Swedish furniture giant IKEA just announced it will be expanding on its U.S. parental-leave policy beginning in 2017. Starting next year, all hourly and salaried employees that have been with the company for at least 12 months will be eligible to take three months of paid parental leave. Employees will receive their full pay the first six weeks and then 50% the second 6 weeks. But that’s not all: If you factor in short-term disability benefits, it can total up to six months of paid leave for new parents. I repeat: SIX MONTHS!
Previously, IKEA gave female employees five days of paid leave and 6-8 weeks of paid disability leave — so yeah, this is definitely an upgrade. (Two thumbs-up, you gorgeous Swedes!)
Not only is the new policy gender inclusive, but it also includes the often-overlooked hourly employees. In the company’s press release, IKEA U.S. President Lars Petersson states:
“At IKEA, we believe time with family and friends is so important for a healthy work-life balance and a happy and productive workforce. Our co-workers are our most important resource, which is why we continue to invest in helping them reach their dream.”
This is pretty terrific news no matter how you look at it; but I have to admit, every single time I hear of a company offering a generous maternity leave, I can’t help groaning a little. It reminds me (yet again) that the U.S. is still the only industrialized country in the entire world that does not require paid leave for mothers of newborns. Did you know that even Afghanistan gives 90 days of paid maternity leave to its women? So does Thailand. And Heck, Bulgaria offers 120-180 days fully paid. (For a full breakdown of the world’s maternity leave policies, right this way.)
I’m honestly aghast as to how we managed to fall so behind on such a pertinent issue that this is where we stack up.
In 1993, the U.S. passed the Family Medical & Leave Act (FMLA), which mandates 12 weeks of job-protection to new moms — but unpaid. The FMLA also only applies if a full-time employee has been with the company for at least a year and the company has more than 50 employees. This is undeniably flimsy protection, and yet it’s become the solitary route in workplaces across America. Even worse, in 2014 the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that only 12% of American women working in the private sector even had access to paid maternity leave. In 2012, the U.S. Department of Labor also found that 15% of workers who did not have access to paid leave or only received partial paid leave were forced to turn to public assistance.
It’s no surprise though that Sweden-based IKEA is implementing generous parental-leave policies for its American employees. After all, Sweden is known as the world trailblazer for parental-leave, topping in at 480 days of paid leave, per child. (Make that a double thumbs-up Swedes, you are LIT!)
In the last few years, there certainly has been an upward trend (of mostly tech) companies changing their own policies to fill in the immense gap from the federal government. In 2015, Amazon implemented a 20-week paid parental-leave policy that could be shared with spouses that worked elsewhere, but didn’t have paid-leave available from their own employer. And earlier this year, Netflix announced that any employee, including dads, could take unlimited paid-leave during the first year of a child’s birth. (Yes, unlimited!) Even Facebook now offers employees 17 weeks of paid leave — plus a $4,000 baby stipend!
All of these companies have reported an increase in employee retention once their parental-leave policies were implemented, and that doesn’t surprise me one bit. Whereas the rest of the world is seeing an increase in the percentage of women in their workforce, the U.S. has seen a steady decline in women continuing to work after having children. And I know this first-hand because I am one of those women.
Pleased to see @IKEAUSA leading the charge on paid family leave in the retail industry. https://t.co/g7FDk3piDz
— Melinda Gates (@melindagates) December 7, 2016
In 2008, I entered my third trimester as a first-time mom and was at the peak of my career. I had graduated with a Master’s in Mass Communication the year before and was working in a really exciting position at the University of Houston. My boss was a wonderful mentor and being a mom herself, was very empathic to all the pregnancy woes and first-year mom calamities headed my way. But the university offered no paid-leave and most employees I consulted with had used up their vacation and sick time (4 weeks total for the entire year) and had then applied for disability for a few weeks — just to muster up some percentage of a paycheck for at least a month or two.
All of that sounded impossible to me. I wasn’t sick or taking a vacation or facing a disability, but growing a human being inside of me. How in the world could I go back to work in two to three months without any type of a cushion for sick leave and also raise a newborn for the first time ever?
I had seen many friends do this throughout the years. They nursed in bathrooms and abandoned offices. They wept with anxiety at how their babies were doing throughout the day. They languished over guilt-tinged lunches about how dead-to-the-bone tired they were. I knew I wasn’t going to do this. I also knew that I had a choice — one that is not afforded most women in the U.S.
I cashed out my puny treasury of sick leave and vacation hours. And then I quit my job.
I didn’t count down the days until I would go back, I didn’t interview nannies or daycares, and I didn’t deprive myself of the naps I took with my newborn. I essentially quit the workforce because there weren’t any compelling options for my inaugural year as a mother. Nonetheless, I ended up going back as a contractor, because I lucked out with a terrific boss who knew I needed much more flexibility than a salaried position would allow for.
All of this definitely set my career path down a different course, one with less ambition, less pay and sadly, less satisfaction. Had I been given the opportunity to take off an entire year or been able to count on my husband’s job to give him more than three days off for the birth of our child, my career trajectory would have been very different.
So while I absolutely applaud IKEA for its excellent new parental-leave policy — one that will benefit so many __parents who work for the company — I also can’t help but think about the rest of us, who aren’t as fortunate to be working for progressive companies. I can only hope the U.S. gets its act together on the issue of parental leave soon, to finally give American __parents the time (and compensation) they so deserve.