Crafting a benefit
In the three years I’ve been at Big Cartel, I haven’t really had a reason to consider our Maternity/Family policy — or lack thereof. But recently a friend of mine, working at a company that boasted good benefits, found out she was pregnant. So she dug into their official policies only to find — that in between gym membership, unlimited snacks, and medical insurance — there wasn’t an official Maternity/Family policy. When she inquired about it — her boss worked with her to haphazardly piece together a combination of vacation time, sick leave, disability, unpaid leave, and some allowance for remote work. Ultimately she’s covered, but her less-than-ideal experience made me take a long look at our own non-policy at Big Cartel.
I personally knew that this piecemeal coverage would never happen at Big Cartel. Our team is at the heart of what we do, and no one would ever be left to wonder how they’d get through a newborn phase. Or would they? We’ve had three dads bring four new babies into the world since 2011 and combined they took a total of 6 weeks completely off of work. Combined! We clearly have a disconnect between what we want to give our team via a flexible non-policy, and what they think they should be taking.
Do the dads working for us think really they shouldn’t take more than a couple of weeks with a new baby? Would moms feel the same way and jump right back into full-time remote work with baby on the hip? How would a new employee or potential applicant possibly know we’d never leave them hanging? It was clear to me that we needed an official policy, not just a promise of our support.
So I got to work. I researched policies from other companies we respect, and was surprised to find that — in a lot of cases — even if a Family Leave policy exits, it often isn’t mentioned in their list of perks or incentives. However, Ping Pong and Beer Fridge came up quite regularly.
I looked into the standard policies for many progressive countries, and tried to follow their lead. Many European countries offered a minimum of 12 weeks with some percentage of pay. While we don’t have government subsidies to help cover our Big Cartel policy, that wasn’t enough of a reason for us not to move forward. A 12 week expense would be far less costly than recruiting and hiring a new qualified team member.
In the end we considered the following priorities and crafted a Family and Medical Leave policy that represented Big Cartel and would offer our team security and encouragement to prioritize their personal lives.
What circumstances qualify for time off?
This started as a standard Maternity policy — so new babies were obviously included. But we opened our scope to include all employees with newly adopted children, newly placed foster children, caring for a seriously sick or injured family member, caring for themselves when seriously sick or injured, and dealing with the death of an immediate family member. All the details resulted in a comprehensive Family and Medical Leave policy.
Who is covered in these circumstances?
Short answer: Everyone. This wasn’t going to be just a Maternity policy, but a Family policy — and our definition of family stretches far and wide. Moms, dads, husbands, wives, domestic partners, same sex couples, adoptive parents, everyone. If you work at Big Cartel, we’ve got your back, no matter what you and your sweet family looks like.
How much time off is the right amount?
This was really hard to define. We don’t love putting limits on our team — different circumstances will always require less or more time off. So this whole policy comes with a giant asterisk for our team: *We ultimately want you to be taken care of, so as situations call for it, we’re flexible and want to work with you. These are important things in your life and we don’t want you to miss them.
In the end we decided to offer two different periods of time off, based on the employee’s role in the applicable circumstance. Primary caregivers are offered up to 12 weeks off, and secondary caregivers are offered up to 6. We didn’t do this to be stingy, the roles are self-assigned and we won’t dispute them, but instead this was designed as a guideline to help our team understand how much time we recommend. We want them to take what they need, and we want (for example) new dads that are supporting their partners to know they can take a full 6 weeks and we won’t bat an eye.
What about pay?
It’s one thing to offer new parents or seriously sick employees time away knowing their job is secure. But we felt it was equally important that our team had financial security too. We’d looked at some European policies and saw that many offered extensive time off at discounted pay — from 50% to 80% or more. That certainly appealed to a cost-saving instinct we all have, but it felt half-hearted. We couldn’t preach financial security if we weren’t willing to pay up — so our team is covered with full pay.
I’m incredibly proud of the policy that we crafted, and even more proud that I was able to help bring it to life. I hope this important policy further shows our team how much we value their healthy work/life balance. I hope it shows potential candidates that we value women and non-traditional families. I hope it shows our tech peers that it pays to offer a generous paid leave beyond vacation days and sick leave. And I hope it shows our customers that we’re a caring company at the heart of it all.
Follow-up: I’m thrilled to say that since this policy was put into place we’ve had two dads leave for a full 6 weeks with their new babies, and one mama leaves tomorrow for her leave, which she’s estimating will be 4–6 weeks, but she’s got full flexibility to change that at any point.
