It s become a regular Silicon Valley event – The new employee perk of the week. Egg freezing. Unlimited vacation. Flexible hours.
It s clearly a sign of the tight labor market. But Adobe s announcement Monday that it was expanding its parental leave benefits is also about something else – its effort to diversify its workplace, the company said in a blog post.
We join an industry movement to better support our employees while striving towards increased workforce diversity, wrote Donna Morris, senior vice president of people and places at Adobe.
Translation: Women come work for us.
As of Nov. 1, the company is offering new biological mothers as much as 26 weeks paid time off, including 10 weeks of maternal disability leave. All new parents can take as much as 16 weeks paid time off.
That news comes on the heels of Microsoft s announced expansion of its parental leave – 12 weeks paid for new parents. For new mothers, that is in addition to the 8 weeks of maternity disability leave. Netflix kicked off the discussion last week when it announced unlimited paid time off for new parents during the first year of a child s birth or adoption.
It s a parental leave arms race.
There s long been a disconnect for women in the tech industry about whether they can sustain the pace and intensity once they become parents. As many studies have shown, female engineers drop off as they become parents. Few stay at tech companies into middle age.
When Sheryl Sandberg wrote Lean In, she said women should carefully pick their life partners. She advised younger women not to leave before you leave, which I interpreted as don t start mentally checking out because you don t think you can keep the same engagement if you ever have children.
But maybe as important as picking a spouse is picking the right employer.
Even for those workers for whom being a parent is not on the horizon, how the company handles these issues sends a message. I remember that when I first came to the Mercury News there was a special room for breast pumping mothers off a certain bathroom. I never used that room. Still, as a young female employee, I appreciated its existence and what it signaled – an understanding of what some employees might need at certain times of their lives.
Likewise, by expanding benefits, such as Netflix s new policy, a company sends a signal that it is committed to the employee for the long haul rather than expecting the employee will make it work for the corporation. We will likely see more of these perks as Silicon Valley tries to figure out how to truly be more welcoming.
Above: Adobe headquarters in San Jose. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma)
