What do I need to consider when creating a parental leave policy?

For many, triangulating a multi-state handbook policy is like a trip through the 7 layers of hell. 

And worst of all, striking fear into every HR leader and PeopleOps specialist is...

The Parental Leave Policy 😱

Parental leave isn’t just about giving people 12 weeks off. 

There’s disability:

Private insurance (if you have it), 

state disability (where applicable), 

and how much longer their job is protected based on disability.

There’s payment:

Whether you’ll top up, pay in full, or not at all. 

And how in the world you'll handle all the variations of state pay, disability insurance pay, and what happens if payments don’t last till the end of leave for everyone. 

And what are you supposed to do about their health insurance deductions this whole time?

There’s the schedule:

Can you force it to be consecutive, or is intermittent leave allowed? 

What about delayed leave? 

What about partial days, medical appointments, and those last few weeks before delivery when anything goes?

There are the accommodations:

Physical accommodations, 

scheduling accommodations, 

accommodations to their responsibilities and work locations. 

Lactation accommodations with special rooms and rules about the seat and the fridge. 

And don’t forget PTO:

How does that fit in? 

And what about sick time? 

Or those special mini-leaves that states like Vermont and Washington have? 

All of these decisions can take hours. People wind up so lost in trying to navigate the maze of regulations that they forget what they were aiming for in the first place.

SHRM: Where passive-aggressive meets the passive voice. 

Mineral: Where you search for 45 minutes and the best you come up with is “it depends.” 

What comes out is a Frankenstein of caveats and legalese. 

Or a “f*** it, 6 months of pay for everyone” policy.

But what if instead of trying to navigate the regulations, you could focus on what you actually want the policy to look like? 

You could take each decision not based on what passed 35 different regulations, but based on what was best for your team? 

What if it weren’t up to you to flag regulation conflicts?

What if someone could flag all the unanticipated consequences and edge cases that you haven’t thought of yet? 

And you could navigate them in advance so your policy isn’t full of blind alleys?

That’s what we're working on. We can't wait to show it to you.

---

Need help designing a parental leave policy you won't forget?

Let's talk