Birth, adoption, surrogacy, guardianship: from 1er January 2022, the Sanofi group introduces fourteen-week parental leave for all its employees who take in a child, with remuneration maintained. “Sanofi wants to show its commitment to diversity, by relying on evidence of improving work-life balance”, explains Florence Cauvet, HR Director France Sanofi. Other subjects of the diversity file, such as disabled employment, or the inclusion of LGBT + people (lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgenders or who do not recognize themselves as heterosexual or cisgender), had been dealt with upstream, and the agreement on gender equality is being renegotiated. With this device, Sanofi wants to further support the family in all its forms.
To accommodate the arrival of a child, French legislation provides for various forms of support: maternity leave, and adoption leave of sixteen weeks for the 1st and 2nd child, remunerated according to a system of daily allowances defined by the Health Insurance. As for parental education leave, in the private sector, it is available to employees with one year of seniority for a renewable period of one year. But during this leave, the employee is not remunerated by his employer (except contrary contractual or collective provisions).
Sanofi had previously provided four weeks for paternity and eighteen weeks for maternity and adoption. By establishing fourteen weeks of paid parental leave, this system creates ” a minimum “parenthood” for all populations as part of a global diversity policy. This new policy will neither modify nor diminish the benefits in place in countries which already offer more than fourteen weeks of paid parental leave. From one country to another, we have very heterogeneous situations. In Spain, they already have sixteen weeks of parental leave ”, indicates Florence Cauvet.
With this system, the group displays a desire to harmonize its social policy in all the countries where it is established. It is aimed at the hundred thousand employees of the group worldwide, including twenty-five thousand in France, regardless of their gender or sexual orientation, from the first day of work on a permanent contract (for France), or in employment ( in other states).
Favorable reception
Only one of the two parents can benefit from the device. The management did not wish to communicate on the cost of the device which was not indicated to the social partners. The group’s HRD France just clarified that it was “Mainly linked to the replacement of parents on leave”. In France, demand was rather weak until then. Of the 359 potential beneficiaries of such leave in 2020, 327 employees took paternity or childcare leave in full or for only part of the days granted (at the time twenty-one days).
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