
How Millennials Are Shaping Parental Leave Policies
Parental leave has begun arriving, one company at a time. And It may all be thanks to the much-maligned Millennials.
For years progressives have argued that America needs to expand its attitude toward parental leave policies, pointing out how the Family and Medical Leave Act lags far behind almost every other nation in the world in not guaranteeing any paid time off for new mothers. (For a more comprehensive dive into the international scene of maternity leave, check out this map put together by The Atlantic.) American law guarantees only 12 weeks off unpaid.
Only two other countries offer new mothers no protected leave after childbirth: Suriname and Papua New Guinea.
And that’s the way it’s been for years, with slightly over 10% of private employees getting paid time off from their employers and the rest banking sick and vacation days to catch their breath after childbirth. Federal and state workers did little better, at an average of 0% and 16% respectively. Lately, however, that ground has begun to shift. In short order, a series of high profile companies have begun to announce sweeping new policies on parental leave, offering longer terms and expanded coverage to fathers and foster families.
Despite the popular impression of millennials as a generation easily impressed by beanbag chairs in the office, experts say that this is a cohort that has always been fairly demanding in what it wants out of the workplace. That has sometimes proved frustrating for many traditional companies used to a culture where young employees work first, then after paying their dues for a decade or two, earn the right to make demands of senior management. The resulting friction has caused a pocket industry of complaints about entitled youngsters and their talented colleagues who never seem to sit still for too long.
Right or wrong, above all else what Millennials seem to want out of the workplace is a sense of work life balance. According to a study by Ernst & Young published last year, lack of flexibility was cited as one of the main reasons for Millennial quit rate. It’s a cohort, according to the study dubbed “Generation Go,” whose members would take a pay cut or forgo a promotion in order to have more control over their own lives.
This urge for control has been cited often as a driver behind increasingly generous parental leave policies, and given that 38% of those surveyed say they would leave the country for better paid parental leave, the connection seemed obvious. Nevertheless, Coca-Cola is one of the first companies to explicitly associate its new policies with demographic retention.
In its press release, Coca-Cola said that the new policy was the brainchild of its Millennial Voices team, “a group of young employees tapped to serve as a kickstarter for change to help the company attract and retain both Millennial employees and consumers.”
The benefit, it said, came about because of “the value their peers place on parental leave.”
To Ian Siegel, Co-Founder and CEO of ZipRecruiter.com, that makes sense. Both from a data standpoint and from the perspective of someone who recruits and retains young talent, this is a huge draw for workers under-35.
“If you’re trying to come up with new incentives for your work force that’s between the ages of 25 and 35, there are few things that would be more impressive or impactful,” he said.
“There is unquestionably a strong influence by Millennials on companies’ re-evaluation of their family leave practice, and I think that’s the result of the way that the millennial generation has come up," he added. "In many ways this generation has been the most connected with their family members, and also their friends, of any generation that has ever existed.”
Young adults grew up in an era of helicopter parents and into one in which their friends could be summoned up with the touch of a button. For them, Siegel said, simply missing out on something as enormous as their child’s infancy is particularly unacceptable because they don’t miss out an any aspects of a loved one’s life.
That pressure seems to be working, in part because of the pushiness of this cohort. As the young talent in an organization, Millennials often know their value and aren’t afraid to negotiate for what they think they’re worth.
“The funniest thing about managing Millennials, for me, is 6 months after coming here, they’ll come in and ask for a raise,” Siegel said.
For those who think this isn’t effective, think again. Work-life balance has become the new mantra at many companies after years of slippage against the pressure of productivity, economics and the mobile office. While the marketplace is still mixed (no one who has spent time at a New York bank or, reportedly, Amazon will tell you that they care much about work-life balance), Siegel describes quality of life as “the biggest trend we see in job postings today.”
Yet even as Millennials seem to be gradually winning the fight for parental leave, there’s a downside to their board room victories: it leaves behind a lot of people on the lower floors.
Among these victories for new parents, it’s easy to forget that the policies were achieved as a result of companies looking to recruit and retain sophisticated young talent. That means great things for office workers and the well educated, but at the same time this is a group whose higher income made it more financially insulated from unpaid leave to begin with.
It’s low-skill, low-education workers who often bear the brunt of America’s patchwork policy, and retention driven schemes generally leave them out.
In Coca-Cola’s announcement on Monday, it specified that the new benefit applies only to non-bargaining workers. Workers with a union contract, generally the ones in warehouses, production and bottling lines, represent about 17,500 of the company’s North American employees and, according to Forbes, are only covered by “varying short-term disability benefits offered for birthing mothers who can claim short-term disability depending on each contract.”
This would be noteworthy if it weren’t so ordinary. Often the sweeping announcements of parental benefits leave out many of the lower-tier workers. Netflix, for example, carved out 400 to 500 non-salaried workers from its yearlong policy, while Richard Branson made headlines when he, too, offered a full year off… to only 140 of his 50,000 workers.
Parental leave, one of the great labor issues of our era, is slowly inching its way across the country, one headline-grabbing company at a time. Workers can thank a newly empowered Millennial generation for insisting on time off for mothers and fathers alike.
Yet at the same time it’s important not to forget why solutions can’t stop at the conference table’s edge. Bargained-for benefits can solve a lot of workplace issues, but they leave out anyone who can’t get a seat at the table in the first place.
If America wants to catch up with the rest of the world, Millennial office workers can only get it so far. Sooner or later, Washington will have to step in to finish the job on behalf of those who don’t have that kind of bargaining power.









