What happens when 280 companies get together to talk about the benefits and challenges of paid leave programs? Insightful conversation. Evolving perspectives. Even an emerging consensus.

Earlier this month we at The Paid Leave Project and the Disability Management Employer Coalition (DMEC) hosted an interactive, national webinar to discuss a developing workforce trend: paid leave as an important component of building a 21stcentury workforce.

More than 280 organizations nationwide joined the wide-ranging discussion about what’s required to build the business case for paid leave. We were lucky to be joined by two outstanding co-presenters:

• LeaveLogic: CEO Anna Steffeney made the conversation real by walking through the data that demonstrates the actual business advantages of paid leave programs.
• Nestlé USA: Veronica Scalzo, manager of benefits strategy and excellence at Nestlé USA, talked about Nestlé’s experience creating a best-in-class parental leave program.

It’s no secret: the environment facing U.S. employers is complex. Legal mandates related to paid leave programs are being proposed at city, state and national levels. Five states and the District of Columbia have already passed paid leave laws, and more than 18 states are actively discussing enacting a law. Employers, especially those who operate across state lines, often have more than one (sometimes up to six) paid leave laws to navigate.

One underlying thesis was confirmed by those attending the webinar: companies know that paid leave will help them attract top talent and keep good employees. But the path to establishing a paid leave program can be vague and complicated.

Companies may initially be deterred by what they think a paid leave program will cost or because they don’t know how to establish metrics to accurately assess the success of a program. Faced with these challenges, leading drivers for adoption often end up being employee demand, industry pressure or a legal mandate.

Yet paid leave programs are becoming increasingly important. Today’s millennials, who are steering the way toward a 21stcentury workforce, demand more workplace flexibility than ever. Companies need to get creative to develop programs that attract top performers and support their bottom-line business objectives.

That’s where The Paid Leave Project and LeaveLogic can both help. We have resources to help companies create paid leave programs that work for them and their employees.

During the webinar, I was honored to share an overview of The Paid Leave Project Playbook, a suite of tools and resources that help employers successfully build or expand their paid leave benefits. Anna Steffeney, CEO of LeaveLogic, spoke about ways to measure the ROI of paid leave, including employee retention, talent attraction and costs. Veronica Scalzo, manager of benefits strategy and excellence at Nestlé USA, shared what Nestlé has learned and the early results the company sees.

I think you will find the discussion interesting: listen to the archived event or access the presentation deck. For additional resources, visit:

• Disability Management Employer Coalition
• LeaveLogic
• Nestlé USA Parent Support Policy

My sincere thanks to DMEC and my co-presenters for sparking such an intriguing discussion of how paid leave programs can help shape our 21st century workforce. This is one conversation that is just beginning.

Policy is the newest resource to help employers bring effective paid leave benefits to their business

SEATTLE, November 6, 2017 – The Paid Leave Project today released a template to help employers create an effective paid leave policy. The template is a new resource in the Paid Leave Playbook, which helps companies build a business case for offering paid leave to all employees.

The Paid Leave Project’s step-by-step Playbook equips companies to design custom paid leave programs that fit their culture and values. It provides comprehensive guidance and tools for human resource (HR) teams, legal and compliance officers, and business leaders who are ready to explore how paid parental, caregiver, and medical leave benefits make sense for their business and employees. The need for a policy template was surfaced through strategic conversations with large employers nationwide.

“Employers are facing new demands of the 21st century workforce,” said Angela Romei, director of The Paid Leave Project. “We’re finding paid leave to be a major benefit consideration for employees, and employers are working to figure out how to administer and pay for it.”

The environment facing U.S. employers is complex. Five states and the District of Columbia have already passed paid leave laws, and more than 18 states are actively discussing the potential for policy. As a result, arming employers with resources to successfully implement or expand their paid leave offerings is becoming critical.

The policy template was created in partnership with Jeff Nowak, partner, Franczek Radelet P.C., and author of the FMLA Insights blog, which provides practical guidance to employers when administering leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act. It is based on research conducted by Panorama and the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) over the past year. In February 2017, BCG and Panorama released Why Paid Family Leave Is Good Business, a summary report from initial research into the paid leave practices of more than 250 U.S. companies. The team also interviewed more than 55 HR and benefits administrators from some of the largest employers in the United States for their detailed experience creating and managing paid leave programs.

Employers can access the new policy template here. The Playbook also offers industry benchmarking and a cost calculator. To address the changing needs of employers, The Paid Leave Project will continue to expand the Playbook to help HR, benefits, and company leaders design custom paid leave programs that fit their culture and values.

The team from Ladies Get Paid sat down with Panorama’s own Angela Romei, to learn more about her advocacy work for paid family and medical leave at Panorama, a non-profit action tank working to solve global problems.

Continue to the full article at Ladies Get Paid.

When I first heard my daughter Lincoln cry as she came out of the womb at 6 a.m. on a Tuesday morning last September, I was numb, sleep-deprived, and in disbelief. The baby had arrived, and however brave a face I tried to put up, I was not ready. The day before, I had a life of my own that I shared with my pregnant partner Kara. The next, I was responsible not only for myself and an exhausted partner, but also a living, breathing, newborn daughter being handed over to me to claim as my own.

The disorientation was profound. And yet, as a father, I had not endured hours of labor and delivery. Nor did I have to carry a fetus for nine months. Nor did I have months of breastfeeding awaiting me.

Continue to the full article at The Good Men Project.

Some employers are providing paid family leave (PFL) as a popular addition to employee benefit packages, and are finding that it can help improve employee engagement and productivity.

While large employers in technology, finance, consulting, and legal are leading the charge, other industries and smaller employers are beginning to offer PFL as well. Historically, paid parental leave (PPL) was the benefit launching point that evolved into PFL with broader benefits. The news media frequently discuss the two interchangeably, which can be confusing.

PFL is a complex benefit with multiple factors affecting cost and perceived value to employees:

• What family leave purposes are covered? Options include: bonding at birth or adoption; caring for parents; caring for spouses; caring for children; personal healthcare; domestic abuse or stalking response; and military family leave.
• What is the level of mandated wage replacement? State PFL and local laws vary as to percentage of wage replaced, and the maximum cap on total weekly benefits. States offering PFL include California, New Jersey, Rhode Island, New York (beginning Jan. 1, 2018), and District of Columbia (beginning July 1, 2020). Employers have more freedom to design custom PFL packages for their employees if unaffected by these jurisdictions or similar municipal laws.
• What is the duration of the benefit? In Rhode Island it’s four weeks, in California and New Jersey it’s six weeks, and New York begins at eight weeks and will reach 12 weeks by 2021. In these four states, the program builds on state temporary disability insurance programs. The District of Columbia will require from two to eight weeks depending on leave purpose. U.S. corporate benefits run as high as 20 weeks of PPL at Twitter, 26 weeks at Etsy, and 12 months at Netflix.

Full content is available to DMEC members only. Please log in to view the complete resource.

I recently had a chance to sit down and talk with Seattle’s King 5 TV News on the passage of Washington state’s paid family leave measure. The bill was passed Friday, June 30 and goes into effect in a few years.  As director of Panorama’s paid leave program, our unique focus is to work directly with large U.S. companies as they assess, design and implement paid leave benefits.

Regardless of a national mandate, state regulations, or benefits offered directly by employers, our position is the same: paid family and medical leave should be made available to all U.S. workers because it makes business sense.

In Washington state and beyond, the conversation is just beginning, and progress is being made. For example, as I explained during my King 5 interview, paid leave is not a “woman’s” or a “mom” issue; every worker has a family member they will want or need to care for at some point in their life. This is a fundamentally different way of looking at this. To create change, we need to change the conversation, and that has to start at the top of any organization.

In my meetings with company executives and HR leaders, most agree their employees need paid leave benefits. Indeed, as the only advanced economy in the world without a national paid leave mandate, everyone agrees something must be done. While we are agnostic in the process that gets us there, we are passionate about working directly with companies to help them provide paid family and medical leave to their employees. We help companies think about and design paid leave benefits that fit their culture and workforce needs.

For more information, including research, a comprehensive step-by-step Playbook, and downloadable tools, visit our dedicated paid leave resource site, The Paid Leave Project or reach out to me directly: angela.romei@panoramaglobal.org.