The rise of employee divorce benefits

Dissolving a marriage can be stressful, to say the least. Some companies are building in flexibility and systems for employees to navigate divorce.

Mental-health services, fertility treatments, paid menstrual leave, even pet bereavement – throughout the past few years, workplace benefits have evolved to keep up with employees’ increasing desire for a positive work-life balance.

Now, some companies are also providing support for workers navigating the intense and time-consuming – but common – process of divorce.

“Divorce is undoubtedly one of the most stressful life events a person can go through, and the immediate emotional impact of a relationship breakdown can feel all consuming. Mental health – and, in turn, ability to work effectively – can therefore be significantly impacted,” says Rebecca Pierce, former family solicitor and co-founder of London-based divorce consultancy Pierce & Groves.

She says the end of a marriage can be a “horrible shock” to some people who aren’t expecting it, and can also be highly labour intensive for everyone involved.

“The divorce process, particularly the associated financial aspects, can also demand a lot of time and attention from the parties themselves in dealing with lawyers’ requests for information and documentation.” On top of stress, this can cause absenteeism as workers take time off to attend to these matters, putting these employees on the back foot.

A rising number of companies are aware of these difficulties – and keen to offer their workers support benefits that employers haven’t traditionally provided. Some firms are offering paid time off or flexible-working arrangements to allow their employees to tend to personal matters related to marriage dissolution, such as meetings and court hearings. Some are also providing emotional and mental-health support.

The benefits are not yet a widespread phenomenon, but experts say they can be crucial to support employees with a stressor that touches many of them – and employees may even come to expect them.

In the US, publishing company Hearst rolled out a divorce-benefits programme to its 12,000 employees through a partnership with SupportPay, a child-support management and payment platform for co-parents, in September 2022.

The benefits for employees going through a separation include free therapy sessions and legal assistance, according to the company. The programme aims to address the negative repercussions of separation that affect “how [employees] feel, how they do their jobs and their overall wellbeing”, says Maria Walsh, Hearst’s SVP and head of benefits.

And in the UK, at the beginning of 2023, Positive Parenting Alliance (PPA), a group of organisations in the UK working for children during separation and divorce, announced an initiative to promote more family-friendly policies for employees going through a divorce or separation. They have called for separation to be recognised as a life event in HR policies; they’ve also asked companies to offer parents flexible working, access to counselling and internally promoting separation support services for employees (for example, organisations supporting single parents).

Multinational groceries retailer Tesco is one of the companies that has launched divorce benefits based upon PPA’s suggestions in the UK.

“We think that these changes will support colleagues with managing what can be one of the most challenging life events that they can experience, either via the resources we’ve made available or a more flexible and understanding response from their managers and team,” says Mustafa Faruqi, the company’s head of reward and workplace relations.

These benefits have become more possible – and well timed – as the pandemic spotlighted employees’ struggles with mental health, and, in many ways, normalised conversations about workplace stress in society, says Peter Cappelli, a professor of management at The Wharton School, and author of Our Least Important Asset: Why the Relentless Focus on Finance and Accounting is Bad for Business and Employees.

“The old notion of workers ‘being professional and leaving their problems at the door’ is long-gone,” says Craig Jackson, a professor of occupational health Psychology at Birmingham City University, UK. This benefits change may represent the crest of a movement that’s been in the works since the early 2000s – increasing awareness that employees’ holistic health is important in the workplace.

 ‘Sensible business’

 Integrating these benefits is also good for business, says Capelli.

In a tight labour market, he says, employers are “more aware of doing things that might retain employees”. Often for the business or organisation, it may make financial sense, too. “Benefits like these may not cost that much – they don’t get used often – and they are much easier to do than to address the causes of underlying stress in the workplace,” he adds.

“Taking action now to help mediate the impacts of divorce upon workers and their employers is sensible business,” agrees Jackson. “It sees people as valuable resources who will respond positively to proactive support in times of distress. A supportive workplace will have their workers back at work and fully functioning post-divorce more quickly than unsupportive workplaces.”

Similarly, he believes incorporating these benefits is key for employee satisfaction – another tool that may decrease attrition. “[These policies] won’t increase divorce rates … but will allow workers to keep their jobs while going through one of the most difficult experiences of their lives. This increases employee loyalty and all the benefits that go with it,” he says.

Even as some companies roll out these new benefits, however, Jackson cautions workers shouldn’t expect this to normalise across all firms.

“Some less-progressive companies may be concerned that such benefits could be abused by some – for example, take too much time off – and complications may arise when trying to apply such benefits fairly,” he says. For example, says Jackson, it may be unclear who qualifies for these benefits – for instance, whether they cover only legally married couples, or if they extend to non-married co-habiting workers.

Yet as divorce support does pop up in some benefits suites, and workers become aware of the existence of these programmes, Jackson believes employees may become increasingly expectant of them. “Like many improvements in workplaces … once they are in place and become part of the ‘psychological contract’, it is unlikely to see them withdrawn,” he says.

Ultimately, even if they roll out slowly, divorce benefits may stand to assist a huge portion of the global workforce, as many workers do go through a separation. Pierce says it is “likely that a proportion of employees will go through a relationship breakdown during the tenure of their employment. It is evident that separation and divorce is and will remain a pervasive factor in work life”.