Erin Barkan decided early in her second pregnancy that she wanted to take the full 12 weeks of leave after giving birth that is guaranteed by federal law. But the Girl Scouts of the USA employee and her husband also knew that would require tough budget choices: Just half of the time away would be paid.
Their calculus changed when the Girl Scouts informed its staff in September that it was implementing 12 weeks of paid leave after the birth or adoption of a child. The policy applies to all of the national organization’s 316 employees, male and female, and puts it well ahead of most nonprofit and for-profit employers nationally.
“My husband was extremely thrilled,” said Ms. Barkan, a lead operations specialist for the Girl Scouts whose child is due in February.
Joanne Rencher, the nonprofit’s chief people officer, said it started reviewing its policy in early summer at the request of employees. At the time, maternity leave fell under the U.S. Family and Medical Leave Act and short-term disability. The law guarantees workers up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave, while short-term disability covers income for some part of that time, contingent on length of employment and a doctor’s recommendation, said Ms. Rencher. It’s a policy typical at many employers; in practice, at the Girl Scouts, female employees typically got six weeks paid leave, and fathers received nothing, Ms. Rencher said.
She said she and her colleagues felt there was an opportunity to do more, so they studied policies at a number of organizations.
“Based on our research and our conversations, it wasn’t prevalent,” she said of paid leave for both mothers and fathers.
The new policy was well-received when it was shared with staff in September, she added. It was made public outside the organization in November.
Ms. Rencher declined to share specifics about the financial costs of the new policy. She did say the nonprofit was able to incorporate it in a cost-effective manner.
“As we looked at trends, the structure of the program and other considerations, we were pleased to find that we could balance the costs effectively,” she said.
Falling Behind
Sarah Fleisch Fink, director of workplace policy and senior counsel at the National Partnership for Women and Families, said the United States is “woefully behind” when it comes to paid family leave — no such federal policy exists — and a dearth of data makes comparisons across employers difficult. Still, she says the 12 weeks of paid leave the Girls Scouts now offers is “decent,” in no small part because it applies to men and women. Even at companies and organizations that do offer paid leave after the birth of a child, it is often for mothers only, she said.
“It is important for gender equality in the workplace that women are not the only ones taking leave to care for new children, but fathers are as well,” Ms. Fink says.
When it comes to leave policies, she adds, it is important for current and prospective employees to read the fine print — there are companies that provide paid leave for professional-level employees but not for lower-level support staff, for example.
Any such policy can be hard to come by for nonprofit workers. Marc Pitman, chief executive of Concord Leadership Group, said paid parental leave did not even get mentioned by participants in the consulting firm’s recent study on nonprofit management and staffing. Some of the responding organizations viewed vacations and other benefits as perks to help minimize turnover rather than as standard features of employment.
“I’m afraid the ‘norm’ is not having leave,” Mr. Pitman said in an email.
Raising the Bar
The National Partnership for Women and Families keeps a manual tally of companies that have publicly committed to progressive family-leave policies, said Ms. Fink. According to its tracking of such announcements in 2015 and 2016, some of the most generous firms include music-streaming service Spotify, which offers 24 weeks of paid leave that can be used over the first three years of the child’s life, and online retailer Etsy, with 26 weeks that can be taken up a child’s second birthday.
As such policies spread, more and more job seekers will be looking for workplaces that offer paid leave, and research shows employees who get it are more loyal and stick around longer, Ms. Fink said. That message is starting to reach more employers, she added. While most nonprofits may not be able to match the salaries offered by for-profit companies, they might be able to use benefits like leave to their competitive advantage.
“I think that there is a number of benefits that a nonprofit employer can reap while doing this while also quite honestly doing the right thing for their workers and their community,” Ms. Fink says,
Might other nonprofits follow the Girl Scouts?
“When a number of employers in an industry show real leadership by implementing strong policies like paid leave,” she said, “it can definitely put pressure on other companies and organizations to follow suit.”
Indeed, the Girl Scouts says it sees the new policy as a competitive advantage in the fight to attract and retain skilled employees in a sector of the U.S. economy plagued by turnover. More and more couples are delaying parenthood to tend to their careers, and the new policy is one way to support staff members and contribute to the long-term health and success of their families, the nonprofit says.
The expectant Ms. Barkan took leave after the birth of her first child — she was with a different employer at the time — but all of it was unpaid. She is happy that this go around her family didn’t have to agonize over whether they could afford for her to take unpaid leave — the decision was made for them.
“The experience of this is so different — just having the support from Girl Scouts to take that 12 weeks and not be thinking about it,” she said.
