Baby steps

Australia’s HVAC&R industry has improved when it comes to parental leave, but as we found out from people with first-hand experience, it still has a long way to go.

Telling a room full of my colleagues that I was going to become a father was one of the most terrifying things I’ve ever done.

I don’t mind the occasional theatrical moment, so sharing this news on a day when (almost) all of AIRAH’s staff were in the office seemed like a great idea in theory. But when it actually came time to interrupt the morning tea conversation and say the words “My partner and I are expecting a baby” in front of 20 colleagues, my heart was racing.

I expected a few polite affirmations – maybe a surprised gasp or two. What I got felt more like kicking the winning goal at the MCG: whoops, hugs and high fives. I’m pretty sure one of my coworkers jumped for joy.

It’s a memory I’ll always cherish – one that still brings a tear to the eye months later. But as I’ve discovered while writing this story, many people in the Australian HVAC&R industry have a far less positive experience of transitioning from work to parenthood.

The ins and outs of parental leave

Parental leave in Australia can be confusing, but not necessarily in a bad way. Any new parent can take 12 months of unpaid parental leave when their baby is born or they adopt their child. They can then negotiate with their employer for a further 12 months of unpaid leave.

Couples who are becoming parents can decide between themselves who will be the primary and secondary carer. If you’re the primary carer and you’ve been working in a full-time job for at least 12 months prior to your child’s arrival, you can take 21 weeks of paid parental leave at minimum wage courtesy of the government.

As the secondary carer, your partner can take three weeks of government-funded leave. From July 1, 2026, this will increase to 22 weeks and four weeks respectively.

Here’s where it gets a bit trickier. Each company also has its own paid parental leave policy, which acts in addition to the government scheme. That means you can take company parental leave followed by government leave, or vice-versa. The most generous companies offer up to 26 weeks at full pay (which can also be taken as 52 weeks at half-pay), while some companies don’t offer any paid parental leave.

In other words, employers have to give you the time off, but it’s their choice whether and for how long they pay you.

The uncomfortable truth

Airmaster Brand Marketing Coordinator Monique Parker is a member of the company’s Women’s Working Group, which was established in 2024 to push for better conditions for women in the workplace, including paid parental leave. For her, there’s a clear reason behind the HVAC&R industry’s sluggishness to adopt more meaningful parental leave policies.

“I think it’s primarily because it’s still seen as a women’s issue, and we are in such a male-dominated industry,” Monique says. “Women tend to be carers across all stages of life – first with our children and later with our parents – so the weight of that balancing act falls heavily on us. I think any company making decisions around policy needs to keep that reality front of mind.

Sonia Holzheimer, F.AIRAH, works as a mechanical engineer at Sequal Consulting Group in Cairns and also serves as the chair of the Women of AIRAH Special Technical Group (STG), as well as the associate director of AIRAH’s Queensland division committee. She identifies financial pressures as a key reason for firms – especially smaller ones – not offering paid parental leave.

“In small private firms especially, parental leave is often viewed through a commercial lens,” Sonia says. “Extended absence directly affects project delivery, revenue and workload distribution. My pregnancies were seen as disruptive, particularly because at the time the men in the office generally took very little leave when they had children – some didn’t take any.”

Taking leave in practice

Being legally entitled to take parental leave is one thing. Actually having the conversation with your employer is another thing entirely.

When Sonia took parental leave for the first time in the early 2000s, she was working for a firm of fewer than 10 employees. She was the only woman in the office.

“Telling the business owners I was pregnant was genuinely difficult because I knew it would be disruptive,” Sonia says. “Out of guilt, I minimised my own entitlement by saying ’Just pay me the standard parental leave and I’ll come back as soon as I can’. I didn’t want to be seen as a burden.

“At the time, paid parental leave was not yet a universal right, although there was a government ’baby bonus’. My contract provided for six weeks’ mandatory leave, with only two weeks paid. I was shocked.”

After a conversation, Sonia’s employer offered her six weeks of paid leave – more than required by company policy. She took this at half pay and returned to work after three months.

“In hindsight, my pregnancy prompted the firm to recruit additional staff to improve workload resilience,” she says. “Structurally, that was a positive shift. Emotionally, however, it was clear that my leave was viewed as disruptive rather than simply part of life.”

Unfortunately, it seems this attitude persists two decades later. We spoke to a woman in HVAC&R who recently took unpaid parental leave. The company’s HR department wasn’t set up to enable the government support payments; they told her she was lucky to be receiving those payments and made her feel like a burden for asking for them to be set up.

She says her employer also pressured her into going on leave early, even though she felt fully capable of working up until the baby’s arrival. While HR framed this as wanting her to feel rested before the birth, she says she felt controlled and patronised, as if the company thought it knew what was best for her and didn’t trust her to do her job anymore. Without any employer-paid parental leave at her disposal, she eventually used up the remainder of her annual leave before the baby’s arrival.

Returning to work

Supporting an employee through pregnancy and parental leave doesn’t end when the leave does. Providing appropriate flexibility and facilities when they return to work can make a huge difference.

“One of the more challenging aspects of returning to work was expressing breast milk,” Sonia says. “There was little understanding from my employer as to what that required. A colleague and electrical engineer proudly told me they had ’accommodated my needs’ by installing a power point in the unisex accessible toilet. I had to explain that this wasn’t appropriate.”

For breastfeeding mothers who work, expressing milk isn’t optional; they need to do so at regular intervals throughout the day to keep producing enough to meet their baby’s needs. And it’s not just a matter of providing a dedicated room.

Data from the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) suggests that HVAC&R businesses in Australia are falling short when it comes to supporting new parents.

“The next option I trialled was the meeting room beside my boss’s office,” Sonia says. “Unfortunately, the acoustic separation between the two spaces was poor, and I was acutely aware the pump could be heard through the wall. Eventually I ended up using the office broom cupboard, holding the door shut with my foot and running an extension lead because there was no power inside.”

While that experience was disheartening enough, Sonia also had to attend important meetings at times when she needed to express.

“Another experience that remains vivid was a weekly project meeting for a major job that consistently ran overtime and clashed with when I needed to express,” Sonia says. “With so many people involved, I didn’t feel I could reschedule the meeting. By the end of those sessions I was physically uncomfortable and distracted.

“It was difficult – not because anyone was intentionally inconsiderate, but because I didn’t feel I could openly discuss my situation without risking my involvement in the project, which was important to my career, or jeopardising what I already considered to be generous flexibility.”

For many mothers, the situation remains just as tricky in 2026. One of the women we spoke to essentially received a shrug when she raised the lack of a safe space to express milk with HR. Wanting to avoid the embarrassment of expressing in a public space like the kitchen or the break room, she would go to her car multiple times a day to express. She then had to put the expressed milk in a cooler bag because there was no dedicated fridge or freezer at the office.

Monique points out that genuine flexibility – including working from home, adjusted hours, and accommodating needs like breastfeeding and expressing – is required.

“Flexible working shouldn’t still feel like a perk – it should be standard,” she says. “And a proper return-to-work process after parental leave, rather than just throwing people back in at the deep end, goes a long way in showing employees they’re valued as whole people.”

A technician’s experience

So far, we’ve looked at how pregnancy and parental leave might affect HVAC&R professionals in office-based jobs. But what about those who work on the tools?

Stacey McGookin is a Melbourne-based HVAC&R technician who was in the fourth and final year of her apprenticeship when she discovered that she was pregnant. Her job maintaining and repairing HVAC systems on a large site involved tasks such as brazing/ welding copper pipes and finding electrical faults, as well as physically strenuous activities like climbing ladders, crawling through roof spaces, and carrying potentially heavy HVAC&R equipment.

While her employer didn’t offer paid parental leave and had some hiccups managing the government payment process, causing some initial payment delays, Stacey says they supported her from the outset and always had her health and wellbeing front of mind. Crucially, Stacey’s employer worked with her to make sure she was able to complete all the requirements for her apprenticeship and get signed off before going on leave.

“They were very accommodating, and from the moment I told them I was pregnant they gave me whatever I needed,” Stacey says. “I gave them the list of hospital appointments I required and there were no questions or sense of inconvenience around it.

“I was put on a pretty strict list of restrictions around my job to make sure I was safe – this was by the company, not by the doctor,” Stacey says. “This included no chemicals, welding or climbing ladders.”

She says she found these restrictions frustrating at the time; her independence was limited and she had to constantly depend on others, which made her feel useless. However, she acknowledges that the company’s willingness to modify her role allowed her to continue safely working on the tools during her second trimester, before transitioning to admin responsibilities later in her pregnancy.

“It was pretty tough, mainly in the last trimester for me, just due to the limitations,”

Stacey says. “I had a pretty good pregnancy, luckily – I didn’t have morning sickness or anything like that. Most of the other workers on my site didn’t even know I was pregnant until about 20 weeks.”

She also appreciates that, instead of pressuring her into early annual or unpaid leave, her employer provided her with the flexibility to work up until two weeks before the baby’s arrival.

“During my last trimester, my employer suggested doing some admin work to help out the office and allow me to work for longer,” she says. “The last few weeks I was able to do some administration tasks from home, which allowed me to work up until 37 weeks.”

While returning to work involved challenges like managing early starts with childcare pickup, Stacey says her employer was extremely accommodating and supported all of her decisions. One challenge that couldn’t be overcome – through nobody’s fault – was breastfeeding.

“I stopped breastfeeding before I returned to work, as I didn’t really want to be expressing in a plant room or bathroom and didn’t have anywhere else like a designated space,” she says. “Due to the type of site I was working on, this couldn’t be changed by my employer.”

After a positive overall experience of taking parental leave, she feels that the barriers that once prevented women from doing hands-on trade jobs are being dismantled and the industry is becoming more accessible.

“I know quite a few females in the trade now, and I can see more [joining] as the industry changes and becomes more accepting that females can do the same jobs as males,” Stacey says. “For me personally, the parental leave didn’t create a barrier.”

Father time

We’re talking about paid parental leave as a women’s issue because that’s how society has typically looked at it. But should that be the case?

Even though parental leave is now gender‑neutral, only 17% of it is taken by men, suggesting that women continue to bear the brunt of parenting responsibilities. While this has rightly been framed as placing unfair expectations on women, there’s a strong argument that it’s also unfair on men, who might feel pressured to keep working and miss out on the joy of bonding with their child.

So, why do so few dads take time off to be with their children? Would they take the opportunity to spend more time with their kids if they could?

For mechanical engineer Michael Cooper, M.AIRAH, taking time off to be with his daughter was a no-brainer. His employer offered 16 weeks of paid primary carer leave, and he says he felt fully supported in his decision to take that leave.

“I wasn’t nervous to ask for parental leave, as it’s relatively common in the company,” Michael says. “It’s part of the benefits and it’s there for a reason.

“I believe the short-term impact of personnel being off for an extended period also brings benefits to the company in the careful planning, grateful employees, trust and loyalty for both parties. The person taking leave gains a maturity that benefits the company as well.”

Michael says the time off hasn’t had any negative impacts on his career, but acknowledges that coming back after an extended period of leave naturally can be difficult.

“The main challenge for me is the company moved forward in the four months I had off,” he says. “It can be challenging on return as relationships get rewired, people cover your job in your absence and having them return to you as the point of contact means you need to re-enter with some disconnect.”

There was one huge complication: Michael’s daughter was born more than nine weeks early – you can read more about that experience in the “Miracle babies” breakout box. This meant that Michael spent the first six weeks of his daughter’s life working remotely from the hospital. He then took four months off to be the primary carer from 10.5 to 14.5 months. He’d do it again in a heartbeat.

“The time I spent with my daughter in the first eight weeks of her life was incredibly impactful on me personally, and I think established a bond that goes beyond words,” Michael says.

“It doesn’t matter how many courses, books or the quality of advice you get – nothing prepares you for going home with a tiny human who is 100% dependent on you and your partner.

“Your partner is dealing with extreme emotions, new responsibilities, changed routines, broken sleep, ever-present nervousness that they are doing it wrong and a stress they will rarely experience elsewhere. They will be gasping for air like they are caught in a relentless rip current.

“Being able to provide support and having the chance to bond with your child is a zero‑regrets move.”

Data shows that only 17% of parental leave is taken by men.

Working towards change

Paid parental leave was the Airmaster Women’s Working Group’s first major achievement. Since then, the group has worked with the company to implement a range of other policies that benefit women in general, and parents specifically.

“At Airmaster, we offer flexible working arrangements including an optional nine‑day fortnight, and at our head office we run a school holiday program where kids are looked after on-site with qualified teachers,” Monique says. “These things might seem small in isolation, but together they add up to a workplace that genuinely cares about its people’s lives outside of work. I’d love to see more of this thinking across the industry.

“The HVAC&R industry has so much to offer women, and removing these friction points is how we start retaining them long-term.”

As Monique points out, it’s important that these measures come from the employees themselves, rather than being dictated to them by management.

“We run a confidential yearly survey sent to all women in the business, which gives us a real sense of how people are feeling and where we should focus next,” Monique says. “Some of our best initiatives have come directly from those suggestions. It’s very much an employee-led group, and I think that’s what makes it work.”

The way forward

So, what steps can the HVAC&R industry take to improve the experience for new parents? For Michael Cooper, recognition and leave that’s available to both parents, rather than the primary/secondary binary, would be a good place to start.

“From a home perspective, I don’t think it’s recognised enough exactly how big a change and how distressing it can be to stop everything with work and do something entirely different,” Michael says. “That’s what new mums are just expected to handle. I certainly got a better appreciation for this when I did it.

“I think we could move towards greater centralised funding of parental leave,” he adds, acknowledging that this does place burdens on businesses. “It’s both very expensive and disruptive to fund people off work for a long period of time. I do, however, think that any company and society in general benefit enormously from this.”

Monique agrees, pointing out that such an approach would benefit both parents and children.

“I think it’s so important for both parents to be given the option to be at home during those early weeks and months, for the whole family’s sake,” Monique says. “Equal leave entitlements would go a long way, because when the option is genuinely the same for both parents, the conversation around who takes it becomes a lot more balanced.”

But is a shift in policy enough to change outcomes for the better? She thinks there’s more to the story.

“Entitlement alone isn’t enough; culture plays a huge role. There can still be an unspoken pressure on men to return quickly, like taking time off is somehow at odds with being committed to their career.

That’s where managers and business leaders have a real responsibility. Whether it’s openly celebrating when a dad takes his full leave, or simply making clear from the top that it’s encouraged, when people see it modelled around them, it stops feeling like an exception and starts feeling like the norm.”