The video-streaming company now allows mothers and fathers to take as much time off as they desire during the first year after their child's birth or adoption³, while earning their normal salary. The updated policy is intended to help the company retain valuable employees, according to Tawni Cranz, Netflix's chief talent officer.

 

"Netflix's continued success hinges on us competing for and keeping the most talented individuals in their field," Cranz said in a blog announcing the leave expansion. "Experience shows people perform better at work when they're not worrying about home."

 

Netflix's updated policy ranks among the most generous in an industry fiercely competing to attract and retain talented employees. At the high end is Twitter, which offers 20 weeks of paid leave to birth mothers, according to a recent survey by The Atlantic. Google offers biological mothers up to 18 weeks in paid maternity⁴ leave, with up to 22 weeks if there are complications.

 

Facebook offers new parents 4 months of paid leave, as well as $4,000 in cash. Apple offers expectant mothers up to 4 weeks of leave prior to delivery and 14 weeks after. Both companies also offer adoption services and subsidize the cost of freezing eggs for female staff, up to $20,000.

 

Netflix's updated parental leave policy allows both mothers and fathers of newborns and adoptees to set their own work schedule, letting them return on a full- or part-time basis and take leaves as necessary during their first year with new children.

 

Susan Wojcicki, the CEO of YouTube, offered some insight into the benefits of expanded maternity leave in the Wall Street Journal last year. Noting that she was the first employee to go on paid maternity leave at Google, Wojcicki wrote that when Google increased its paid maternity leave from 12 weeks to 18 in 2007, "the rate at which new moms left Google fell by 50 percent."

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