Starting or growing a family is one of the biggest decisions a person can make. It is very exciting but often accompanied by stress, concern and questions. Will I be a good mom? Will I be a good dad? How will I manage? How do I change a diaper? How do I do my job on two hours of sleep? These questions and hundreds more swirl endlessly in the heads of expectant parents.
As an employer, it’s crucial to help employees navigate this huge life change as seamlessly as possible. Having a child is stressful enough without having to worry about if your company is going to be okay with you taking time off. Below, see a few companies who hit the nail on the head when it comes to parental leave policies and went above and beyond the required 12-week parental leave:
Netflix
Netflix recently made headlines with their new unlimited parental leave policy. It’s become semi-standard of startups and tech companies to offer unlimited paid time off (PTO), however Netflix took this policy even further in their recent announcement, offering unlimited days off for new parents.
So, what’s the catch? This policy applies to new parents for the first year of their child’s life, and Netflix will continue to pay those employees full salary in addition to full access to all other company benefits. So, all in all, a generous policy. Kudos, Netflix!
Twitter has gone above and beyond the mandatory 12-week parental leave period and offers its employees 20 weeks of paid leave, a full two months longer than required by law.
Beyond time off, though, Twitter has gone above and beyond to extend certain luxuries to their new moms and dads. Most recently, it launched free breast milk deliveries. While on business trips, Twitter will pay for moms to ship their breast milk home to their newborn babies. Now that’s a great perk.
Microsoft
Shortly after Netflix announced their updated parental policy, Microsoft updated theirs to include eight weeks of fully paid leave plus an additional 12 weeks for all parents, rounding out at 20 total weeks for new parents.
Additionally, Microsoft has 632 benefit reviews on their maternity leave policy on Glassdoor, and it averages a 4.38 rating out of five.
Tech rules the paternal leave policies
Other major tech companies, including Facebook and Apple, have also lengthened their parental leave policies to compete with other tech giants. As of now, tech companies, particularly those centered on the West Coast and Bay Area, rule the roost in terms of maternity and paternity benefits.
But why not startups?
Many of the companies that have great maternity and paternity leave policies are mature, large companies. In doing more digging, we found the reason that many younger startups don’t offer as competitive parental leave benefits. Why not?
The reason why is twofold -- first, startups are known for their youth, and are typically run by younger leaders who don’t necessarily have parenting on the brain. Secondly, startups are known for keeping costs low, which unfortunately means many startups bucket “parental leave” in a “would be nice to have” bucket, instead of making it a top priority.
Are you a smaller company looking to update your parental leave policy? If so, our advice is this: be patient, and fight to update your parental benefits. Our policies at Glassdoor have evolved over the past seven years, and we now offer paid time off and free breast milk deliveries, just like many of the tech giants. The time is now to start having these conversations with key stakeholders to get the ball moving in the right direction.
Do you know of a startup with stellar parental leave benefits? Leave a comment and let us know about them -- we’d love to feature their story in an upcoming blog post!
