AESG has used this Sunday’s Mother’s Day to announce the implementation of a new maternity policy that ‘generously’ extends on the UAE’s labour laws.
Aimed at fostering more equitable and gender-neutral career growth opportunities across its organisation, female staff are now entitled to 90-days paid leave with an additional 90-days of optional unpaid leave.
AESG described the policy in a statement as being in line with its commitment to being an equal-opportunity employer which has organically resulted in its industry-leading gender ratio with women representing 46% of office staff and 42% of senior leadership positions.
The consultancy and commissioning firm said the move will make it an attractive proposition for aspiring female professionals in the construction industry, but stressed empowering its female employees to ‘thrive in both work and family life’ was the ‘foremost reason’ for this decision.
“It’s all too common for women to have to place their careers on hold following their decision to have children. This is a contributing factor to why we see gender disparity, especially in senior management and leadership positions, in our sector,” explained Phillipa Grant, director of Energy and Sustainable Development at AESG. “We are proud of the fact that women at AESG – by virtue of their merit and our company’s fairness policies – are already well represented in senior positions. With the implementation of these new provisions, we hope to ease the transition into motherhood while giving our female employees the confidence that the hard-work and progress they have made in their careers will be safeguarded.”
AESG said its ‘world-class project management workflows that incorporate industry best-practices’ will remain ‘unimpacted’ by the new policy.
“We have always implemented a ‘soft-handover’ process with a sufficiently long duration. This has served to ensure that newly assigned team members have an in-depth understanding of the project and their responsibilities much before the actual transition takes place,” addedGrant.