To coincide with the occasion of Mother’s Day, taking place on the 21^st of March, AESG today announced the implementation of its new maternity policy aimed at fostering more equitable and gender-neutral career growth opportunities across its organisation. The policy generously extends on the UAE’s labour laws by offering 90-days paid leave, with an additional 90-days of optional unpaid leave, to its female staff in the UAE.

According to AESG, the policy is 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. While the announcement will stand to make employment at AESG a more attractive proposition for aspiring female professionals in the construction industry, the company has cited its desire to empower its female employees to ‘thrive in both work and family life’ as 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.”

While making this announcement, AESG reiterated that it follows world-class project management workflows that incorporate industry best-practices which ensure that the quality of its services and progress of projects 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,” said Grant.