LRPS-2023-9182863 Rapid Assessment of Paid Parental Leave Benefits in Thailand
UNICEF Thailand is seeking a qualified institution to conduct a Rapid Assessment of Paid Parental Leave Benefits in Thailand
Background
Parental leave benefits are important in promoting the well-being of new-born who will add to the human capital of Thailand. The benefits are arisen by the opportunity for exclusive breastfeeding, bonding time between parents and child, as well as the opportunity for new mothers to recuperate from giving birth and for fathers to take shared responsibility for rising children. While paternity leave and long maternity leave benefits are not universal in Thailand, several organizations, both in the public and private sectors, offer those benefits to their employees.
When those benefits are provided, they are not only creating positive impacts on children and parents but also on
employers and society. While there are costs arising from losing workers, the benefits of parental leaves are
hypothesized to increase employees’ loyalty to employers as it shows that employers #care” as well as the wellbeing and work productivity rates of the employees. This eventually contributes to increasing the brand’s reputation. Moreover, the costs associated with hiring new workers, onboarding, and productivity gaps are also occurred when employees leave the organization.
In Thailand, several businesses have offered parental leave beyond what the laws mandated. This includes 1
month of paid paternity leave and up to 6-months of maternity leave. Nevertheless, the communication of outcomes of those benefits remains sporadic and the actual understanding of those benefits are not recognized the societal level nor to the business models. Therefore, there is a need of collecting data and analyzing the cost of inaction to understand the incentives of the businesses to provide such benefits and factors that discourage businesses to do so and promote a societal level consensus about the need to provide paid parental leaves in workplaces.
Objectives, Purpose & Expected Results
As stated in the background, UNICEF Thailand is commissioning this rapid assessment to understand the current situation of parental leave benefits in Thailand provided voluntarily by some businesses and inform the future programming of UNICEF Thailand in advancing parental leave benefits for Thailand. The findings from this assessment will inform UNICEF’s future programming and advocacy efforts in promoting parental leave benefits within the broader framework of promoting Family Friendly Policies. The result of the analysis will be used for advocacy to other private sector actors for providing similar benefits to their employees. It will also be used for engaging with RTG units relevant to parental leave such as the Ministry of Labour, the Ministry of Social Development and Human Security, The Public Debt Management Office, and the Revenue Department to advocatefor change in parental leave policy.
Description and Scope of the assignment
In this assessment, the contractor is expected to present the results that demonstrate business-level and social-level benefits of paid parental leave beyond legal mandates and regulations in the private sector, as well as the business model on how the private sector adapts their operation when their staff are on parental leave. The contractor is further requested to present the cost of inaction (simulated or actual) for employers that provide paid parental leave benefits as well as benefits to children and society.
Location and duration of assignment
- The assignment is planned over a period of five months between May-November 2023.
- The assignment can be completed remotely.
- No international travel is expected under this assignment.
For full details, please refer to the attached Terms of Reference.
This tender will be run through the UNICEF e-submissions system (UNGM).
By clicking on the blue ‘Express Interest’ button in the UNGM tender notice, the full UNICEF e-submission system instructions to bidders document (including instructions on how to access the tender documents and submit an Offer) will be automatically emailed to the ‘contact persons’ included in your UNGM registration. Alternatively, the full UNICEF e-submission system instructions to bidders document is publicly available on the UNICEF supply internet pages here: https://www.unicef.org/supply/index_procurement_policies.html .
In the tender management site, if you navigate to the documents tab and opt in to confirm your intention to submit a Bid – you will then see the mandatory placeholders for documents that must be attached prior to submitting your Offer (you will also see if there are any mandatory questionnaires to complete). As such, you are recommended to `opt in` well before the submission deadline so you are clear exactly what documents are required to be uploaded prior to completing your submission.
Please note that in order to access the full-set of tender documents through UNICEF’s e-submissions system, vendors must: (1) be registered with UNICEF in UNGM as a company/NGO; (2) have successfully completed all mandatory information currently required by UNGM when registering.
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Should you have any questions against this solicitation, please submit your queries to Thanistar Kamtabnam at tkamtabnam@unicef.org with CC to: jbehr@unicef.org , osrimanotham@unicef.org , tsonsawangphol@unicef.org and psookchareon@unicef.org no later than 5th June 2023 so that all queries could be clarified and circulated to all bidders before the deadline.
We look forward to receiving your proposals within the given timeline.
Best regards,
UNICEF Supply team