Suzi, Molly and Brandon discuss an article in the Washington Post called “Richard Branson has announced a great paid leave policy for 0.2 percent of his workers”. They discuss the details of the paid paternity policy, discuss what other employers are offering, and dive into a philosophical discussion as to whether or not the government or employers should be required to offer this type of benefit to employees.

Supporting Articles:

“Richard Branson has announced a great paid leave policy for 0.2 percent of his workers”
by Danielle Paquette, The Washington Post

“Why this CEO believes paid paternity leave is good for business”
by Elizabeth Murray, The Today Show

“Paternity Leave: Toms Shoes Founder Blake Mycoskie on How it Changes Everything,”
by Genevieve Field, Glamour

Download the MP3 | Run Time: 14:54


Suzi: Welcome to the It’s About People podcast! This is Suzi here with you, along with Molly and Brandon, and today I am presenting an article for conversation here and maybe some possible debate.
Molly: Probable!
Suzi: It was in the Washington Post, and actually in some other spots too, but the article I’m specifically referring to was in the Washington Post and it was written by Danielle Paquette and it was about Richard Branson of Virgin, which most people know about Richard Branson.
Brandon: Serial entrepreneur.
Suzi: He’s one of the more visible billionaire entrepreneurs. So he has recently decided to offer some of his employees, his Virgin company employees, a year of paid paternity leave. So of course that headline caught attention, but as you read a little bit more into the article you see that it is limited to a very specific set of employees and is probably only going to amount to about 2% of his employees.
Brandon: I think it’s even less than that, I think it’s 0.2%.
Suzi: 0.2%, right. So basically what it is, to qualify, male and female employees must live in London or Geneva, and I’ll talk about how that’s relevant, and have worked at least 4 years for Virgin management, the company’s investment arm, and then workers with less than 2 years of experience will receive 25% of the benefit.
So this really came on the heels of the UK’s new shared parental leave policy, which allows moms and dads to split between them 50 weeks of leave, for parental purposes.
Molly: And that’s time off, paid? Unpaid leave versus paid leave?
Suzi: It is, 37 of the 50 weeks are paid.
Molly : Wow.
Brandon: That’s incredible.
Suzi: It is. So if you look at that compared to the U.S., we have no—
Brandon: Only a few select companies are doing it.
Suzi: Right, there’s no mandatory paid leave.
Molly: True.
Suzi: In the UK and some other countries, it is mandatory. Like FMLA and OFLA is mandatory for covered employers but it’s unpaid, this is paid.
Molly: And we’re talking about it at a federal level, nationwide versus state by state. There are some states that offer a little bit of support.
Suzi: Right.
Molly: Not many, not many.
Suzi: So, an interesting shift. You know, Richard Branson’s also saying, like he does with everything else, he’s looking to “revolutionize” the workplace.
Molly: For 0.2%!
Suzi: Right, which is funny!
Brandon: But these are also headline grabbers as well, so maybe it’s PR?
Suzi: He likes the PR, he does like the PR I think. But this isn’t an isolated situation or topic, because I don’t know if any of you saw The Today Show or the recent article in Glamour magazine where the CEO or Founder of TOMS shoes, Blake Mycoskie, he wrote about his decision to take 12 weeks of paternity leave when he had his child.Toms shoes
Molly: At the CEO level!
Suzi: At the CEO level, yeah. And he decided to implement a policy that allows 8 weeks of paid paternity leave. He’s a very strong believer, philosophically, that men, dads, need to be afforded the opportunity to take off that leave and bond and spend time with their child. And we have many employers covered under family medical leave, it’s unpaid. And so what happens is that a lot of men, for that reason, either feel that they can’t afford or elect not to take much leave after the birth of a child. So, as opposed to Richard Branson, I kind of feel like Blake’s a little bit more passionate about the value and his personal philosophy of, Hey, this is something that’s really important to our employees. And in his estimation, he feels it’s an investment in higher productivity and more engagement. And he has communicated that his employees, because of this, are more focused on providing value because they see that TOMS is invested in them and they therefore want to make the company more successful.
So for him it’s a value-based decision, and then also feels that it’s retention and performance and engagement strategy.
Molly: See, I think that’s fabulous, and I gotta jump in before Brandon, who is winding up I can tell—he’s gearing up here to jump in! And I’ll say that the TOMS model is fabulous. I think it’s great. I would say that the Branson model is almost a de-motivator for me. So if I am an hourly employee, non-management, working for Virgin Airlines, so not the investment arm, I would feel so like my child and my life matter less than your money-making group over here on the investment side. To me I just feel like there are some families that matter more to Richard Branson than another. So it was a great gesture, but in some ways it would be almost damaging, I think, potentially to morale for the rest. And there’s quite a few Virgin offshoots that are not included in this, so that’s concerning.
Suzi: Yeah, and I think, honestly, I think that’s why it comes off as a PR strategy, because less than a percent of his employees?
Brandon: All these rules based on living requirements.
Molly: Basically the elite.
Suzi: A year of paternity leave and you perk up!
Brandon: Sounds awesome.
Suzi: But then you’re like, oh yeah, only a couple employees. And so you’re right, I think we’ll have more negative than positive impact for that reason.
Molly: What about the employees who can’t afford a nanny? Their children matter too.
Brandon: This is such a huge topic, we could debate this all day. There’s two arguments to this: there’s a philosophical one—is it the right thing to do? Which I think it is. But the side of it that I’m on is that I don’t think you can force a company to do it. So if a government comes and says this has to be mandatory, a year paid leave, I mean that’s a lot. That’s an economic hardship for a business, especially a small one. So I think the Googles of the world, the Intels of the world could do it.
Suzi: They’re doing it. Google, Facebook, Think of America, they’re doing it.
Brandon: They are doing it. Where I stand on the philosophical side is that it is the right thing to do, and I think that organically, when these big companies are doing it—they’re sucking up all the talent because they want these benefits, I think that puts pressure on smaller companies to make something work.
But the economic side is the challenging part of this. Who pays for it? If the government comes and says You gotta offer this, well, how are you going to figure out a way to pay for it? Do the employees pitch in to save money over time to be able to do it, is there a tax, these are all questions that are not really answered. To me, this article states—actually, I don’t know what the article really states, it seems like it’s the employer’s burden. I think you’re digging a little bit deeper and thinking it’s a government thing.
Suzi: Well the UK Shared Parental Leave Policy is very complex and there’s all these caveats and eligibility requirements. But because it’s a shared leave, it’s probable that both UKparents do not work in the same company. So what I gathered from reading it is that it’s country-funded. It’s funded by the government.
Molly: Most of the EU is like that.
Suzi: So this is something that was implemented by the UK and is funded and there’s probably some taxes or money being collected.
Brandon: The last point I wanted to make on the economic side is, is it truly a productivity booster? Because for me, the incentive is to have kids and just stay out a year. And maybe there’s rules around that, but do you come back to work and actually be more productive?
Suzi: It’s a sabbatical.
Molly: What I think and what I’ve seen in that struggle is that people are facing that final 12th week of leave is a real decision that many parents make about whether they can afford to put a child in daycare and return to work or stay home with that child. And not to say that that argument would change, but if I had financial backing for the bulk of my leave, I might find that I have more resources then to return to work in that first year. I think what we’re missing in the whole argument and probably goes off on a terrible tangent that we don’t have time for, it becomes a parenting podcast, but many many studies are saying that having children back in daycare at 3 months can be detrimental. It’s hard on a family and if you don’t have a flexible workplace that allows you to go pick up your kid early or what have you, that becomes challenging. So there’s those arguments as well.
Brandon: There’s no doubt that something like this would be beneficial to the household. From a financial standpoint and just in being there for your kids when they’re growing up, I think it’s great.
Molly: I think it’s less of a productivity argument than retention. I mean, for me, a company that bent over backwards and took care of me like that, it would be really hard for me to consider going elsewhere, especially if I decide to have two kids.
Brandon: That’s a good point.
Suzi: I think that’s part of TOMS’, Mycoskie’s, strategy there. Because it’s instilling loyalty—we’re willing to invest in and take care of you, in exchange, he’s seeing results in that area.
Brandon: Let me ask you this, and this might be a tangent, but this, to me, seems like a really good benefit that employers can use for a retention tool. Well what if, as this topic gains traction—paid sick leave has already gained traction across the nation but specifically in Portland, Oregon—if all the companies are required to do it by law, how do you use benefits like these to your advantage to find talent? Or retain talent? If everybody else offered the same thing, you’d have to get really creative at that point.
Molly: Which, I would argue, is not a bad thing! [Laughing]
Suzi: The other thing to consider, in terms of being creative around your benefits, is flexibility. So maybe you can’t offer paid or much paid leave, and here we’re talking about paternity specifically. There’s a focus here on fathers, which I think is interesting. But we don’t have paid, really, paternity.
Brandon: There’s none of that.
Suzi: So basically, maybe you can’t afford to provide paid leave, or maybe you can provide some of it, and in exchange maybe you can extend some flexibility. For example, I was able to do the job share. Or if you’ve got talent, legacy folks that you have a vested interest in retaining, then it’s worth getting creative around your policies, around how you can
make that transition work for both parties. Because TOMS shoes, in addition to their paid leave, they also allow flexible schedules upon return to work and I think they do their
Brandon Laws with his son Parker

Brandon Laws with his son Parker


best to people so that someone finds a win-win. And I think, in my opinion, this kind of becomes—and you can go really deep with this—it becomes a bit of a social issue.
Brandon: Absolutely.
Suzi: If people are having issues at home with their children, their family, that is going to bleed in to their work.
Molly: Absolutely.
Suzi: There’s also this issue of these companies that are actually providing paid paternity leave, the biggies that we talked about—Google, Facebook, whatever. Their policies often are specific to certain occupations and types of employees, and ironically the lower wage workers with the least financial resources to support a new baby have the least access or no access to paid family leave. So that means diminished paychecks, they can’t afford to take time off at all, and that, right, can result in some other challenges. Obviously socioeconomic.
Brandon: It perpetuates itself, you’re right about that.
Suzi: It does. It’s an interesting topic. I think here in the U.S. it’s a greater stretch I think for the states or even federally to say we’re going to require this and the government or the states are going to fund it. That’s the challenge. So then the burden falls on the employer and then that’s a big issue, especially for smaller employers.
Brandon: I just have a feeling that this topic will gain some traction in the U.S. specifically.
Molly: I think it will.
Brandon: And I think we need to talk about it, especially if we want to have newer generations, if we want to have more kids and we also want to be productive. I think we do need to talk about these things and how we’re going to do them.
Molly: We’ll post the link, right?
Brandon: We’ll post the link. There’s several articles actually, right Suzi?
Suzi: Yeah, there’s a few articles we can post along with the transcript of today’s conversation and you can check them out at your leisure. So thank you for joining us!
 
Image credit: Christian Scheja