Hellobee Boards

I would just clarify what "primary and secondary care giver" means- DH had that at his former job, and it meant either parent could be primary and take the longer leave, but if both parents worked for the company, one would take the longer leave and one the shorter. I personally think that's an awesome policy!

+1 on pumping accomodations!

I would definitely see it as a huge perk to allow for part time transition back to work. It's really hard to go from 0 to 60 in terms of coming back to work!

Any sort of child care subsidy would obviously be a huge perk as well!

@tramdoof: A fridge would be great. A comfy chair close to an outlet and of course a door that fully locks with no risk of intrusion!

Does short term disability apply at your company? At my job, we had to use all of our accrued vacation and sick time before STD kicked in. And if you had more PTO than the STD would cover (6 weeks), then your forfeited the STD. It was really unfair. It punished us for saving our time and then left us with absolutely nothing when we returned if we or our baby got sick (which happened to me)

@tramdoof: If you have more than one pumping mother, it helps to have an Outlook calendar that's scheduled like a conference room - so you can see when someone else plans to be in the room.

Other than that, I'd just be very clear about who qualifies (is it like FMLA, where you need to have worked at least xx many hours in the last year? If someone is hired at 8 months pregnant, do they still qualify for the whole leave? What about adoptions, foster care, etc.?) and what you have to do to make it official (i.e. give 3 months notice? Fill out a form and submit to HR? Just put it on your calendar?)

What a great benefit - many kudos to you and your company!

If you're already offering 9 weeks paid, you're already so far ahead of the curve!! That's awesome!

Is the 9 weeks through STD? What is the interaction between STD and your paid leave? Is it 100% pay or a %? Those are some questions I would expect you'll get from employees/prospective employees.

Did I read correctly that your company offers 1 week sick leave? If so, I think the way my company has structured parental leave would be very helpful to your employees. For us, birth mothers get 6 weeks STD, then everyone gets 4 weeks of "parental leave" that can be taken any time within the first year. I could so something like that time frame being incredible helpful as babies get sick A LOT their first year, so it'd be nice to choose to use say 2-3 weeks up front, and save some days for taking care of a sick kiddo. ETA: it also allows the flexibility to create a modified schedule for returning to work.

Everyone's suggestions have been good so far. I also agree that any paid leave time is an incredible bonus in the U.S. I was the first person to take a maternity leave in my small company so I went through a process of "defining" it with them. They were not able to provide me with any paid leave (other than what my STD policy provided) but some of the things that they tried to do for me were:

- Pumping room with mini fridge

- Flexible about return date - I was formally given 12 weeks off but most daycares here don't take babies until "3 months old" which is usually more like 13-14 weeks. My company allowed me to tack on PTO plus a few extra days of unpaid leave so that I could have a 14 week leave.

- Flexible hours upon return - This was very brief, but I did a few part days before returning to full-time. This coincided with my baby's transition to daycare (started at a few hours per day, ended at a full day after a week)

- Work from home option towards the end of my maternity leave - I didn't take advantage of this much but I did put in a few hours from home. If you are giving paid leave though, this isn't really as necessary.

You've gotten some great suggestions so far!

As far as extended leave is concerned, I was allowed up to one year of unpaid leave with guaranteed job security. They hired a temp to replace me during my mat leave and then she stayed on for my extended leave. When I didn't come back, they hired her full time. I really loved that I had the extended leave option because I was absolutely not ready to leave my baby after 16 weeks of paid mat leave.

You could also look at offering two weeks work from home or flex time towards the end of pregnancy. It became so uncomfortable to sit st work I really wasn't getting much done. On top of weekly or more appointments that last month I wasn't able to be in the office full time.