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About 1 in 5 U.S. companies may be going above and beyond federal requirements to offer parental leave for employees, according to a recent survey from WorldatWork.
The vast majority (96 percent) of the 667 companies responding to the survey are required by law to offer parental leave. Eighteen percent said they offer leave benefits that exceed minimum requirements of the Family Medical Leave Act. Almost half of those organizations offer employees the option of a longer duration of job-protected leave than required by law (47 percent of respondents) or for a broader array of circumstances (51 percent). About a quarter said they require less documentation than required by the federal law.
Among employers offering parental leave, 44 percent require employees to be on the job for at least 12 months, while 38 percent permit parental leave from the hire date.
Of those offering paid parental leave separate from paid time off for vacation and sick leave, the majority (70 percent) offer six weeks or less of paid time off, while 16 percent offer paid leave for up to 12 weeks. The FMLA does not require companies to pay employees on parental leave.
In terms of the permitted time frame for taking parental leave, 38 percent of survey respondents require new parents to take leave within six months of a child’s birth or adoption, and 47 percent within the first year.
The WorldatWork survey also asked companies about whether they’d like to see changes in the FMLA given that state and local governments are now passing their own family leave laws. Almost three-fourths of respondents (72 percent) favored leaving the current federal law as is, while 16 percent favored a requirement that employers comply with the most generous leave requirements of federal, state or municipal laws when those rules conflict.
Under the FMLA, employees can take up to 12 work weeks of unpaid leave in a year (with additional leave benefits for service members and their families); group health coverage must be maintained during leave. All public employers and private-sector companies that employ 50 or more workers must comply with the law.
WorldatWork has conducted its PTO survey five times since 2002, but this is the first time the survey has asked about parental leave. Of the 667 respondents, 46 percent have fewer than 1,000 employees, and 14 percent came from the financial services sector.
Karen Bankston is a longtime contributor to Credit Union Management and writes about credit unions, membership growth, marketing, operations and technology. She is the proprietor of Precision Prose, Portland, Ore.
