Grant Thornton offers long service leave for short stayers

Mr Keith and his director of people and culture, Kim Schmidt said they believed this is the first time an employer has changed the rules around long service leave in this way.

"The legislation is outdated and this is an opportunity to connect with our people, particularly our Millennials, to engage them in our organisation and have them working at their best," said Mr Keith. "To do that, we are offering over and above what is being legislated in each State."

Despite the fact that each State and Territory has its own legislation around long service leave, Ms Schmidt said their legal advice was that the more generous nature of his offer to staff means that this benefit was likely to survive any legal challenge under the legislation.

"The first thing we did was get legal advice," Mr Keith said.

Ms Schmidt said that his 1,300 employees are still able to save up their long service leave if that is what they want: "This is a choice people make. We are not forcing people to take long service leave early.

"Essentially, what we are trying to do is give people access to five weeks [total leave] per year."

'We hope this policy will be widely adopted'

Grant Thornton also announced this week that is offering the most generous parental leave scheme among accountancy firms: 20 weeks from May 1 and 26 weeks from 2017. Before this, the best on offer in the sector was 18 weeks (PwC and BDO).

Potentially, if a Grant Thornton employee's partner works at another company with a generous scheme and claims primary carer status, the Grant Thornton parent could also claim to be a primary carer and the parents could tag-team their leave to give their baby a year of fully-paid parental care, he said.

"We hope this policy will be widely adopted by males and females."

The Virgin group of companies in the UK offers a full year of paid parental leave to be shared if two people work at the company. It also offers unlimited vacation days.

Grant Thornton has also adopted the All Roles Flex flexible working policy, which was pioneered by Telstra three years ago and makes every role able to be done in different hours or locations by default, rather than by exception.

"These policies are market leading, innovative and disruptive," says Mr Keith, adding that they are designed to suit different life stages. People may want more than their four-weeks-per-year holidays when they are young and studying to qualify as chartered accountants or want to travel, the extra parental leave can benefit them (it is available to primary carers) when they start families, and the extra flexibility around working times and locations will help them balance competing work and personal demands.

"We are going fully flex… We are referring to it as the Grant Thornton Flex Appeal," he said.

Around 25 per cent of 25 to 27 year olds leave the firm each year and Mr Keith says that rate is unacceptable.

"We don't accept that level of [staff] turnover is in our people's or clients' best interests. Our clients value having team members that have worked with them over an extended period of time and understand their business indepth.," he said.

"We believe the benefits of this suite of policies will outweigh any cost."

In its recent submission to the Victorian government's review of long service leave arrangements, the Australian Human Resources Institute ​said funds for the long service leave should be redirected to take-home pay, superannuation and credit for recreational leave that can be deferred to an end-of-service date.

AHRI national president Peter Wilson said such a scheme would direct the value of long service leave into "where it's most needed by workers today".

Only 21 per cent of workers stay with an employer for 10 years or more, according to a survey by AHRI.