nib offers new employee benefits to boost life at nib

nib Group (nib) has launched a new suite of flexible benefits to better support the personal health and wellbeing needs of its diverse workforce of more than 1,300 employees.

The broad range of entitlements for employees include increased paid parental leave for all parents; gender affirmation leave; compassionate leave for pregnancy loss and miscarriage; cultural leave; flexible public holidays; and increased paid family and domestic violence leave. The benefits came into effect from 1 July.

nib Group Chief People Officer, Martin Adlington said the benefits follow months of consultation with employees and planning, to better support nib’s people.

“It’s important that our benefits reflect the diverse needs of all our employees, no matter their life stage,” Mr Adlington said.

“For example, one of our benefits include increasing our paid parental leave for up to 18 weeks for all parents, regardless of whether they’re a primary or secondary carer, in the first two years of the child’s life. Our employees can choose to take this leave in a way that suits them – whether that’s consecutive weeks, single days, full pay or half pay,” he said.

Mr Adlington said the suite of benefits also reflect Australia’s modern and inclusive society.

“For example, our parental leave benefits provide greater opportunity for all parents to share family responsibilities,” Mr Adlington said.

“Current data tells us that men account for only 12% of primary carer leave use[1], yet it’s known that fathers feel more motivated after taking parental leave and will consider staying with their organisation longer as a result.[2] Women are also more likely to have interrupted careers, reduced participation in the workforce and lower earnings potential to care for their child or family members.[3]

“We believe all employees, no matter their gender or background, should have equal opportunity to excel in the workplace. Our range of benefits will help to support this and shows that we’re serious about meeting our commitments in our Diversity and Inclusion Action Plan released last year,” he added.

Another benefit introduced includes five days of paid cultural leave designed to support nib’s Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander employees to take time away to practice their traditional rituals and customs and partake in dates of significance.

“We’ve introduced five days paid leave to enable our First Nations employees to participate in days of significance, such as NAIDOC and Reconciliation Week, understanding that it’s an important part of their culture, tradition and identity,” Mr Adlington said.

The benefits complement nib’s hybrid working model, introduced last year, which includes a $1,200 annual work from home allowance and the opportunity to work outside the office for the majority of the time, including overseas.

“Life at nib means our people have the flexibility to choose when, where and how they work and it’s important our policies, practices and benefits support this.  In fact, 85% of our employees say they now have the flexibility in their work schedule to be able to better balance their work and personal needs.

We were also excited to expand our hybrid work offering recently to include international remote work for up to six weeks at a range of locations, including the UK and Ireland,” Mr Adlington said.

“Our benefits help position us as a market leader when it comes to our employees. We aim to be an employer of choice for both our existing and future employees,” he added.

Employee benefits snapshot

nib’s new and updated employee benefits include:

• Compassionate/bereavement leave: definition
  of family extended to include traditional kinship structure and include pregnancy
  loss and miscarriage

• Cultural leave: supports First Nations peoples in Australia and New Zealand to
  practice traditional rituals and customs

• Flexible public holidays: allows employees to ‘swap’ a scheduled public holiday to another
  date of celebration (e.g. Diwali or Lunar New Year)

• Family & domestic violence leave: increase
  in entitlement from 10 to 20 days paid leave and the introduction of five days
  paid leave for support persons

• Gender affirmation leave: supports
  trans, gender diverse and/or intersex employees’ medical and/or legal gender affirmation
  processes

• Health insurance discount: 50% off nib health insurance for all Australian-based nib employees

• Parental Leave: increased to 18 weeks paid leave for all parents (regardless of
  their gender or carer status), paid superannuation for up to 12 months during
  parental leave and two days grandparents leave

[1] WGEA Gender Equality Scorecard Data (2020-2021), wgea.gov.au/publications/australias-gender-equality-scorecard  

[2] 2021 McKinsey Study, mckinsey.com/business-functions/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/a-fresh-look-at-paternity-leave-why-the-benefits-extend-beyond-the-personal

[3] WGEA, ‘Wages and Ages :Mapping the Gender Pay Gap by Age’ (2022), wgea.gov.au/publications/wages-and-ages