PayPal New Parents Can Take Advantage Of New Leave Time Starting Jan. 1
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PayPal, an electronic payment company based on San Jose, Calif., recently increased its paid parental time leave program, making it one of the many Silicon Valley firms to do this in order to get and keep talent.
Beginning Jan. 1, new mothers can get up to eight weeks of paid maternity leave. Both mothers and fathers can take another eight weeks of paid “bonding leave”, which can be done all at one time or spaced over time. This means new parents can take nearly 16 paid leave weeks.
According to PayPal’s Chief People Officer Marcia Morales-Jaffe, the policy also extends to adoptions. She said how the company treats its customers should also be extended to its employees.
The company is also offering up to eight weeks of paid family care leave for its employees who must take care of their seriously sick parent, spouse or child.
There are about 10,000 U.S. PayPal employees, with one-third working in California. The remaining percentage is mainly in its operation and customer service centers in Arizona, Maryland, Nebraska, Texas and Utah with its sales offices in Illinois, Massachusetts and New York.
The Federal Disability law stipulates that women are eligible to take up to six weeks of unpaid leave after a normal birth delivery and up to eight weeks after a C-section. In the state of California, new mothers can get eight weeks of unpaid leave.
When compared to other U.S. companies, the new benefits from PayPal are rather generous. However, according to Bruce Elliott, Society for Human Resource Management compensation and benefits manager, when compared to other Silicon Valley companies, it’s still a little low.
Most of the companies in Silicon Valley have looked for ways to make themselves positively stand out, and one of the ways they’ve done this is to increase the amount of parental leave they give their employees.
Netflix gives up to a year of both maternal and paternal leave, Facebook is currently offering 16 weeks, both Amazon and Twitter give 20 weeks of leave while Google provides up to 18 weeks.
Elliot said, from a national standpoint, just 21 percent of businesses provide paid material leave and only 17 percent give paid paternal leave. He said the U.S. is one of two countries that don’t have any kind of paid family leave benefit, citing Papua New Guinea being the other country.
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