift times with agency workers this will present a cost and is unlikely to be a workable solution long term, particularly if margins are tight.
Payroll systems
Are you equipped to manage changes in statutory pay rates or entitlements? Payroll systems may need to be updated to reflect more generous or complex entitlements, and HR teams should be trained to handle these changes efficiently. Our view is that this is probably the least impactful consideration because family leave can often be on a handful of occasions an employee who is starting a family and not all employees will request it due to their age and stage in life.
Be proactive
These considerations are not just administrative and operational, they are strategic. Employers who take a proactive approach will be better positioned to manage risk, retain talent, and demonstrate compliance with evolving legal requirements.
Beyond compliance, this is a chance for employers to demonstrate leadership in workforce wellbeing. Proactively updating policies and engaging with staff about upcoming changes can foster trust and loyalty. In sectors with high turnover, such as food and beverage manufacturing, this can be a differentiator.
Potential impact for employers
Current paternity rights offer an entitlement to leave and pay for two non-consecutive weeks within a 52-week period, either at £187.18 per week or 90% of their average weekly earnings, whichever is lower.
There is speculation this could be extended to match maternity leave, and that paternity leave and unpaid parental leave will be ‘day one’ rights for workers. Many employers in the food and drink sector actually pay full pay for the standard two-week paternity leave period already; likely because it is rarely exercised when looking at the workforce as a whole and it is a helpful differentiator to attract and retain talent at low cost.
A cultural shift could change factory dynamics
If full pay becomes mandatory, these changes are likely to have significant impact on payroll and create gaps in the labour force which employers must consider carefully to ensure the sector can maintain business continuity whilst supporting employee’s family leave.
If pay is enhanced for shared parental leave, the industry may see a shift in which parent takes family leave, and a potential increase in fathers taking shared parental leave. This is especially the case where both parents earn a comparative amount and there would be no change to household income.
It is thought that, currently, male workers fear the impact of leave on their progression at work and have financial concerns where regular earnings far exceed the capped paternity leave pay and shared parental leave pay. Often, these issues deter fathers from taking family leave.
There could be a cultural change around paternity leave/shared parental leave with a greater effect to the days of additional paternity leave that had a low take up and the aftermath of shared parental leave as studies have shown the barrier to more fathers taking such leave have been economic ones.
A further barrier that could be eroded that requires mothers to sacrifice a proportion of their maternity leave for the father (typically) to take the time instead under the shared parental leave provisions. These are barriers which, if removed, could lead to a greater share of childcare in an infants early life.
The result of increased uptake of paternity leave and/or shared parental leave for employers will be gaps in the workforce which employers have to temporarily fill whilst employees are on family leave. With shift work and production lines, this could cause a continuity of service issues if adequate preparation is not put in place, such as utilising temporary staffing solutions like agency workers.
This may lead to AI automation being further embedded into industry, particularly at the labour-intensive and repetitive production line level.
One of the four objectives the Government is working to has significant relevance for this sector - economic growth through labour market participation.
This means supporting economic growth by parents staying in work after starting a family. The real impact of these changes will be seen in the demographic of the workforce. In a predominately male workforce, such as the food and beverage sector, these changes could cause a key shift in the working population on the factory floors from predominantly male-led to more women being employed in these roles.
If paternity leave and/or shared parental leave becomes more financially viable and accessible, we may see a cultural shift in who takes family leave to equalise to the father or non-birthing parent. A more equitable system could encourage greater uptake among fathers or non-birthing parents, which in turn would require employers to rethink workforce planning and resource allocation.
This could mark a transformational moment for the sector, with long-term implications for recruitment, retention, and workplace culture.
Employers who get ahead of the developments and embrace these changes early may gain a competitive edge in attracting a more diverse and engaged workforce and steadying the fluctuations in employee in the workplace in the coming years.
Sam Greenhalgh is a partner and Grace Humby is a trainee solicitor at law firm Birketts LLP.
