Some companies have decided to create a paid paternity leave benefit for their employees, seeing it as a good investment in the workforce. “It helps with retention and to build loyalty to the firm,” says Maryella Gockel, flexibility strategy leader at accounting and advisory firm Ernst & Young.
Ernst recently boosted its paid paternity leave from two weeks to six. “Some men take two weeks when the baby is born, then another four weeks when mom goes back to work,” says Gockel.
Another Big Four firm, KPMG, offers two weeks of paid leave to fathers of new children. “We’ve had an incredible take-up on this benefit,” says Barbara Wankoff, national director of workplace solutions. “Eighty-five percent of eligible dads take paternity leave; the rate was 30 percent in the program’s first year,” which was 2002.
Paid Leave Doesn’t Always Equal a Free Lunch
So how does the work get done when fathers go on leave? When employees are exempt from overtime pay, companies are less likely to hire temporary replacements. “We had four dads in the same office all expecting, and they covered for each other,” Wankoff says.
And many white-collar workers can’t or don’t entirely let go of their professional responsibilities when they’re home rocking the baby to sleep and changing diapers. Whether and how much working fathers continue to labor while on leave “varies per person and according to circumstances,” says Gockel. “If you’re in the middle of a big (business) deal, the transition to leave may take longer.”
