Parental leave policy
This policy applies to employees who are new parents regardless of how a child has joined the employee’s family. A separate ‘pregnancy leave policy’ may be developed at a later date to support employees who are pregnant and giving birth.
Federal and provincial resources
Eligibility for parental leave
New parents are entitled to up to 69 weeks of unpaid parental leave. Information about dividing parental leave between two parents is available in the linked resources above.
Hypha employees are eligible for paid parental leave for 3 out of the next 12 months after a child arrives in the employee’s family. These months do not have to be consecutive, but Hypha’s salary top-up program is designed with EI payments in mind and EI payments generally must be consecutive.
EI payments
Assuming a standard parental leave, federal EI benefits pay 55% of an employee’s salary, up to a weekly maximum of $668 (monthly maximum of $2700). For the purposes of calculating EI payments, the annual salary where the weekly maximum is reached is $58,909.09. Nearly all of our salary matrix entries are above this value.
There is a possibility that EI will pay for non-consecutive weeks of parental leave, but a new claim must be submitted.
Hypha’s top-off program
Hypha will pay three months’ salary, less the EI payment, up to a maximum salary of 3x our base minimum salary. This top-up-cap salary is saved in the Operations Planning spreadsheet on the Salary Matrix tab.
Here are some examples of what a pay cycle might look like for employees at various levels:
Employee A (L0 R0 S0) works 4 days per week and has an annual salary of $52,531
- This employee’s monthly salary is $4,377.58
- EI will pay 55% of the monthly salary: 0.55(4377.58) \= $2,407.67 paid by EI
- Hypha will pay the balance: 4377.58 - 2407.67 \= $1,969.91 paid by Hypha
Employee B (L6 R4 S3) works 5 days per week and has an annual salary of $260,249.
- This is above Hypha’s top-up-cap, so we will use an annual salary of $157,593.
- This employee’s monthly salary is $13,132.75
- EI will pay 55% of the monthly salary to a max of $2700: $2,700 paid by EI
- Hypha will pay the balance: 13132.75 - 2700 \= $10,432.75 paid by Hypha
Q\&A
- Does taking parental leave count as a month with a 0-day work week for the purposes of calculating average vacation?
- Employees are entitled to 3 weeks’ worth of paid vacation based on their average work week throughout the year.
- No, an employee on parental leave is still a full-time employee at their usual time commitment, so their vacation allotment is not impacted by parental leave.
- Does an employee continue accruing labour patronage while on parental leave?
- No. Labour patronage is calculated by “hours worked” as a member, and while a member is still employed full-time during parental leave, they are not working hours. This also means that a probationary member's probationary period would pause on the "hours worked" side but not on the "time passed" side.
- A person must complete >800 hours of paid work for the co-op in the last 52 weeks AND have been an employee for at least 1 year to be eligible for full membership. Historically, the limiting factor on this is "time passed" because it's very easy to work 800 hours for the co-op; it usually takes 25 weeks to hit that number.
- Does seniority pause while an employee is on parental leave?
- No, employee seniority does not pause. Hypha doesn’t use employee seniority for anything but we do track membership seniority, which also will not pause. This is consistent with a probationary period not pausing on the "time passed" side.
- Can an employee break up months of parental leave (i.e., take 1 month of leave, work for 1 month, take 2 months of leave)?
- Technically yes, but it may not be practical or efficient for the employee. EI payments may not allow for returning to work between leaves, and Hypha’s top-up program will not compensate for a lack of EI payments.
- In the example for Employee B above, Hypha will pay $10,432.75 for each month of parental leave regardless of whether the employee is being paid by EI or not.