As baby leaves go gender-neutral, dads get time off
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[September 15, 2016]
By Beth Pinsker
NEW YORK (Reuters) - When Brian Cooksey
joined a tech startup as a software developer in 2011, he was not
thinking about the benefits package, especially not the parental leave
policy - and neither was the company.
And when Cooksey became the first employee at Zapier to expect a child,
management came to him for feedback on what the policy should be.
"They said, 'We're looking at 14 weeks of paid leave, what do you
think?,' I remember thinking, 'Do they really mean weeks?!'" says
Cooksey, 30, who has three children, ages 11, five and 13 months and
lives in Columbia, Missouri.
After his second child was born, his previous employer only gave him 14
days of parental leave.
What changed in the meantime time was a key decision by the U.S. Equal
Employment Opportunity Commission in 2014 that mandated all leaves be
treated the same, beyond the birth of a child qualifying for medical
short-term disability.
So any "bonding" time has to now be offered equally to birth mothers,
fathers and adoptive parents - or even those caring for other family
members.
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Also some state laws, such as in California and New Jersey, now mandate
paid family leave. More states are adopting similar policies.
In 2015, companies started to announce new offerings, too, says Brian
Gifford, director of research and measurement at the Integrated Benefits
Institute, a nonprofit research group.
Although just 3 percent of the tech workforce has a child under the age
of 1, companies want push the envelope because they are in such
competition to get and keep employees, according to the organization's
research. "The numbers of who is going to take it doesn't matter so
much. They want to be supportive of their workers," Gifford says.
In other sectors, there is still work to do on parental leave policies,
particularly for men. Human resources at one power company wanted to put
a gender-neutral parental leave policy in place, but the pitch to the
CEO did not go so well, says Rich Fuerstenberg, a senior partner at the
benefits consultant Mercer.
"I'm not paying for a dude to have a baby" was the feedback,
Fuerstenberg notes.
Overall, the U.S. lags in paternity leave policies among leading
economies around the world. According to Mercer's 2015 survey on Absence
and Disability Management, only 25 percent of companies surveyed offered
paid leave after the birth of a child, with companies like Google,
Microsoft and Netflix leading the way with their generous benefits
highly publicized.
But plan designs vary widely.
One company Fuerstenberg knows provides 16 weeks of leave, but it has to
be consecutive - if you come back early, your eligibility ends.
Another offers 12 weeks, but you can come and go three separate times.
Still others allow new parents to take a leave within the first year,
but it does not have to be immediately, so two working parents could
stagger their respective leave dates.
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![](../images/091516pics/busine5.jpg)
A father holds up his son for a photo in front of a cherry tree in
full blossom in Central Park in New York April 20, 2014.
REUTERS/Carlo Allegri
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Employees also need to note that "paid" leave may not
mean you get your full salary, says Brenna Shebel, director of
healthcare costs and delivery for the National Business Group on
Health, a non-partisan research group.
"More commonly, we're seeing 60 percent income replacement for
parental leave and disability," Shebel says.
THE UPTAKE
Just making a policy is half the battle. The uptake rate for fathers
taking leave depends on the messaging they get from their companies
and they examples they see, says Shebel.
"The easiest thing is to have leadership walk the walk," adds
Mercer's Fuerstenberg, noting the impact Facebook CEO Mark
Zuckerberg made with his parental leave.
Getting the human resources team up to speed
certainly helps. When Mike Schaffer, an executive a communications
firm Edelman in Washington, went to talk to his HR department about
paternity leave options, there was a binder full of information.
"To be honest, there weren't a lot of fathers in my company that
were role models. But I was able to take a full month off, which was
encouraged and fully supported," says Schaffer, who also blogs about
his three kids, ages three, five and three months. (http://thebestdadblog.com)
At first, Cooksey doubted whether his company's offer was sincere,
but they persisted with encouragement. "Being the first one, I did
think I should take it because it will set the precedent," he says.
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Three other dads-to-be at the company have since come to him with
questions. Cooksey tells them: "Don't be afraid to take the whole
thing and unplug. Really unplug. You'll be OK, and you'll be happy
you did."
(Editing by Lauren Young, G Crosse)
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