The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) today announced a new paid parental-leave program for its employees, providing six workweeks of paid leave per year for the birth, adoption or foster placement of a new child.
The benefit can be taken all at once or intermittently. It will be available to both mothers and fathers immediately upon hiring at the FDIC.
“We are proud to provide this important benefit to our employees to ease some of the burden and worry that new parents face,” said FDIC Chairman Jelena McWilliams. “We recognize that many of our employees spend much of their time on the road and away from their family, and it is important that they feel supported.”
Currently, there are no federal-level paid-leave programs in place. In that absence, employers around the country have been expanding their paid-leave perks to help attract and retain new talent.
Smucker’s recently announced its new paid-leave policy, giving new moms and dads 12 weeks of paid time off.
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“Parenting is a defining moment for employees. Anyone who becomes a parent knows it’s life-changing,” Jason Russell, director of North America total rewards at SAP America, said last month at the National Business Group on Health’s Workforce Strategy conference in San Diego. “So we think about, as an employer, how we help them become better parents and better employees.”
Overall, around 27% of employers offer paid parental-leave benefits, according to data from the Society for Human Resource Management. Industry experts say that offering such a benefit not only helps employees, but also the company at large.
“The paid parental leave will allow the FDIC to be more competitive with the private sector in attracting the next generation of top talent,” McWilliams said.
The FDIC’s program is being established in conjunction with the compensation agreement with the National Treasury Employees Union, and will become effective in January 2020, following formal ratification of that agreement.
