Company in WA has no paternal leave policy- what to do?
My wife and I are having our first baby in the spring, and my company (5yr old startup, ~150 employees) has yet to formalize a parental leave policy. They’ve been dragging their feet a bit since I requested details regarding leave a couple of months ago, so I’m trying to figure out the best approach here. If you were in this situation, would you continue pushing them to establish the policy or simply propose a paternal leave package? Were you to go with the latter, what is a reasonable amount of time off & pay for a company like ours these days?
Paternal leave? Go to Europe... for each of my kids I've taken a week off of vacation time then back to work.
I used to work in a very small company in Oregon. It was breaking my heart to see some of my female ex coworkers got back to work after 2 unpaid weeks because they also live paycheck to paycheck. After having gone through the experience myself, it’s crazy how my ex coworkers could do that. I was barely coherent 2 weeks after delivery with so much trauma from the delivery. I am not sure how likely you can change. Is this family owned? I probably will propose a combination of pto, borrowed Pto from next year, and unpaid leave.
2 weeks is brutal. I fully intend on taking more time off even if it’s unpaid- While I won’t have gone through the physical hardship that my wife will, IMO she’ll absolutely need my support for while she recovers. Not to mention the importance of that bonding time with my first born. I like the idea of a combination of pto and unpaid leave.
Not sure how established your HR is or how much they stick to the policy book, my last startup was around that size and they winged everything , including vacation time. I talked directly to the co-founders.
I have read a medium post of a woman who used this as an opportunity to create the maternity/parental policy at her startup. So I'd suggest go ahead and propose them a month of paid leave. Also if you are in California you are entitled to 6 weeks of partially paid CFPL which both parents can take. What I have seen mediocrr companies doing, they just pay you on top of CFPL to match 100% of your salary. Great companies just give you a parental leave with full pay independently from CPFL.
Appreciate the perspective! This is very helpful.
Fight for it in a calm, respectable manner. Provide data on what is the norm for companies like your. All of your colleagues that come to this life stage after you will thank you. If the company won't budge, I would seriously consider leaving. People need to get the message that this is important.
If you want to connect with kid or just want to help your spouse then take time off whether company pays for it or not. Decision to spend quality time should not be dependent on policy.
For the reference, Microsoft used to give one month of parental leave to male employees but now it is three months paid leave. I think Google and Facebook have similarly good leave. You may want to use it when arguing for paid leave. If not, prepare to leave for other company and leave the glassdoor review.
I have a new born baby and just made a flexible work schedule deal with my Mgr. The HR told me to take FMLA, which was unpaid. They had no info about state law. I checked myself that state pays very little compared to my pay. I felt sad about our corporate culture that punishes you when u having normal family issues. When u worked long hrs, u r expected. I used to work top IT companies - all had good paid leave.
FMLA is a federal law. If they have more than 50 employees at that site, they should provide it.
That’s true, though I think we’re just under 50 employees at this office unfortunately.
I think it’s the size of the company that matters, not how many people are in each office location.