Would you give employees ‘wedding leave’?

By Marketing Coordinator - Candice Dolley

This is hardly an Accounting, Business Advisory or Financial Planning topic, it is interesting all the same.

Would you give employees wedding leave?  Some countries allow marriage leave.  In France, for instance, employees are entitled to a minimum of four days paid ‘marriage leave’ when they get married. Over the border in Spain, that entitlement more than triples to 15 days’ paid leave.

I got married just shy of three years ago. I never even thought about hitting up my employer  for "wedding leave".  I simply put it through as annual leave.  

Before you start thinking this is going to become a "thing" it isn't.  “Under the Fair Work Act, there is no obligation to pay employees when they are off work to attend such events. Most employers would ask their employees to take these days as annual leave. Some might allow staff to take unpaid time off, but that would be up to the employer,” 

Just like I did for my wedding.  However, when I continued reading through the article (you can read the article here), other countries allow paid leave for weddings, religious holidays, school sport days, kids birthdays etc, arguing it increased productivity and reduces absenteeism.  

Wedding leave, in my opinion, should be taken as Annual leave (please note, this is my personal opinion). Leave or the flexibility to attend children's events, I like this idea (I have three children).

Trying to balance work and life  is hard.  I have been lucky in the businesses I have worked for.  I have had the flexibility to attend sports days (or similar days).  It makes it easier when you live in a smaller town and it takes 15 minutes to drive to your kids events.  You can pretty much use lunch breaks to watch events.  However, if I have missed an event it has been due to meetings I could not change.

But if I lived in Sydney or Melbourne where I had to travel an hour to and from work each day, I would not have the ability to just "duck out" to watch my child run laps of the oval.  Having the flexibility to use my leave or have additional leave per year, to watch my child participate in an event would be ideal.  

Some of my greatest memories as a child was having Mum on the sideline as I played my sporting/musical events.  As my sister and I grew older, she returned to work and couldn't attend as many of our events, I still found myself looking for her in the crowd.  

This article got me pondering, should leave for children be incorporated into the leave system?  Or is it discrimination for those who do not have children?  So many questions from reading one article.

Let me know your thoughts below