Guidance

Advertise leave policies in job adverts

Published 4 March 2026

Applies to England, Scotland and Wales

Purpose of this action

Publishing leave policies can show you are committed to helping staff to maintain a healthy work-life balance. It can help you attract a wider and more diverse range of people to your organisation.

The aim of advertising leave policies is to encourage more people to apply for roles. Leave policies include:

• parental leave
• carers leave
• compassionate leave

Doing this can help reduce barriers applicants may face, such as balancing work with caring responsibilities.

Benefits and evidence

Sharing your leave policies may help you attract more applicants, including carers and prospective parents. Making it clear that you will help applicants balance work and caring responsibilities may help them to stay in work or rejoin. This allows you to recruit from the widest possible range of people.^{[footnote 1]}

Research suggests that transparent leave policies can be an important part of successful recruitment.^{[footnote 2]}

Employers have reported that they believe that having inclusive and clear leave policies can give an organisation a competitive edge in attracting the best talent.^{[footnote 3]} Making enhanced parental leave policies public can help attract applicants and retain talented employees.^{[footnote 4]}

A review of 750,000 UK job adverts by Totaljobs found that fewer than 1% mentioned parental leave. They suggest that this lack of information can lead people to view an organisation negatively.^{[footnote 5]} Transparency may help remove the need for candidates to ask difficult questions. People may feel uncomfortable asking about parental leave or eligibility during an interview but need to know about these policies before accepting a job. They might worry that asking for information signals a need for time off and will hurt their job prospects.^{[footnote 6]} 

Implementing this action

To advertise your leave policies effectively, you could consider the following steps:

• use a dedicated section in the advert to explain the types of leave you offer
• give clear examples of the support available to staff
• make sure full details are easy to find on your website
• state clearly what employees get if your offer is above the legal minimum
• list any eligibility rules, such as how long someone must work for you before they qualify
• use inclusive language that recognises different types of family structure, such as adopting or same-sex parents

Tracking progress

You might want to consider tracking the progress of this action by measuring:

• the proportion of new adverts that state leave details
• tracking how many employees actually use the leave policies you offer, including against different characteristics (such as sex, disability or caring status)
• surveying new staff or applicants to find out if knowing about leave policies influenced their decision to apply
• tracking if the number of staff who identify as unpaid carers increases over time

Where possible, you should compare any data you gather with ‘baseline’ data from previous recruitment campaigns.

Data privacy

Some or all of the equality information you collect is likely to be ‘special category personal data’, meaning it has special legal protections. 

Ensure that you are complying with the UK’s data protection legislation when you collect and analyse employees’ data.

Get advice and approval from your organisation’s privacy or data protection expert before you start.

1. Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (2024) Carer’s Leave Impact Assessment   ↩

2. The Behavioural Insights Team (2025). How to improve gender equality in the workplace: actions for employers.  ↩

3. Bright Horizons (2025) Bright Horizons parental leave and family support UK benchmark  ↩

4. Government Equalities Office (2021) What motivates employers to improve their Shared Parental Leave and pay offers? - GOV.UK ↩

5. Totaljobs (2024) Family Planning: How to Make Parental Leave Work for Everyone in 2024 ↩

6. Totaljobs (2024) Family Planning: How to Make Parental Leave Work for Everyone in 2024 ↩