Parent Benefits from work

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Hey!

Which companies are the most parent friendly to work for. I remember seeing an article about Netflix offering both parents up to 1 year off work after the birth of a child.

My company only offers statutory maternity and paternity leave... (there are only 40 employees) is this fairly standard for a small company?

I'd love to hear what other companies offer.

Netflix offers great benefits and it demands exceptionally great results from you. Do you deliver exceptional results and pull in $millions in sales for your employer? If you don't Netflix will offer you also offer you an amazing deal to get rid of you - only the best get recruited and only the very best survive in Netflix. You are not comparing like with like.

That’s a whole different ballgame.......

Netflix also pays its creatives top of the market rates - the operational staff get mid market rates - they are easier to replace and don’t have the same positive impact on company profits.

Netflix radical approach to its staff benefits and culture centres around highly talented, technical, creative, ambitious, hardworking, self motivated, individuals- they are not easy to find or recruit.

Find one of those people and you’d do anything you could, within reason, to keep them. They have a whole company full of them!

And even if you have all those amazing attributes but have a shitty, moany or aggressive or even just non helpful for Netflix culture they’ll get rid of you. Would you survive op?

I think a lot of small companies offer the minimum they need to, it is harder to cover extended leave with a smaller resource. However I would never chose a job just because of the benefits. Maybe look at what your skills can translate too and see what companies you could realistically work for, then see which of them has the best benefits. Sites like glass door are good for real life employee views :)

Thanks so much for the comments... I get the reasoning, wanting driven achievers to stay at Netflix - and other massive companies.

I also get the cost and resource of Mat/ Pat cover. I have always gone the extra mile at work, and would hope that would be recognised via parental benefits, even in a small company...

Benefits are a policy, so the same rules apply to all employees. Would you ask at interview about what benefits there are (and if so about parent benefits)?

Ask and negotiate your package once you have been offered the job.

I would ask about benefits at a second interview or if salary was being discussed, assuming the information wasn't already forthcoming. However, while it would be nice to think that it shouldn't make a difference, sadly recruitment still isn't a level playing field and by asking specifically about parental benefits you are highlighting to an employer that you are likely to be off on maternity/paternity leave at some point. Apart from that specific benefit I'm not sure what else you thought should be offered though?

Also worth noting that the size of the company doesn't necessarily mean improved benefits. There are probably some old threads on here where women working in huge companies had statutory, or barely above, benefits.

Interested OP in what you think is a reasonable period for Enhanced Maternity Pay for a small company to provide?

I would like to see a proper version of NI where all employees were covered for proper sick pay not £95/week and maternity pay for a decent length of time etc - so that employers did not take the risk, but we all paid, the risk was spread and the benefits were more equal. I think this would help with discrimination against women and the disabled - the person making the decision to hire isn't directly paying the bill for the absence. But that's another thread isn't it!

I'll be brutally honest. What the law says about discrimination is one thing. Proving it is another. In the majority of cases, if you ask about parental benefits at interview, especially if you are a woman, don't expect to get the job. If you are a woman of a certain age, it can be hard enough to manage the expectations that interviewers have. Ask about how much maternity leave you could get, or paid time off for dependants, and you have just pinned a banner on your forehead that says flakey, unreliable and costly. It shouldn't be true, but more often than not it will be.

But I think truthfully no employer wants an employee with a life that will significantly impact their business - so when they want 6 months off to have a child - intermittent weeks to look after ailing relatives, several days off a year to deal with mental health problems it is never good news - it's hard to employ someone you know they will cost you a significant amount of money by their absence, the unconscious screams at you to say no to the person who is both inconvenient and expensive - which is why I think their absence should be paid for by the NI not employers directly.

My employers offer 6m full pay for maternity leave or for paternity leave. If you both work there you could have 6m off each in the first year of your child's life without losing a penny of income.

And we're not Netflix, just a large engineering company that recognise retention of staff is a priority.

And we're not Netflix, just a large engineering company that recognise retention of staff is a priority. Because you are skilled and staff turnover is expensive - but where there is no skills shortage or in low skilled jobs, it makes no sense for employers to offer enhanced maternity - which means we have a two level system - I think everyone should have good maternity rights but the economics for a lot of businesses don't stack up - we should pay sufficient taxes so everyone has access to enhanced maternity.