Could Paid Leave Be Silicon Valley’s Next Disruption?

In case you have missed
every study and article written on the subject: Paid leave improves gender
equality in both the professional and personal spheres, improves the health and
well-being of parents and children alike, and is, in the long-run, beneficial
to employers. Perhaps this is why it is guaranteed by almost every country in
the world, the exceptions being Papua New Guinea, Suriname, Tonga, and also the
United States.

This is often justified
by the claim that implementing mandatory paid leave will put a heavy burden on
small businesses.  In the short term, and from a strictly pecuniary
perspective, offering paid leave is simply more expensive than not having it.
Though the costs of offering paid leave are often a bit overstated (the direct
cost of paid leave need not be paid solely by employer contribution; the
program also offers indirect savings by boosting worker retention and lowering
the cost of finding and training new workers), the fact that they usually come
up front is particularly costly for start-ups, which are less financially
stable and may find it difficult to compete with larger companies that can
afford to provide paid leave.

Whether startups can
start up paid leave and how, exactly, they would go about doing so, was the
subject of a recent discussion at New America CA, moderated by Elizabeth
Weingarten, director of New America’s Global Gender Parity Initiative.

The issue is not
necessarily that companies do not understand the benefits of paid leave, but
that they are struggling to make it affordable. While the cost of paid leave is
a concern for many companies, and in particular small companies, startups are
mainly comprised of employees in their 20s and 30s—that is, mainly of people
who are starting families, and would therefore be eligible for this costly
benefit. Some startups are trying to implement programs that provide some of
the benefit of paid leave without the full cost. Jessica Young, Culture and
Operations Manager at Tint, explained that, while her company does not
currently offer paid leave, it has developed a program that allows new parents
to distribute their workload amongst other members of their team, so that
priorities and timelines can be modified to accommodate the needs of employees
welcoming new members into their families.

Others on the panel
argued that the time for implementation of paid leave by startups will be when
startup founders decide to debate not on whether it will work, but on how to
make it happen. Kim Rohrer, Director of People Operations at Disqus, discussed
how her company took the “just do it” approach. The conditions, Rohrer noted,
will never be perfect. Employers should therefore spend their energy on looking
for ways to make it work, as opposed to debating whether they should implement
it or not.

Chief among these is
getting startup higher-ups to establish a different sort of Silicon Valley
culture by taking time off themselves. “It’s crucial that company leaders set
the example “and show all employees that taking leave is not only o.k., but
that welcoming a new child into an employee’s family is celebrated by the
company,” said Katie Bethell, Founder and Executive Director at PL+US.

It’s also important that
gender be considered when thinking about how to implement paid leave work.
 For paid leave to work in a startup culture, it must be available whether
the employee is a man or a woman. “People normally think of paid leave as
maternity leave,” said James Jarvey of People Operations at Particle, “but in
fact this type of thinking is leaving lots of people out.”

Additionally, Jarvey
explained his belief that LGBTQ employees, as well as other employees welcoming
children into their families through foster care or adoption, should have the
same benefits as traditional families. “Employees shouldn’t feel like they
can’t have a family,” Jarvey said. Further, allowing and encouraging fathers,
as well as mothers, in heterosexual couples to take time off makes for more
equal partnerships at home and could help change the idea and reality of
startups as places that are more welcoming to men than to women.

Lack of mandatory,
nationwide paid leave in the United States is contributing to a
disproportionately low number of women in leadership positions in tech and
virtually every other industry. The absence of these policies is forcing the
small amount of women in tech to consider moving from startups to larger
companies just to be able to have children.

It’s hurting companies,
too: As competition for talent grows, companies that provide these benefits
become more attractive to potential candidates and can reap the benefits of a
more diverse workforce. Providing paid leave allows companies to retain
employees and spares them the costs involved in hiring and training. Getting a
new employee up to speed may take longer than it takes a proven employee on
leave to come back to work.

Creative minds at
startups are revolutionizing economies and changing the way we interact with
technology. This collection of forward looking minds should be able to see that
not having paid leave is the way of the past.