US tech companies announce new family-friendly parental leave policies
The tech companies of Silicon Valley are improving their parental leave policies beyond US norms in order to attract the best, most diverse talent.
Whilst the US is the only developed country in the world that does not require some kind of paid leave for new mothers—the US Family and Medical Leave Act states companies must offer new mothers 12 weeks of unpaid leave along with job protection, anything beyond being at the discretion of the particular state or company—Netflix, Microsoft, and Adobe have all recently announced significant upgrades to their paid maternity (and paternity) leave policies.
At Netflix, salaried streaming employees who have a new baby can now take a year off. At Microsoft, all new parents (mothers and fathers) will get 12 weeks paid leave, with birth mothers qualifying for an additional eight weeks of paid time away from work. At Adobe, new parents will qualify for 16 weeks of paid time off, with birth mothers receiving 10 weeks more of medical leave.
Microsoft has acknowledged a desire to “support employees with benefits that matter most to them,” stressing the importance of building a culture that “embraces diversity and inclusion.”
Adobe also sees paid parental leave as a way to craft a better environment for its employees. Donna Morris, Adobe’s senior vice president of human resources, reveals that “[b]etter paid leave benefits are critical to our overall growth, to our ability to attract great people, and to keep them in the company.” She believes that the new policies “will contribute to…having a more balanced work force from a gender perspective.”
Gender balance and diversity in the workplace are not just a US issue. After deciding to shelve the stalled 2008 Maternity Leave Directive, which aimed to increase the compulsory maternity leave period in the EU to 20 weeks at full pay, the European Commission has announced a new road map to address the challenges of work–life balance faced by working families. Its particular emphasis is on improving women’s labor market participation, which remains far below its potential in most countries due to a lack of possibilities for balancing work and family responsibilities.
Nina Smith also broaches the division of family responsibilities in her IZA World of Labor paper on gender quotas on boards of directors. She feels that policymakers should focus on “the much broader task of getting a more balanced gender division of careers within the family, for instance by encouraging more fathers to take advantage of parental leave schemes” in order to improve the gender balance in organizations, specifically at board level.
You can read more about the tech companies’ new policies on Wired.
Whilst the European Commission’s road map document is here.
Related articles:
Gender quotas on boards of directors, by Nina Smith
My husband and I were equal partners—then we had a baby, by Brigid Schulte