

Google's formula to retain women: Longer maternity leave - arihant
http://lifeinc.today.com/_news/2012/08/24/13439661-googles-formula-to-retain-women-longer-maternity-leave?lite

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eslachance
I guess this is one reason I'm lucky and happy to be in Canada: There is a
total of 52 weeks of shared parental leave, then there's 2 weeks reserved
individually for each parent. The parental leave can be split in any way the
parents feel necessary.

And this isn't anything employers do; this is a governmental program. However,
the first 6 months of leave are paid 70% regular salary, the rest is at 50%.

I think it's a great program, and I don't know that a lot of women have any
issues returning to work after that time.

~~~
jasonlotito
Quebec, as usually, is a bit different. There is a years worth of maternity
(or paternity) leave. There is also 5 weeks given specifically to the other
spouse (generally referred to as paternity leave). Anyways, You can take the 5
weeks whenever you want, up to a year from when the child is born.

Considering the many massive deficiencies in Quebec, this is one of the
brighter spots.

~~~
PuerkitoBio
And on a related note, in Quebec, public child care centers are 7$ a day.
Though it's not all perfect, those programs sparked a mini baby boom and as a
result there are not enough places for everybody. But private child care
centers are usually around 25$ a day.

"Many massive deficiencies" is overly dramatic.

~~~
jasonlotito
> "Many massive deficiencies" is overly dramatic.

No, no it's not. Not in the slightest. I meant exactly that. If anything, it's
less antagonistic then I how I usually describe Quebec, it's government and
laws, and it's medical community. I usually associate them with child-abusers,
and feel justified in doing so. Nor do I feel it's overly dramatic.

Simply put, if I knew years ago what I knew now, I would have left Quebec
before having children.

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Spooky23
I don't have any insight into Google, but is is a smart thing to do.

My wife and I recently had our first child, who thankfully has no serious
health issues and is a great sleeper. My wife's employer provides 3 months
leave at half pay, but only after she uses her PTO accruals.

So that left us in a position where we would have to find quality, expensive
infant care, while simultaneously dealing with taking FMLA time without pay
for baby doctor's appointments or when daycare sends the child home due to
illness or other issues. (My job unfortunately requires travel, so much of
that burden falls on my wife.)

End result is that we ran the numbers and talked about what we really wanted,
and it made sense for my wife to stop working.

~~~
skrebbel
Just a somewhat offtopic request: on an international site like this one,
would you please be so kind to translate non-international terms such as "PTO"
and "FMLA" to something more general? I really want to understand your
comment, but I have a hard time at it.

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trhtrsh
Paid Time Off

Family Medical Leave Act

\-- <https://www.google.com/>

~~~
ch
And just to expand on that a bit further. The FMLA allows you to take up to 12
weeks unpaid leave for health reasons, and protects you from being terminated
by your employer during that time.

My wife and I had to face similar decisions when our first son was born.

I really applaud Google for doing this. I certainly understand that employers
walk a thin line on giving benefits without employees simply taking advantage
of the company. But a good maternity/paternity leave program really helps
build loyalty to a company.

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sp332
We just had the original posted yesterday
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4420056> and it explains several other
steps Google has taken to increase the percentage of women hired and retained.
Today.com ignored the rest of the article and made this clickbait to promote
some social agenda.

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rachelbythebay
How incredibly simplistic. Of all of the women I know who have left (and there
are quite a few), maternity leave never came up as a reason.

How about meaningful work, not being evil, and being respected?

~~~
danielbarla
I think it's not a reason only because people's expectations in that regard
are extremely low, and also, because anything remotely reasonable is seen as a
perk. As such, women might might not leave over something they never knew they
should have had. Just as a point of reference, several European countries
measure maternity leave in years, not months.

~~~
hnal943
And if you're looking for reasonable fiscal decisions, Europe is definitely an
A+ place to look.

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icarus127
As some people have pointed out this is a bit of a simplistic analysis, but I
find it encouraging that Google is doing this. The state of Maternity leave in
the U.S. is frankly appalling. My wife (a nurse) is currently pregnant and her
Maternity 'leave' is 8 weeks. She is _required_ to burn all but one week of
her vacation time as well as all her sick leave. After that it's unpaid and if
she were to stay on her employer's insurance we would have to pay for it out
of pocket for the remaining duration of the leave.

Fortunately I have good insurance but this seems incredibly bizarre to me.
Nurse's are already overworked. Long story short, when I see a high profile
company treating pregnant mothers better it only makes me happy.

~~~
colmvp
I actually like the way the U.S. does it. Citizens and companies shouldn't
have to have their dollars used to pay other people to have and raise
children.

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nileshtrivedi
That's somewhat naive in my opinion. Reducing maternity leave would lead to
women leaving work rather than not having babies. So citizens and companies
lose ultimately.

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colmvp
I prefer the approach of saving money to account for one parent being able to
take extended time off from work/leaving their job for a period of time.
Myself, I've saved money and could work from home.

As for my own mom, even though I live in a country where she could take a long
maternity leave, she opted to go back to work after a very short time.

~~~
lukeschlather
The thing is, you're viewing this from a moral rather than a business
perspective. From a moral perspective, sure, people should plan ahead and not
have children until they have the requisite resources with sustainable income.

From a business perspective, six months paid leave is worth it if you can
avoid hiring and training a new employee.

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PeterisP
Every civilized country has it better than USA in this regard. Every. single.
one. In many of them, the minimum mandatory maternity/paternity support that
every sweatshop must (and does) provide is better than what google is offering
now.

~~~
mediascreen
Just for comparison: Sweden has got 18 months per child at 82% salary, where
none of the parents can use more than 16 months.

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tocomment
How does paternity leave generally work at most companies? My company even has
maternity leave for adoptions but they make sure to mention that men aren't
eligible! (It seems to me men are just as capable of adoption as women, I'm
not sure what would make them less eligible.)

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trhtrsh
0,2 or sometimes 7-8 weeks. Maternity leave is a combination of medical
disability for late pregnancy and post-partum (should be covered by disability
insurance) and family leave for a primary caregiver. There is absolutely no
reason to enshrine sexism in the policy. Lay out a sex-blind policy, and
accept if women tend to exercise it more than men, that's plenty of
(acceptable) imbalance.

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xradionut
It's not only that maternity leave policies in the US suck in the majority of
companies, it's that fact that quality child care is so expensive, that many
mothers find it cheaper to stay at home or work part-time, especially those
with more than one small child.

Add in the fact that many companies are understaffed to cut expenses, that
there can be resentment from coworkers when a mother goes maternity leave. You
might get some blowback from the non-parents and singles in the office when
you expect them to cover for you with no incentives, not even a thank you. Try
working in a office with deadlines and critical projects when 40% of staff are
expecting...

~~~
PeterisP
Well, in countries with larger maternity (and other) leaves and functioning
overtime legislation, it's obvious even to dumb,lazy and miserly managers that
(a) you need to plan for workers becoming unavailable, and (b) you need to
hire extra staff for absences, as it's cheaper than paying lots of overtime.
Only in USA they can get by without caring about this.

Handling long absences is an everyday task just if you handle vacations
properly - a month paid vacation means that of an unit of 12 employees at any
time at least one is off, so every company has worked out how to handle
replacements and task switching properly (i.e., delegate tasks to someone who
has time) - and if you handle a month off, then you can handle 6 or 12 months
off.

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debacle
What about paternity leave?

