Commercial Investment Real Estate May/June 2016 | Page 12

busines s
is sues
by Mary Stark-Hood, JD, CFP
The Family and Medical Leave Act requires that employers with
50 or more employees provide eligible employees with 12 weeks
of unpaid job protected leave for family and medical reasons in a
12-month period.
There has been significant publicity
lately about large companies going further
and providing women, and in some cases,
men, generous paid parental leave benefts.
Te issue gained even more visibility when
Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuck-
erberg announced that he was taking a two-
month paternity leave upon the birth of his
frst child.
Paid Leave
Paid parental leave is a beneft to consider if

May | June | 2016
your company is engaged in a talent war for
new workers or is seeking ways to keep good
workers. It ofen appeals to young, well-
educated, technologically savvy employees,
who are interested in maintaining a work-
life balance.
In a Society for Human Resource Man-
agement newswire, Harvard Business
Review identifed three models for ofering
paid parental leave. Te frst model is “take
what you need,” which allows employees to
take as much time of as they like in the year
Other Options
Since paid parental leave benefts are expen-
sive and of value to a specifc segment of the
workforce, businesses can still diferentiate
themselves by providing other benefts that
may be of greater interest to their workforce.
To start, review the demographic makeup of
a company’s workforce or survey employees
to determine what benefts would have the
broadest appeal.
For example, if the workforce is older,
hands-on assistance from a qualifed pro-
fessional to help with fnancial and retire-
ment planning would be of greater value
than parental leave. A SEP-IRA account
that has few administrative costs and oper-
ates like an individual IRA could be ofered
as a beneft, along with voluntary disability
or long-term care insurance that employees
could purchase.
Examples of non-specifc benefts that are
available to everyone and easily provided
include access to a refrigerator stocked with
healthy snacks and beverages, a stipend for
a gym membership, gif cards or quarterly
Commercial Investment Real Estate
t
Workforce
benefts
afer the birth or adoption of a child with full
salaries paid and benefts maintained. Tis
approach is used by Netfix for their salaried
employees.
The second model involves lopsided
leaves — one period of time for a primary
caregiver and a shorter period for a second-
ary caregiver. Adobe has implemented this
model with 26 weeks of paid leave for a birth
mother and 16 weeks of paid leave for new
fathers and adoptive parents. Tis approach
is also used by Twitter and Google, although
the two companies have diferent amounts of
time for employees.
Te third model is a standard policy for
everyone. It usually involves approximately
four months of paid leave to all parents
within the frst year of birth. Facebook uses
this approach for both mothers and fathers.
In addition to those mentioned, many
other large companies provide similar ben-
efts in order to attract and retain valuable
employees. However, only 21 percent of com-
panies ofered paid maternity leave and 17
percent paternity leave in 2015, according to
the Society for Human Resource Manage-
ment. Tat’s up from 12 percent in 2014.