The Parental Leave and Employment Protection Act 1987 requires, in almost all circumstances , an employer to keep the position of an employee open when they wish to take parental leave. The position may need to be kept open for up to a year.
The Act allows employees to return to their position earlier than contemplated when certain situations arise. Here the employee simply wanted to return early to a part time role rather than the fulltime role she left.
The employee gave several good reasons why an early return to a part time role was beneficial to the employer; including holding on to a valuable employee, flexibility that a part time position offered to both and that if she came back there would be no “down time” involved in training a new person.
Her open communication to her employer encouraged the employer to think positively about an early return. Remember that the Employment Relations Act 2000 requires the parties to deal with each other in good faith and that this obligation obliged the employer to give the employee’s proposal careful and objective consideration.
While the Act does not force the employer to take the employee back in a different role to the one they left (that is a part-time job rather than a full-time job) the employer could see benefits in agreeing to a part time role if the employee agreed to a slight alteration to the duties she undertook.
