I’ve got a troubling riddle for America: what gets bigger but never really increases?
Sadly, the answer is maternity and paternity leave.
There is often a huge gap between the leave policies companies offer and the amount of time off their employees actually take surrounding the birth of a child. It’s time to hold companies accountable for enabling women and men to take full advantage of maternity and paternity leave time.
Recently many companies, especially in the tech sector, have changed benefits for new parents. In fact, 26 major corporations, including Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft and Netflix, initiated and/or improved their maternity and paternity leave policies in 2015 and 2016. San Francisco just became the first U.S. city to require companies to provide paid parental leave — six weeks at 100% salary for both mothers and fathers.
Even some banks on Wall Street, where reputations as workplaces for women are even worse than here in Silicon Valley, have improved leave benefits.
But what good are leave policies if employees don’t take advantage of them because they feel pressured not to? According to EY’s 2015 study, only 37% of US parents who could have taken paid leave did so. If increasing leave benefits doesn’t necessarily translate to employees taking more time off, what’s the answer?
Truth. Transparency.
Businesses need to be transparent about not just what leave they offer, but what leave their employees are taking. I will begin with my company, SAP. I’m proud to report that in 2015, 100% of identified new parents in the US took paid leave, 96.5% of them taking the entire period offered – up to 18 weeks for new mothers and 7 weeks for new fathers and/or adoptive parents. To send the right message to employees, we model this behavior from the top and honor people’s time off when they take it.
I have heard first-hand and read in news reports about what happens here in Silicon Valley – pressure to come back early from and/or work during leave can be enormous. New or expectant mothers receive subtle or direct threats to be cut off from projects, promotions or raises. Some women hide their pregnancies for as long as possible, others put their careers first and opt out of motherhood altogether. Sometimes the cost of taking full leave is systematic. At one prominent tech company near me, anyone on leave for more than three months is not eligible for a performance review that cycle which means no chance for promotion or advancement.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg took only two of his company’s offered four months of paternity leave. Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, who increased the company’s maternity leave from eight to 16 weeks, took only two weeks after giving birth. That sends a terrible message to Yahoo’s female employees, especially given that Mayer’s peer, a man, took four times more leave than she did.
I do commend Yahoo for being transparent about its leave utilization after Mayer was criticized, but its numbers may bear out my point: only 75% of Yahoo women who had babies last year took the full 16-week leave, while just 38% of fathers took their full eight weeks.
Effective leave policies are actually good for both families and companies as they contribute to more women staying at their jobs, improving retention and lowering rehiring and retraining costs for companies. According to a 2014 report of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors:
- California’s paid family leave has actually increased weekly hours and pay of mothers with 1- to 3-year-old children by nearly 10%.
- Maternity leave increases the likelihood that mothers will return to work and careers.
- Maternity leave positively impacts infant outcomes like birth weight and infant mortality.
This is where business leaders should really pay attention: costs to replace workers are estimated to be as much as ten times higher than the national average for high-wage, high-skilled workers — in fields like technology, accounting and law nearly 213% of workers’ salaries — according to the Center for American Progress.
You may be thinking; why does the responsibility fall on companies? Shouldn’t the US government ensure fair leave policies for workers? It should. But it doesn’t:
- The US is the only industrialized nation that does not guarantee paid maternity leave.
- Fewer than 1 in 8 Americans who work in the private sector have any paid maternity leave, according to the Center for Women and Work. This means low-wage workers, who can least afford to take unpaid time off, are worst off.
- Only five US states and the District of Columbia have enacted parental leave policies – and only relatively recently.
It’s time for change. I hope that our government will very soon join the family of nations that ensure new parents can take time to care for the next generation. Until then, the other engine that drives our country—its corporations—must lead. Silicon Valley, I’m looking at you.
Dearborn is senior vice president and chief learning officer at SAP, in charge of overall learning and development activities for the company’s 77,000 employees globally. She is also author of the bestselling book “Data Driven: How Performance Analytics Delivers Extraordinary Sales Results.” She wrote this as a guest column to USA TODAY.