Japanese company allows male employees to take paternity leave with 100% pay.

To alleviate financial anxieties and encourage childbirth, some Japanese companies have introduced policies allowing fathers to take paternity leave while their children are on maternity leave and receive 100% of their salary.

Aeon Group will allow employees to take paid leave to care for their children up to one year old. The policy, expected to be implemented this year, aims to alleviate financial worries and encourage male employees to take leave to care for their children.

This benefit has no age limit and will be gradually rolled out starting in February to approximately 150 companies within the group. In the first year, it is expected that around 2,000 male and female employees will take paid leave to care for their children.

Currently, almost 100% of Aeon's female employees receive maternity leave, but this rate is only 15% for male employees. Maternity leave benefits provided by insurance only cover a maximum of about 80% of their salary, so employees will receive the remaining 20% from the company after they return to work.

At this Japanese retailer, many employees are reluctant to take time off due to fears of reduced income. Therefore, the company plans to encourage male employees to participate more in childcare through various measures to alleviate anxiety when returning to work.

In addition to its policy of paying 100% of salary during maternity leave, Aeon also plans to establish a system to address employees' concerns about the potential impact on their career paths if they take leave for childcare. For example, if the company conducts a performance review while an employee is on maternity leave, they will only evaluate based on the period before the employee's absence.

In Japan, Aeon is not unique in its policy of taking leave to care for young children. Suntory Holdings also plans to increase the percentage of male employees taking leave to care for their children to 100% by 2025, up from 85% in 2022.

At Sapporo Breweries, all eligible male and female employees were granted paternity leave in 2023, after the company introduced a program that maintained 100% pay during the first week of leave and provided in-home parenting counseling.

A survey conducted by Japan's Ministry of Health , Labour and Welfare in June 2023 among companies with more than 1,000 employees showed that 46.2% of male workers whose wives gave birth in the previous business year had taken paternity leave.

As part of its efforts to address the declining birth rate, the Japanese government has implemented measures to increase the percentage of men taking paternity leave, aiming to raise this rate to 50% by 2025 and 85% by 2030.

The Japanese Ministry of Health 's research agency projects that the country's population will decline by 17% between 2020 and 2050, to 104.69 million people. By 2070, the population will be as low as 87 million, according to the National Institute for Social Security and Population Research (IPSS). The number of children in Japan has been declining for more than four decades, as the desire to marry and raise children has decreased and financial anxieties have increased.

Phiên An ( according to Japan Times, Kyodo News, Reuters )

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