Staff benefits: HSBC Luxembourg has recently acknowledged the needs of LGTB+ parents and/or parents where one partner is not biologically related to the child, and decided to enhance the parental leave proposition.
Two benefits are already extended even if one of the parents is not yet recognized through adoption as such legally: Parental leave of ten days and leave for family reasons in the event of a child's illness.
Target audience: all staff.
Duration: indefinite.

A case arose in the company. The LGBT+ working group lead became aware of the case interacting with the concerned person. He brought the case to the attention of the management and HR. An internal working group composed of ExCo representative, LGBT+ working group and HR was created to analyze legislation in force, to understand in what the gap consisted of and how HSBC could align benefits to standards applied to biological heterosexual parents to ensure equal treatment of all staff. The working group came up with a business case that was presented to ExCo and received CEO and ExCo members’ endorsement. The business case was transposed in a policy amendment proposal that was formally submitted with regional benefits team and staff delegation.

Align parental leave propositions for all staff.

The enhanced employees proposition has been discussed with HR, approved by Exco as first level of approval, submitted to the performance and reward team and proposed for review to staff delegation and becoming a formal and permanent part of the staff handbook. Every individual requesting the leave will be granted with it in light of the criteria stated in the staff handbook.

On a voluntary basis the LGBT+ working group members invested their time to understand the needs of the colleague involved and setting up the initial conversations with relevant stakeholders. The same individuals contributed afterwards building up the business case and joining all the dedicated sessions with HR and ExCo members involved. The volunteers could invest their energies during working hours endorsed by their respective line managers. At the same time resources in HR were allocated to support the working group and face bureaucracy and procedures in scope, in addition to advocating with regional benefits team. The most important thing to mention is that the parental leaves in scope of this initiative are currently not covered by CNS and/or ADEM Labor Ministry. For this reason HSBC took the decision to bear all the costs related to those leaves. The benefit enhancement has been communicated by HR to all staff, the action has been also shared and explained by our CEO.