Sarah Hardy is the Co-Founder and COO of Bobbie, the mom-founded and led infant formula company.
It was 9 p.m. on a Wednesday night in September, and my phone rang. It was one of our employees, and when I answered, my stomach sank.
As a cofounder of a fast-growing company, unexpected moments that catch you completely off-guard are commonplace. But there’s nothing that can prepare you for the moment when a first-time expectant parent on your team is rushing to the hospital to give birth at 27 weeks—nearly 3 months early. And yet, it was immediately clear to me what we’d do: Meet her in her reality and implement a policy that would support her.
Between 10% and 15% of infants in the United States need care in the neonatal intensive care unit. To even imagine any employee spending their paid leave driving back and forth from the NICU every day is unconscionable to me. Even worse is the notion of returning to work during this time to “save” their paid leave for once their baby is discharged from the NICU. As I imagined those realities for this employee, I knew one thing for sure: She needed to be at the NICU every day with her baby and still have time to adjust to life at home down the road.
As a mom of two myself and with a team of more than 100 employees—80% of which are parents—I’m constantly thinking about ways we can show up for working parents differently. And when it comes to creating first-of-its-kind employee benefits, I’ve come to learn that innovation happens at the cross-section of real-life moments that inspire us to be responsive to our employees’ needs, especially in unique circumstances that may otherwise go unnoticed.
That’s exactly why, when I received this call, we sprung into action. Within 24 hours of receiving this news, our People and Finance teams put our heads together and established an addendum to our existing parental leave policy, adding up to 16 weeks of additional paid leave for parents whose baby is in the neonatal intensive care unit or NICU, thereby protecting parents from having to even consider compromising time with their newborn to ensure paid leave once their baby comes home. Overnight, it was permanently written into our policy, without hesitation. By creating a policy that meets those needs, we’re meeting parents in their reality, and we’re able to make an outsized impact for them when they need it most.
Approaching benefits in a human-first way isn’t easy, and it certainly isn’t cheap. I won’t pretend it is. But it’s a superpower we’ve embraced at my company and a mindset I believe is critical when it comes to creating best-in-class benefits. It requires a level of financial investment alongside a unique mindset that is equal parts responsive, nimble and humble enough to look to your team to find out what they need rather than assuming. But it more than pays off when it comes to employee retention rates and employee satisfaction across the board. Since the implementation of our NICU policy, we’ve heard from NICU parents and nonparents alike about how meaningful the company’s commitment to offering critical and unique employee support is. In short, it’s completely worth it.
When we look toward the future of work in increasingly remote environments, meaningful applications of empathy and heart will go a long way in differentiating work cultures that truly walk the walk versus those that only talk the talk. Expanding parental leave to include time to care for a child in the NICU is a good place for companies to start.
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