Amazon to give new dads paid leave, a first for company

Elizabeth Weise | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption Amazon will offer paid paternity leave for the first time Amazon will now offer paid paternity leave to its salaried and hourly workers, according to the Wall Street Journal. The e-commerce company announced the new policy to its employees on Monday.

SAN FRANCISCO—For the first time, all new dads at Amazon.com will be eligible for paid time off.

Under Amazon current rules, women who’ve given birth can take up to four weeks of paid time off before they give birth and another ten weeks afterwards. Most new dads were out of luck.

The new rules add six weeks of paid parental leave for all new parents. This includes not just women who’ve given birth but also their partners and spouses.

That makes Amazon a front-runner when it comes to fathers. Just 17% of companies in the United States currently offer paid paternity leave, according to a survey by the Society for Human Resource Management.

That’s the same percentage of companies that offer paid adoption leave.

Amazon sent an internal memo to employees on Monday announcing the new leave plan. It will be rolled out on Jan. 1, 2016.

The move comes at a time when companies are expanding parental leave, especially companies in the technology sector, said Bruce Elliott, manager of compensation and benefits with the Society for Human Resource Management in Alexandria, Va.

Better benefits are one way employers are differentiating themselves as the job market recovers, he said.

“We’re seeing movement, with Microsoft, Google, Facebook all offering these rich, family-centric benefits,” said Elliott.

Amazon’s announcement comes four months after the company was excoriated in a widely-read article in the New York Times for having a crushing, family-negative workplace culture. Amazon staunchly rebutted the article.

“What I’m seeing out of Amazon now is they’re trying to position themselves, at least from a marketing point of view, as a little more family friendly,” said Elliott.

Amazon's new benefits apply to all full-time hourly and salaried employees, including 100,000 plus workers at Amazon fulfillment centers.

One innovative program Amazon announced is called leave-share. This allows new moms to transfer parental leave.

The program “allows you to share all or a portion of your six-week parental leave with a spouse or partner who doesn’t have paid leave through his or her employer,” Amazon’s internal memo said.

The would mean, for example, that a new mother working at Amazon could take a month off with her new baby, then come back to work. She would get an additional two weeks pay to cover the time her spouse or partner was at home with their child and not working.

The benefit is unique, said Elliot. “It’s an interesting new twist, to be perfectly honest. I don’t know of any other company that offers this benefit.”