Parental Leave in Practice: Keon Bakhshi Shares His Experience

My role at Alpha Bank London is an MIS Analyst. I help develop and support the Finance and Risk teams with their reporting and data. This requires technical knowledge and understanding of systems/processes.

My family is myself, my girlfriend Steph and our baby Ollie. I have been together with Steph for 12 and a half years and we live just outside of London. 

My main reason for taking shared parental leave (‘SPL’) was to help support Steph and Ollie during the first months of becoming parents, this is our first child and two weeks paternity  leave didn’t feel enough for our situation. Steph also suffers with her mental health so this also played a key role in my decision to take the parental leave available. Another huge reason was the fact that I could spend time with my baby son and see him grow at home and not miss those first key milestones.  I think that sometimes the father’s role can be overlooked as they don’t always get to spend as much time with the child as the mother in that first year.

I believe I was supported very well by my manager at the time, and the People & Culture team were extremely helpful in figuring out my entitlement, having a call with myself and Steph to discuss our situation. The SPL law is still relatively new, so the help was invaluable to us. The process of arranging the leave was fine.  The pattern I was requesting was to work one week a month to support the business at key times, so it was a bit of an issue working out my time off in terms of specific dates and such, but they were all placeholders anyway until we knew the date of birth.

I think we experienced many benefits, the main one being able to care for Ollie as a team together without the worry of work. Another benefit was for Steph’s mental health, knowing I was around constantly and being able to take ‘shifts’ for night feeds. As mentioned previously, I feel personally much more of a deeper bond with my son as I got to spend much more time with him than I would have otherwise if I didn’t take the SPL.

I think this time impacted both relationships hugely, me being able to build a bond with my son and spend more time with him and also, Steph had me as a constant support on those tougher days and didn’t have to worry about waking me as I had to be up for work for example. I think it helped mine and Steph’s relationship also as any child is a blessing, but we are fortunate to go through most of the early experiences together.

I would say the most rewarding part was seeing Ollie grow and being able to spend that time with him as he grew up to the boy he is now, it’s special and I haven’t taken it for granted!

Returning to work was fine for me.  It helped that during my SPL, I did work one week a month anyway to help support the Finance team and keep in touch with work. The full return to work though was fine and my manager at the time was supportive and eased me back into projects which needed working on!

I think Alpha Bank London’s support is very good based on what I have experienced so far, the SPL enhanced pay benefit was wonderful for my family. In terms of general support, all managers I have worked under have been very supportive during the whole process, from scans during pregnancy to Ollie being unwell and being able to WFH or move hours around, it is invaluable and as an employee, you remember these things fondly.

The enhanced SPL as mentioned was a very good benefit and allowed me to take my time off. I think it’s also very good that children can be covered in healthcare at the Bank. All employees are also enrolled in a health cashback plan which includes a £200 new child payment, this helps at a time where you are buying lots of nappies!

I do get it, it’s been a view intertwined in our lives that men work, women look after children and that’s that. The world is becoming a more open place and those ‘older’ views are changing, slowly. Personally, I am quite relaxed about the perception of those things, I would much rather spend time with my children and family as opposed to trying to appease people to potentially ‘boost’ my career which might have happened years ago when this was introduced and may happen at other corporations but here at ABL, I never felt that at all.

I would definitely recommend it! Every situation is different of course and there are other mitigating factors but if you ask Steph, she is very grateful that I got the opportunity to take the time off to be with my family and for myself, it was a no brainer, nothing beats spending time with my family and I hope Ollie would be grateful for it also!