Just wrote our org’s paid leave policy

[Anonymous]

It’s great to hear of companies doing the right thing!! This thread demonstrates why collective action is really hard given our political system and the bootstraps brigade.

[Anonymous]

Make sure you have employment counsel review your policy, OP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Don't forget to compare your hiring stats to your previous 5-10 years of hiring stats. You want to make sure this benefit isn't depressing the hiring of women who could become pregnant.

Monitoring potential consequences is important so you'll be able to address them if they occur.

OP again. This is gender-neutral because we want either parent to be able to take leave. Also so there is no temptation to actually discriminate against women; an employee of any gender is equally likely to use this policy.

FYI, the first employee to use the new policy will be a non-birth parent.

You'll also want to monitor that.

My organization offers parental leave, not sex-limited. However, when we review the stats at my org, we find men are less likely to take the leave, and take it for shorter times. My organization is already in a male dominated industry, so we keep a very careful eye on our records to help limit any cooling effect our parental leave might have on the hiring of women of childbearing age.

As someone who's been there, I strongly suggest not just hand-waving and assuming any bias would apply equally to both men and women and thus not be an issue. We have found there still appears to be a bias against women of child bearing age. It could be because we're in a male dominated industry. It could be because of society's sexism. It could be because our hiring managers are more concerned about women having children and taking leave than they are about men. And so on.

OP and agree wholeheartedly. Lots of things we’re doing to support equitable practices, but yes, data and constant listening and feedback is key.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Don't forget to compare your hiring stats to your previous 5-10 years of hiring stats. You want to make sure this benefit isn't depressing the hiring of women who could become pregnant.

Monitoring potential consequences is important so you'll be able to address them if they occur.

OP again. This is gender-neutral because we want either parent to be able to take leave. Also so there is no temptation to actually discriminate against women; an employee of any gender is equally likely to use this policy.

FYI, the first employee to use the new policy will be a non-birth parent.

You'll also want to monitor that.

My organization offers parental leave, not sex-limited. However, when we review the stats at my org, we find men are less likely to take the leave, and take it for shorter times. My organization is already in a male dominated industry, so we keep a very careful eye on our records to help limit any cooling effect our parental leave might have on the hiring of women of childbearing age.

As someone who's been there, I strongly suggest not just hand-waving and assuming any bias would apply equally to both men and women and thus not be an issue. We have found there still appears to be a bias against women of child bearing age. It could be because we're in a male dominated industry. It could be because of society's sexism. It could be because our hiring managers are more concerned about women having children and taking leave than they are about men. And so on.

OP and agree wholeheartedly. Lots of things we’re doing to support equitable practices, but yes, data and constant listening and feedback is key.

As a first time mom trying to navigate maternity leave planning in a male dominated industry can I just say thank you both for existing? This thread has been terrifying to track and it’s great to see that not everyone thinks the ways some of the posters do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:* Gender-neutral paid leave for new parents of new children (includes biological, adopted and foster)
* Six months total: 3 months fully paid, 3 months of partially paid leave or return to work for 3 months part-time with full-time pay
* Same for medical leave
* 1 month caregiving leave

We’re a small org (less than 50 people), but they’re very serious about diversifying their staff and especially leadership and I told them
this is how you do it.

As a parent of a kid with a life threatening illness, it seems hugely unfair that you get 4.5 months for having a healthy baby, and 1 month if your child is diagnosed with cancer.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:* Gender-neutral paid leave for new parents of new children (includes biological, adopted and foster)
* Six months total: 3 months fully paid, 3 months of partially paid leave or return to work for 3 months part-time with full-time pay
* Same for medical leave
* 1 month caregiving leave

We’re a small org (less than 50 people), but they’re very serious about diversifying their staff and especially leadership and I told them
this is how you do it.

As a parent of a kid with a life threatening illness, it seems hugely unfair that you get 4.5 months for having a healthy baby, and 1 month if your child is diagnosed with cancer.

Not OP, but... you would get 1 month in addition to the maternity leave that you got when your baby was born, if the policy was in effect at the time.

Seems fair to me. And I’m sorry that you’re going through this. I can’t even imagine.

[Anonymous]

I work in an area where work output is partly measured by independent research. My experience is that many men who avail themselves of the 3 months of family leave do so not to take care of the kid(s) but to do research. At root it is a problem of family division of labor.

Also while I strongly favor disability pay (and its use for pregnancy / complications / recovery), I have concerns about pay for not working that is not applied equally without regard for family status. (So: I support more flexible use of LWOP, annual leave, sick leave, but not paid leave.) When we talk about equal pay for equal work, it applies here too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:* Gender-neutral paid leave for new parents of new children (includes biological, adopted and foster)
* Six months total: 3 months fully paid, 3 months of partially paid leave or return to work for 3 months part-time with full-time pay
* Same for medical leave
* 1 month caregiving leave

We’re a small org (less than 50 people), but they’re very serious about diversifying their staff and especially leadership and I told them
this is how you do it.

As a parent of a kid with a life threatening illness, it seems hugely unfair that you get 4.5 months for having a healthy baby, and 1 month if your child is diagnosed with cancer.

Not OP, but... you would get 1 month in addition to the maternity leave that you got when your baby was born, if the policy was in effect at the time.

Seems fair to me. And I’m sorry that you’re going through this. I can’t even imagine.

I'm sorry, I'm not following your logic. You feel that because I might have gotten 4.5 months of maternity leave 9 years ago when my kid was born, if I'd been working for the same company when my kid was born, I should be fine with 1 month now?

Or are you assuming that only newborns get sick?

I think that we need paid maternity leave in this country, but as part of a comprehensive package of medical leave. The idea that needing to be with your baby is one kind of need that families have and that privileging it over other needs is unfair.

I think the FMLA guidelines for what qualifies for leave are decent, and that a company would do well to cover the same amount of leave for anything that FMLA covers. (e.g. if you decide that all those conditions are worth 3 months of pay or 6 months of pay or whatever, that seems reasonable). But to cover all of someone's FMLA with pay, plus another 1.5 months worth of time, and then to over a small portion of other people's FMLA seems unfair.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:* Gender-neutral paid leave for new parents of new children (includes biological, adopted and foster)
* Six months total: 3 months fully paid, 3 months of partially paid leave or return to work for 3 months part-time with full-time pay
* Same for medical leave
* 1 month caregiving leave

We’re a small org (less than 50 people), but they’re very serious about diversifying their staff and especially leadership and I told them
this is how you do it.

As a parent of a kid with a life threatening illness, it seems hugely unfair that you get 4.5 months for having a healthy baby, and 1 month if your child is diagnosed with cancer.

As a small business employer, I once gave 16-weeks paid maternity leave but stopped when I had several employees quit after taking paid leave. However, I have a liberal paid-leave policy for employees with seriously ill children, or close family members. Pregnancy is a choice whereas a child with cancer is not. Not a single one of these has ever quit or taken advantage of this policy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:* Gender-neutral paid leave for new parents of new children (includes biological, adopted and foster)
* Six months total: 3 months fully paid, 3 months of partially paid leave or return to work for 3 months part-time with full-time pay
* Same for medical leave
* 1 month caregiving leave

We’re a small org (less than 50 people), but they’re very serious about diversifying their staff and especially leadership and I told them
this is how you do it.

I wonder if you’re going to get the result you want. I think there’s a segment of the workforce that will like this but I don’t see it as universal by any means and I think a lot of people are going to resent it. I also think it’s going to be tough for a small organization to actually provide this.

+1 it’s excessively greedy. You’re making new mothers look like freeloaders with this policy. I’m trying to understand why any company would want to pay someone their full salary for 3 months when they’re completely MIA and THEN on top of that pay them another 3 months of a full salary when they’re only working part-time. That sounds so incredibly entitled and short-sighted.

This is such an American view, and not in a good way. Why does it work in almost all developed countries and there is no resentment and so unsupported here?

The same thing with universal healthcare. People are just too selfish.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:* Gender-neutral paid leave for new parents of new children (includes biological, adopted and foster)
* Six months total: 3 months fully paid, 3 months of partially paid leave or return to work for 3 months part-time with full-time pay
* Same for medical leave
* 1 month caregiving leave

We’re a small org (less than 50 people), but they’re very serious about diversifying their staff and especially leadership and I told them
this is how you do it.

As a parent of a kid with a life threatening illness, it seems hugely unfair that you get 4.5 months for having a healthy baby, and 1 month if your child is diagnosed with cancer.

Not OP, but... you would get 1 month in addition to the maternity leave that you got when your baby was born, if the policy was in effect at the time.

Seems fair to me. And I’m sorry that you’re going through this. I can’t even imagine.

I'm sorry, I'm not following your logic. You feel that because I might have gotten 4.5 months of maternity leave 9 years ago when my kid was born, if I'd been working for the same company when my kid was born, I should be fine with 1 month now?

Or are you assuming that only newborns get sick?

I think that we need paid maternity leave in this country, but as part of a comprehensive package of medical leave. The idea that needing to be with your baby is one kind of need that families have and that privileging it over other needs is unfair.

I think the FMLA guidelines for what qualifies for leave are decent, and that a company would do well to cover the same amount of leave for anything that FMLA covers. (e.g. if you decide that all those conditions are worth 3 months of pay or 6 months of pay or whatever, that seems reasonable). But to cover all of someone's FMLA with pay, plus another 1.5 months worth of time, and then to over a small portion of other people's FMLA seems unfair.

Pretty sure after OP talks to a lawyer, she will face this reality.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:* Gender-neutral paid leave for new parents of new children (includes biological, adopted and foster)
* Six months total: 3 months fully paid, 3 months of partially paid leave or return to work for 3 months part-time with full-time pay
* Same for medical leave
* 1 month caregiving leave

We’re a small org (less than 50 people), but they’re very serious about diversifying their staff and especially leadership and I told them
this is how you do it.

As a parent of a kid with a life threatening illness, it seems hugely unfair that you get 4.5 months for having a healthy baby, and 1 month if your child is diagnosed with cancer.

As a small business employer, I once gave 16-weeks paid maternity leave but stopped when I had several employees quit after taking paid leave. However, I have a liberal paid-leave policy for employees with seriously ill children, or close family members. Pregnancy is a choice whereas a child with cancer is not. Not a single one of these has ever quit or taken advantage of this policy.

My company solved this issue by making the amount of paid parental leave dependent on the number of years worked and conditional upon returning to work for at least one year post parental leave. If the employee quit immediately after parental leave or was terminated before the one year, then they would have to pay back the cost of the leave. This way the cost of paid parental leave is spread out and the risk is substantially lower.

Btw, my relatively small company has never had anyone take advantage of paid parental leave. It's only benefited loyal employees who already worked there for a couple years before having children. And all of them continued to work there for years after returning from leave.

Pregnancy is a choice but it's a choice that the overwhelmingly majority of people will make. Also, as a society, I don't think that we make it harder for people to become parents. Parental leave (paid and unpaid) should be considered a part of operating costs. The proper response to abuses is not end parental leave but to structure it in a way that costs/risks are minimized.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Don't forget to compare your hiring stats to your previous 5-10 years of hiring stats. You want to make sure this benefit isn't depressing the hiring of women who could become pregnant.

Monitoring potential consequences is important so you'll be able to address them if they occur.

OP again. This is gender-neutral because we want either parent to be able to take leave. Also so there is no temptation to actually discriminate against women; an employee of any gender is equally likely to use this policy.

FYI, the first employee to use the new policy will be a non-birth parent.

You'll also want to monitor that.

My organization offers parental leave, not sex-limited. However, when we review the stats at my org, we find men are less likely to take the leave, and take it for shorter times. My organization is already in a male dominated industry, so we keep a very careful eye on our records to help limit any cooling effect our parental leave might have on the hiring of women of childbearing age.

As someone who's been there, I strongly suggest not just hand-waving and assuming any bias would apply equally to both men and women and thus not be an issue. We have found there still appears to be a bias against women of child bearing age. It could be because we're in a male dominated industry. It could be because of society's sexism. It could be because our hiring managers are more concerned about women having children and taking leave than they are about men. And so on.

OP and agree wholeheartedly. Lots of things we’re doing to support equitable practices, but yes, data and constant listening and feedback is key.

As a first time mom trying to navigate maternity leave planning in a male dominated industry can I just say thank you both for existing? This thread has been terrifying to track and it’s great to see that not everyone thinks the ways some of the posters do.

Update from OP here.

85% of our new hires since this policy was rolled out have come from underrepresented populations because we've updated our recruitment practices to maximize inclusion, and two people have used this policy thus far -- both are stellar employees that many organizations are interested in recruiting away, and this will undoubtedly help us retain them (in addition to evaluating our pay to ensure it's in line with industry standards). Continuing to monitor and identify ways we can continue to maximize support and ensure equity and inclusion in our workplace.

Overall, our employees are really happy about this policy and have cited is as an example of employee satisfaction in the end-of-year survey.

[Anonymous]

I'd have two considerations to add one regarding teleworking and a second regarding guarantee.

What do you do with teleworking? When I was managing several departments I would get requests for teleworking and part time teleworking after disability benefits ran out. We did it as a case by case basis depending in the job, projects and duties. It worked for very well for the programmers and it was easy to asses whether they submitted their code on time and whether it worked. However, several wanted to keep teleworking 100% which would not work because while missing the in person interaction with colleagues and mentoring for several months was OK the entire group did not work well if everyone was teleworking 100%. It also did not work well for employees who were in positions that had some face time activities even with video conferencing. These employees would be upset that one group got to telework full time for several months while they did not.

For small businesses, profitability is often a problem with outstanding liabilities. Smaller businesses have a harder time quantifying the cost of longer paid parental leave policies. Hiring a contractor to cover parental leave is often far more expensive than the salary savings from the disability. If others simply pick up the work then there is opportunity cost in what things those individuals are not doing. If the work just slows down that is also opportunity cost. A generous parental leave policy can help a small business recruit and train talent. If the company is doing well and doesn't really track costs closely then it can quickly get into a point later on when profits are down in needing to reverse policy fast. Does your policy convey any guarantees or is subject to change on an annual basis?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:* Gender-neutral paid leave for new parents of new children (includes biological, adopted and foster)
* Six months total: 3 months fully paid, 3 months of partially paid leave or return to work for 3 months part-time with full-time pay
* Same for medical leave
* 1 month caregiving leave

We’re a small org (less than 50 people), but they’re very serious about diversifying their staff and especially leadership and I told them
this is how you do it.

As a parent of a kid with a life threatening illness, it seems hugely unfair that you get 4.5 months for having a healthy baby, and 1 month if your child is diagnosed with cancer.

Not OP, but... you would get 1 month in addition to the maternity leave that you got when your baby was born, if the policy was in effect at the time.

Seems fair to me. And I’m sorry that you’re going through this. I can’t even imagine.

I'm sorry, I'm not following your logic. You feel that because I might have gotten 4.5 months of maternity leave 9 years ago when my kid was born, if I'd been working for the same company when my kid was born, I should be fine with 1 month now?

Or are you assuming that only newborns get sick?

I think that we need paid maternity leave in this country, but as part of a comprehensive package of medical leave. The idea that needing to be with your baby is one kind of need that families have and that privileging it over other needs is unfair.

I think the FMLA guidelines for what qualifies for leave are decent, and that a company would do well to cover the same amount of leave for anything that FMLA covers. (e.g. if you decide that all those conditions are worth 3 months of pay or 6 months of pay or whatever, that seems reasonable). But to cover all of someone's FMLA with pay, plus another 1.5 months worth of time, and then to over a small portion of other people's FMLA seems unfair.

Pretty sure after OP talks to a lawyer, she will face this reality.

What exactly do you think a lawyer is going to say? It’s not discriminatory to offer less time for caregiver leave.