The Cocoon blog

Challenge: Baggu managed leaves across spreadsheets and slideshows, leaving People Ops managers anxious about their accuracy across more leaves in more states as the company began to grow.

Solution: Implementing Cocoon in just three weeks, Baggu can scale leave management, automate their compliance, and offer employees flexibility and visibility into the leave management process they never had before.

Results:

• Reduced leave management time from 3+ hours to 30 minutes per leave.
• Automated employer compliance features pay calculations and compliance, reducing human error.
• Improved employee experience with self-serve leave planning and automated pay calculations.
• Fast implementation—live within three weeks to support an upcoming leave.
• Centralized documentation for easy access and fewer lost files.

Meet Baggu’s People Ops team

As a small company trying to make a big impact, Baggu began crafting durable, reusable bags in 2007. Though that vision has expanded across more products and the teammates who bring them to life, Baggu is still committed to minimizing waste, maximizing delight, and long-term sustainability. 

For Baggu’s People Ops team, long-term sustainability meant rethinking their processes and tooling to offer a scalable employee experience as Baggu continued to grow. One day, as Senior Director of People Ops, Ben Seltzer, began to train up People Ops Manager, Patricia Do, on Baggu’s in-house leave management process across slideshows and spreadsheets, all Patricia could think was, “I hope I don’t actually have to use this,” and began looking for a leave management solution.

Choosing a leave management solution

It wasn’t just the manual processes making Patricia wary. “Ben created valuable resources for employees taking leave, but when it came to calculating pay, taking state benefits into account—and in which state—actually mapping it all out was confusing. I was worried I would make a mistake,” Patricia says. “Plus, Baggu is growing and scaling. It’s hard enough doing this manual process once a year, but when it suddenly quadruples, there’s so much that can go wrong. Messing up someone’s leave would be the worst.”

Though Baggu had just implemented Rippling as their HRIS—which has an exclusive integration contract with a Cocoon competitor for leave management—Ben still encouraged Patricia to evaluate her options and check out Cocoon. He’d looked at them in the past and wanted to see how they had evolved in the years since. 

Ben’s hunch proved to be spot on. On the surface, it would have been easy to keep everything inside Rippling, but as Baggu actually evaluated Cocoon vs. Tilt, Patricia and Ben realized that Tilt lacked a key feature that put a damper on the seeming convenience. “We realized that Cocoon was the only solution that would handle and automate the employer compliance portion. Even though Tilt’s integration with Rippling made certain pieces more convenient, worrying about continuing to file physical paperwork, and not taking on certain compliance pieces on our behalf, we thought Cocoon was the better route to take in the long-run.”

Cocoon’s fast and simple implementation process

Baggu began conversations with Cocoon in late 2024, and signed in January of 2025. By early February, Cocoon’s implementation went live. “We had someone taking leave very soon, so I asked to expedite the implementation timeline, and our reps, Dom and Victoria, delivered in just three weeks. Having just implemented a new HRIS, we were prepared for a lot more time and complexity, so it was a relief that we just had to fill out a few forms and checklists and Cocoon took care of the rest.” 

An automated solution for a people-centric future

Though it’s barely been a month with Cocoon, Patricia already sees there’s a lot to love. “It’s so nice to be able to trust in a platform that’s already wired to calculate and automate complex stuff—and not rely on manual, human calculations,” Patricia explains, relieved. “It’s also a relief that all the documents live inside of Cocoon, so everything employees submit is already there and nothing gets lost.”

Patricia estimates that Cocoon has reduced the time People Ops has to dedicate to the leave management process down from 3+ hours per leave down to 30 minutes. “It will allow me to focus more on my work around hiring practices and compensation packages, and ultimately just reduces a lot of the anxiety I had around managing leaves in-house.”

Cocoon is also proving to be a hit with employees. “We did a walkthrough with an employee using Cocoon, and she loved that she could visualize her leave, tweaking it as she went to make the best decision, and getting things estimated before even officially requesting leave. That was never possible before.” “Plus,” Patricia adds, “as we hire more People Operations managers, and grow the team in general, I think Cocoon will be a huge selling point to show that we’re not only investing in software that makes our work better and our lives easier, but also committed to providing the best employee experience possible.” 

Team Cocoon is fresh off our company-wide offsite in Cancun, slightly sunburnt, and excited to share some big developments we’ve been working on for several months. This month we’re all about customization, a key component of our vision to transform the leave experience with technology and great design. 

Unveiling our tech-powered leave experience for Managers 

Leave management is a team sport, which means your leave solution needs to play nicely with your HR team and managers. That’s why we were excited to announce our new Manager Dashboard last month that gives managers the visibility they need to support their teams through leave—removing you and other People team members as a bottleneck.  

Managers now have access to their own Cocoon Dashboard with details into their direct reports' leave timelines, plus access to a dedicated resource library with templates and guidance.

We sat down with members of the Cocoon Product Team to hear more about how we built this prioritizing customer feedback around simplicity and privacy. 

I’m excited about this launch because it’s part of a larger, ongoing effort to truly tailor the Cocoon experience to all the different roles and functions that may touch a leave, giving them the information they need when they need it.”
_{- Sean Miller, Cocoon Product Manager}

Meet the Leaves tab you’ve been dreaming of

Our (belated) Valentine’s Day gift to you this year: several highly-requested updates to the Leaves tab in your Cocoon Dashboard that give you more visibility at-a-glance and help you report on all leaves with even more granularity. After a little glow-up, this page now includes:

• A search bar to look up any employee
• The ability to filter by leave type 
• Labels for leave cadence (“Continuous” or “Intermittent”)
• Helpful tooltips and flags, e.g. important documents an employee needs to upload

Also—as part of this release, our Insights feature is getting its very own page that you can find on the nav bar (they grow up so fast!) Log in to your Cocoon Dashboard to see it IRL.

Small changes, big impact

As always, we can’t neglect to highlight some smaller but (we think!) equally important product releases.

1. Self-serve FAQ editing: This one is a small but very mighty update. Workspace Admins can now easily edit the FAQ employees see in their Cocoon Dashboard. Learn how to do it here.
2. Easier leave date selection for employees: We heard from employees that the experience for updating leave dates was confusing….So we updated it. To edit a leave plan, employees can now choose any dates on the calendar and Cocoon will automatically validate that they’re in line with laws and your policies. If any of the selected time is not covered, we’ll tell the employee exactly how many days they need to remove from their date range and explain why.
3. Streamlined recertification requests: For intermittent medical or caregiver leaves, that require employer review, Workspace Admins can now easily request new or updated serious health condition forms (known as a “recertification”) with a couple clicks. Cocoon will automatically notify the employee, and let you know when they’ve uploaded the new document to fix any deficiencies. 

Coming soon: A new era of customization in Cocoon with bespoke leave approval flows

We’re kickstarting our customization era with new functionality that allows People teams to choose exactly which leave requests (if any) they want to review themselves, and which they want Cocoon’s software to handle for them. Here’s the scoop:

• In Settings, Cocoon Admins can choose to toggle “Leave adjudication” on or off per leave type: parental (disability and bonding), medical (continuous and intermittent), and caregiver (continuous and intermittent)
• Turning adjudication on allows you to review each leave request and approve it, deny it, or request additional information from the employees. 
• Cocoon walks you through the process with step-by-step guidance and automated employee communications.
• Don’t want to take on this work? No problem—adjudication is off by default, meaning Cocoon will handle these decisions for you with our unique processes per leave type. 

This functionality has been a top request from partners and prospective partners for several months now, and we’re excited to see it out in the wild. Check out how it works firsthand with this interactive demo.

Coming soon: More leaves, not more problems

Cocoon knows leave is not one-sized-fits-all. We think about the edge cases, and are building software to make those moments as smooth as possible for both People teams and employees. Cocoon has created a streamlined experience for employees who need to take multiple leaves. This new functionality makes it easy for employees to plan additional leaves, or plan two simultaneous leaves for different qualifying reasons. People teams: as always, we’ve got you covered—Cocoon handles compliance and makes it easy to track and see details for each leave in your Cocoon Dashboard.

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No two companies or teams operate identically. Cocoon is proud to continue to push the boundaries on tech-powered leave management, this time with unparalleled customization for how your team wants to handle leave reviews and approvals, support for multiple leaves, easy self-serve editing to the information your employees see in Cocoon. Have feedback on what else you’d like to customize within Cocoon? Reach out to support@cocoon.com—we’d love to hear from you!

With the holidays now behind us, there’s still one more gift for you: we’re unveiling the highly requested Manager Dashboard to give managers better visibility into key leave details for their employees. We spoke with Product Designer, Estell Kim, and Product Manager, Sean Miller to learn more about what this feature does, why we built it, and how it helps both our customers and our platform continue to evolve and improve the way leave gets managed.

What is the Manager Dashboard?

The Manager Dashboard is a focused view just for managers offering key details about their direct reports’ leaves, including: leave type, dates, status, and a list of past, present, and upcoming leaves. They’ll also have easy access to resources to help them better support employees through a leave. People Ops teams benefit from this view too—you won’t have to be in the middle answering questions about essential leave details. 

From a design perspective, we wanted it to reflect the overall ease of using Cocoon with everything where you expect and need it to be. We also wanted to ensure privacy and control, so managers can only see certain details, and only for their employees. Admins can toggle manager access on or off and track who’s logged in to keep tabs on accounts and usage.

Leave is a team sport that goes beyond HR and a leave-taker. In offering managers more resources in Cocoon that are easy to access, we can help them focus their time and energy toward supporting a leave-taker.”

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Why we built the Manager Dashboard

This feature was born straight out of customer feedback and research led by our Product team. “Admins told us that, on the one hand, managers needed more than reminder emails from Cocoon, and that having People Ops in the middle for certain questions was slowing everybody down. But on the other hand, they didn’t want to give managers too much information or something that required a lot of training,” Estell explains. 

“Our solution was to develop a Manager Dashboard by leveraging census data to establish a relationship between managers and their direct reports, providing enhanced visibility and greater autonomy,” Sean adds. “Managers can plan effectively before, during, and after an employee’s leave with this self-serve option that has just the right amount of detail.”

“We also wanted to address the patchwork of solutions that non-Cocoon customers rely on today—emails, spreadsheets, too many meetings, and generally scattered processes,” Estell says. “With this additional dashboard, we’re offering an even more seamless, out-of-the-box solution that reduces manual effort and improves communication across the board for seasoned Cocoon customers or those just getting started.”

How does the Manager Dashboard work?

“We prioritize evolving alongside our customers, adapting to their needs, and simplifying things for them,” Sean proudly proclaims. “The Manager Dashboard is straightforward to use, and reduces friction for both managers and People Teams by removing Cocoon Admins as a bottleneck to get key info on employees’ leaves .” Here’s how it works:

When managers log in, they’ll see a focused Leaves tab in the left sidebar. This tab will show them:

1. A list of employees with any past, present, and upcoming leaves
2. Leave type, leave dates, and leave status
3. A link at the top with tips and templates for managers supporting an employee and team through a leave.

From here, they can click on any employee’s name to dive deeper into leave details like:

1. Leave timeline details
2. The laws or policies that cover each segment
3. If their leave is paid, and from which sources 

For Workspace Admins

Workspace Admins are the folks who manage your organization’s use of and access to Cocoon. They have the ability to invite and activate managers and new employees who will use Cocoon—so make sure they’re aware of this update!

• When you integrate your HRIS or provide us with census data, Cocoon automatically matches managers to their direct reports, so you don’t have to do this manually. 
• In the Settings menu, you can see which managers have created an account, confirm their teammates are properly assigned, and turn manager account access on or off. 

Today’s launch, tomorrow’s improvements

“Leave is a team sport that goes beyond HR and a leave-taker,” Estell says. “In offering managers more resources in Cocoon that are easy to access, we can help them focus their time and energy toward supporting a leave-taker.”

“I’m excited about this launch because it’s part of a larger, ongoing effort to truly tailor the Cocoon experience to all the different roles and functions that may touch a leave, giving them the information they need when they need it,” Sean says. “Looking to the future, this work will help us to continue to improve efficiency, flexibility, and transparency as your organization grows, and as Cocoon grows, too.”

In short, at Cocoon, we’re excited to keep improving the leave management process for everyone who’s a part of the journey. To keep doing just that, in 2025, we’re planning to launch roles in Cocoon for HR business partners—so stay tuned!

Being motivated by a desire to help others, inspired by the opportunity to build a great culture, and up to the challenge of helping employees and organizations evolve are some of the special ingredients that make for a great People Ops teammate. While some folks start in HR straight away, others come into it after a life experience that pushes them to want to help others—often in a way they themselves were not. It’s what drove our founders to start Cocoon, and how our leave champion, J, came to her current role as a Benefits Program Manager. J is a powerful example of someone who translated both her positive experiences and struggles in life (and on leave) into concrete solutions, policies, and processes to ensure others would be better supported and equipped to face what the real world and their work life presented. 

Meet J on her search for joy

From a young age, J knew the importance of being there for her family, and that good health wasn’t something to be taken for granted–that’s because J took leave to care for her mother who eventually lost her battle with breast cancer when J was only 23. “When you lose someone that you love so much, it really changes your perspective on life. I started questioning what my purpose was. I realized life was really short and asked myself if I was doing exactly what I wanted to do? Was it bringing me joy?” Upon reflecting, she realized that she wanted to make a bold change, trying her hand at a career in fashion. She stayed in the fast-paced industry for a decade before realizing it was time to switch it up again—this time by starting a family.

“When I got pregnant with my daughter, I remembered that life lesson of how short life was and I knew I didn’t want to miss a single day with her. So I resigned and shifted all that purpose and energy into being a mom and just absolutely loved it.” Adding a son into the mix a few years later, J made each day with her young family count. As her kids grew, J started dabbling in part-time work, once again, asking herself what brought her joy. “I knew I didn’t want to go back to fashion, which was too much travel and intensity,” J says. “I realized, you know, I’m really passionate about helping people. I also really enjoyed the project management side of my work, so that’s when it clicked for me that HR roles worked well with my personal and professional needs.”

She made the full transition back when a part-time role turned into a full-time gig in 2018. Though she had taken on a lot of HR generalist work, she always enjoyed roles focused on leave and benefits most, because they made her feel the impact of her work directly. This eventually led her to become a Benefits Program Manager at a B2C SaaS EdTech company with around 250 employees across the US and Canada. With a team of three, J had a lot on her plate, but it was about to overflow…

From leave admin to leave taker 

In mid-2022, J and her husband were thrown for the loop of their lives as they were both diagnosed with cancer within weeks of each other. Knowing her higher risk for breast cancer, J had always been vigilant about prevention and detection, catching it at an early stage. For her husband, a triathlete unknowingly hosting a growing tumor in his abdomen, however, the diagnosis and treatment were more dire. “I had just enough time to schedule my own surgery, have time to recover, and then get ready to take care of my husband as he underwent his treatment and recovery for what would end up being almost a full year.” 

J ended up taking two leaves: first, a medical leave for her own recovery, then a caregiver leave while her husband underwent treatment. This compounded the complexity, not only having to navigate two types of leave, but doing so while working through her own health problems before turning around to help her husband in his recovery—and with little time to plan and process it all. It didn’t help that her first leave with a different leave administrator went awry. 

“We had one leave rep through our provider to handle everything. They often took too long to respond, or just didn’t respond at all. On top of that, they would send inaccurate manual payroll files, so we wasted a lot of time double-checking and sending files back,” J explains. “I had administered leaves, knew what problems people tended to encounter, so I thought I had a slight upper hand at navigating my own leave. But when you experience it first-hand, it’s even more challenging than you could ever imagine. And it’s downright scary when you don’t know your pay amount or timelines.” The final straw for J came when the leave admin miscommunicated her return date to her manager by eight weeks, causing chaos at work and home. “I just thought, there's no way I could let this happen to anybody else,” J asserts.

Luckily, even before J had taken her first leave, the Benefits team was already in talks about how they could improve the leave experience, cut ties with their outsourced leave provider, and Cocoon was slated as the top option to replace it. “My experience made me even more compassionate for people going on leave, and often not under happy circumstances, and dealing with it all. And now I was in a position to make a difference for them, to ensure nobody else would have to go through what I went through,” J reaffirms.

A sunnier horizon on the road to recovery

Though she didn’t have much time after returning from her medical leave before beginning her caregiver leave, J and her team lined up the pieces enough that she could use Cocoon to plan and manage her caregiver leave. This time around with Cocoon, it felt like night and day compared to the first leave experience. Cocoon gave her the peace of mind she needed about submitting paperwork, pay, and timelines so she could focus on caring for her husband on his long road to recovery.

Unfortunately, her husband’s employer didn’t have Cocoon, and they struggled trying to figure out what to do about disability payments that weren’t coming, until J realized Cocoon could still come to the rescue. “My husband wasn’t receiving disability payments, nobody from the EDD was getting back to us, his HR team wasn’t very helpful, so I started poking around in Cocoon to figure out how to contact the EDD,” J explains. “There was an article that explained the process and even gave tips to get through, like which hours are the best to call. It was incredible.” 

Cocoon gave J such a clear sense of the process, that upon returning to work, she had ideas on how to keep improving the leave process for everyone. “Without the manual processes and overall administrative burden of our previous provider, we could finally work on how our organization could craft more intentional and realistic transition plans to help employees ramp back up after leave. We also started drafting two additional leave policies to complement the parental and disability leave we already had.” 

Without the manual processes and overall administrative burden of our previous provider, we could finally work on how our organization could craft more intentional and realistic transition plans to help employees ramp back up after leave.” 

A leave management experience that keeps getting better

Having now been a Cocoon customer for over two years and managing dozens of leaves in Cocoon, J says the complaints they used to hear from leave-takers about their rep have dried up. “In the People Ops world, when we don’t hear anything from employees, we know that things are going well,” J laughs. “For the Benefits team, we’ve reduced our need to oversee the process by at least 50%, and we don’t keep getting stuck in the middle. We have confidence in Cocoon, and don’t need to spend all that time auditing payroll and trying to get a hold of someone. When we do have questions, we get a timely response that makes sense and offers solutions. And I know first-hand how important that is.”

J also appreciates that the Cocoon experience is always improving and evolving. “In our calls with Mike (J’s Customer Success Manager), he always asks what’s working, what’s not, and to have someone with that kind of attitude is so different. And it isn’t just talk—I constantly see how Cocoon listens and makes improvements. I know Cocoon is keeping an eye on our needs and thinking about the future. This approach fits really well with the ethos of our culture, and is reassuring for the leave industry which desperately needs more of it.” 

With her a clean bill of health for herself and her husband, J also rests assured about how she can play her part in helping others overcome the obstacles they face on a leave, or sidestep them entirely by relying on Cocoon. As someone who has pondered, chased, and redefined her purpose, J knows that “when I can help somebody, I find joy and fulfillment in that. I know that what I’m doing matters to someone else, and also to me… and nothing is more important than that.” We couldn’t agree more, J. 

It’s full steam ahead for Team Cocoon as we wrap up 2024. Before we close our laptops for our company-wide Winter Recharge Week (sidenote: highly recommend this), we’ll be busy at work to release more functionality that helps People teams manage leave a little more smoothly. This month, we’re excited to share what we’ve built along the themes of customization, seamless access across multiple Cocoon accounts, and more.

Customize how your company holidays impact leave time

‘Tis the season for more customization in Cocoon. Our Product Team is definitely on the nice list this year for tackling another top request from our community: including holidays in leave calculations. Cocoon Admins can now easily add their company holidays and shutdowns into Cocoon so we can calculate time balances accordingly if they overlap with an employee’s leave. And, you can customize how you want us to handle pay per employee type for any paid leaves. See how it works below.

Multiple entities, one Admin login

More company entities should not mean more problems. Cocoon Admins at companies with multiple entities can now easily access each entity’s dashboard with a one login with a single click, giving you seamless visibility into the full picture of your company’s leaves. Simply log in with your standard work email and use the nav bar to toggle between them. That’s right—no more time spent logging in and out or using jane+doe+300***@company.com as your email.  

Coming soon: A better experience for People teams who take leave

It can be easy to forget that People leaders need to take leave sometimes, too. Starting next month, any Cocoon Admin who also has an employee account will be able to easily switch back and forth between their employee and Admin Dashboards without ever leaving Cocoon. And did we mention we’re building a dedicated dashboard for managers for visibility into their team’s leaves? Down the road, this ability to easily switch between accounts will also apply to Managers who plan their own leaves in Cocoon. Stay tuned for updates in January!

Small changes, big impact

Some launches are flashier than others, but smaller improvements stack up over time to make a real impact to the overall experience for both People teams and employees. Our team is always hard at work to make incremental changes based on our community’s needs. Here are a few recent small but mighty updates we made:

• Reminders for employees to verify benefits payments:  We know how critical it is to verify that employees are paid correctly. Based on your feedback, we added a task to employees’ “My tasks” Dashboard to use our Benefits Verification Tool. All they need to do is enter dates and amounts from one benefits check and we’ll instantly verify whether the daily rate they received matches the rate in our system. With this update, they can easily *check* that task off the to-do list ;)
• Growing into eligibility based on tenure: Compliance is our bread and butter. As of next month, Cocoon’s system will automatically detect if an employee hits an FMLA tenure requirement during a leave, and will instantly trigger all relevant updates from there: send relevant compliance notices, update employees’ leave timelines, and enable them plan additional leave time based on their new eligibility. A small but mighty win for reliable, tech-powered leave.

Have feedback or thoughts on anything above? Feel free to share them directly with our Product Marketer, Libby Buttenwieser, at product-feedback@cocoon.com. Otherwise, we’ll see you back here in 2025 with a lot more updates to share!

"Paid leave pays off" is more than just clever copywriting and Cocoon’s vision for leave—it’s a conclusion we’ve come to again and again having helped our customers manage over 10,000 leaves, seeing first hand the impact paid leave makes. But we know nobody can speak to that better than employees themselves. That’s why our team partnered up with Parentaly and the Chamber of Mothers to craft a survey to understand the impact of paid leave (or the lack thereof). Paired with the results of our annual benchmark survey, you have access to rich datasets to: see what a competitive policy is, understand the benefits of having one, and make a case to update yours accordingly. We know that compassionate, competitive employers go further and get better results, but now you can see why for yourself!

Key takeaways

Though we encourage you to explore all the findings below, these were the top three that stood out for us:

1. Paid leave is a must-have. 60% of respondents said lack of a competitive paid leave package would be a deal breaker when considering a new job.
2. Paid leave outranks most other benefits. Potential job seekers ranked a competitive paid leave package as their #2 priority (a hair more important than even a competitive salary), with 100% covered health insurance being #1.
3. Paid leave impacts retention. 56% say a poor leave package was a reason they left their job, while 70% say a generous paid leave package would make them stay.

The business case for offering paid leave

Over 1,300 respondents nationwide took our survey (with the vast majority sourced randomly). Across this set of questions, we sought to understand how access to competitive paid leave policies impacts recruiting and retention.

60% say access to paid leave would be a deal-breaker in considering a new job; 56% say a poor leave package was a factor in deciding to leave a job

When it comes to recruiting and retention, not offering paid leave is a dealbreaker. Surprisingly, it’s sometimes doing as much or more heavy lifting than compensation: when we asked respondents to rank the importance of benefits, access to paid leave was ranked #2 overall—just a hair above even a competitive salary! (Number one was 100% paid health insurance.) Nearly half said they would take a pay cut to work with a company with a better paid leave package. 

Based on how unnecessarily confusing and frustrating my first leave was… I would need to forgo my dream of a very-much-wanted second child if I stay at my current company.”

I would like to have a third baby, but will have to look for another job with better leave before we do.” 

70% say a generous paid leave package would make them stay at their current employer

Paid leave can be a huge factor in keeping new parents in the workforce overall, which in turn helps them support their families and grow their careers. It’s also a good deal for employers who can spend up to double a former employee’s salary to replace them. When an employee knows they’re being taken care of in their moment of need, they return the favor by staying on with their supportive employer.

My husband has 18 weeks of paid leave through his employer and will literally never leave.”

I’ve taken paid parental leave twice and it was instrumental to my physical healing and mental capacity to get back to work at full productivity.”

58% say they would take unpaid leave if there was no company policy

Though this may be a favor in point of naysayers (“why pay for it if they’d take it unpaid?”), we think this speaks to the dire necessity of access to paid leave so employees can take the time they need to care for themselves and/or their loved ones in some of life’s most challenging moments. Leave will happen whether you have a policy or not, and we think it’s better to be prepared.

I took paid parental leave and unpaid leave following that where I was pushed out of my role, denied my annual bonus, and opportunities for advancement. That, on top of postpartum anxiety and depression, has had a significant impact on my life.”

Access, understanding, and satisfaction

This set of questions helped us understand what kind of leave respondents do or don’t have access to, and how satisfied with it they are.

Only 43% are satisfied with the process of taking leave

Though 71% of respondents were content with their access to leave, less than half were satisfied with the process of taking it. This could suggest policies might look good on paper, but when an employee goes to plan and manage their leave, the experience takes a turn for the worse. Companies should not only train and educate employees on their policies, but also provide them the tools to effectively take advantage of the policies.

I work at a company with a ‘somewhat generous’ paid leave policy… but HR is perpetually confused at how to apply our policy and state programs, and doesn’t seem to care to learn more to actually help employees. Some of my colleagues have even been given completely incorrect information meant for employees based in other states… I dread the stress involved with navigating our leave policies.”

The gender gap shows up in leave, too

Unsurprisingly, more males have access to paid leave, with 86% saying their employers offer it, while only 59% of females’ do. In general, the higher your wage, the better your access to paid leave. When males aren’t satisfied with the amount of paid leave they’re given, they’re also more likely to leave a job: 68% of males say it has impacted their decision to leave, versus only 42% of females. 

Though 77% of males say they’re very comfortable taking full advantage of their company’s paid leave policy, 50% of them also said they thought doing so would impact their career progression. Women are less comfortable using their company’s leave policy (60%), but only 19% are concerned about the career impact it could have. Given the gender and class dynamics at work when it comes to access and use of paid leave, more work needs to be done to provide equitable access to leave, inside of a culture that promotes taking leave for whomever needs it. 

Best practices for employers

1. Improve your recruitment efforts and employee retention by offering paid leave. Tap our free resources to help you draft parental, medical, caregiver, and compassionate leave policies. Check out our paid leave benchmarking data to help you determine policy length.
2. Make employees feel comfortable to take leave. Educate employees, managers, and People Ops so they can properly navigate your policies. Provide tools like Cocoon that simplify and automate the hardest parts of leave, where friction and problems can arise. Establish the kind of culture that makes anyone feel safe and supported to take a leave, and confident about what will happen when they come back.
3. Provide equitable access to leave. Craft your policies with the needs of any employee in mind–not just people you “think” will take leave, or based on the exact employee population you have today. You also reduce complexity if everybody is offered the same thing, while future-proofing your policies as you grow and expand operations.

The U.S. is the only OECD member country—and one of only six countries in the world—without a national paid parental leave policy. This puts the burden on employers and state governments to figure out an offering, which could explain why 84% of US employers are planning on changing their leave policies in the next two years. That’s why we offer our annual paid leave benchmark report to help you set competitive baselines (and even help you craft policy language with our generators). Increasingly, competitive paid leave policies are table stakes for employee recruitment and retention, making this data more timely than ever.

This year, we offer paid leave policy insights with data from more than 250 companies across more than 12 industries for parental, medical, and caregiver leaves. In this blog, we’ll cover the top highlights, but you can visualize the data on our dashboard, or by downloading the full dataset below.

Tenure benchmarks 

While FMLA-protected leaves have hard and fast tenure requirements (working full-time for a covered employer for 12+ months and logging at least 1,250 hours), our benchmarks show that only 5-10% of companies have tenure requirements for 12+ months, and a majority don’t have tenure requirements at all. If you and another company offer the same amount of paid leave time, but have different tenure requirements, that’s a factor employees consider. Here’s how tenure requirements shake out:

• 52% of companies offering paid parental leave don’t have tenure requirement
• 79% of companies offering paid medical leave don’t have tenure requirement
• 81% of companies offering paid caregiver leave don’t have tenure requirement

💡 Interestingly, the median employee tenure at companies with paid parental leave policies is 20% longer than those without, supporting the idea that paid leave does pay off.

Overall leave policy median benchmarks

Below we share median policy lengths across paid parental, medical, and caregiver leaves, with insights by company size and industry. 

💡 If you don’t yet have a paid parental, medical, and/or caregiver policy, or are looking to update yours, try our free policy generators. 

Parental leave

With only 27% of US private-sector workers overall having access to paid parental leave, and over four million Americans taking an FMLA-protected parental leave each year, the need for paid parental leave is dire. That makes these 2024 metrics reassuring:

• Median birthing parental leave policy: 16 weeks
• Median non-birthing parental leave policy: 12 weeks
• 97% of employers in our data set have a paid parental leave policy (up 2% from 2023).
• Since 2021, parental leave policy lengths for birthing and non-birthing parents have increased nearly 25% across our benchmark data.
• Company size and industry insights:
  • Leading industries for birthing parental leave policies: media, capital markets, engineering/manufacturing, and pharmaceuticals—offering a more generous 18-24 weeks.
  • For non-birthing parental leave policies, the media industry bumps down to an 8 week median, where specialty retail also sits.
  • Smaller companies, with 11-50 employees, also bump down to 14.25 weeks for birthing parental leave policies, while all others held at 16 weeks.

Medical leave

Though parental leave has more coverage, when it comes to those taking an FMLA-protected leave, 55% use it for taking care of their own medical condition. This year, we found that a smaller percentage of employers offered a paid medical leave, which we think is more reflective of adding more companies to the dataset that simply don’t have medical policies versus employers revoking them. 

• Median medical leave policy: 6 weeks
• Since 2022, median medical leave offering is up 76% (up to 6 weeks from 3.4 weeks).
• 46% of employers in our data set have a paid medical leave policy (down 12% from last year).
• Company size and industry insights:
  • Leading industries for longer medical leave policies include: pharmaceuticals, engineering/manufacturing, healthcare services, media, and consumer services, offering anywhere from 7-12 weeks.
  • Mid-sized companies and beyond (250+ employees) see a boost in their median medical leave to 8 weeks.

Caregiver leave

Across the US, the need for caregiver leave is on the rise—with 22% of US adults working full time and providing caregiving (up 21% since 2015). Though this is the least common paid leave policy, it’s also gained traction throughout the years in our benchmark reports.

• Median caregiver policy: 6 weeks 
• 24% of employers surveyed have a paid caregiver leave policy (up 15% from 2023).
• Company size and industry insights:
  • Leading industries for longer caregiver leave policies include: pharmaceuticals and capital markets, offering up to 12 weeks.
  • Companies 11-50 employees offer just a bit more caregiver leave at 8 weeks.
  • While the overall median is 6 weeks, the most generous policies range from 12-16 weeks.

💡Not sure where to start with caregiver leave? Learn why you need a policy, and try our free caregiver leave policy generator. 

The bottom line

Though we’re still working towards our long-term vision where every working person can afford to take the time they need during life’s pivotal moments, we’re reassured by the growth in the number of companies offering paid leaves as well as increases to the lengths of those leaves each year. By offering our benchmarking data, we hope to help companies set competitive, progressive, and equitable baselines for their leave policies. But even beyond that, we are here to raise the standard for how leaves are planned and managed so employers can best support a leave-taker to make the most of the time they need.

Last year when we announced our vision for the future of leave management, we weren’t just talking about the evolution of our platform. We also included our hope that every working person could afford to take leave when they needed it, because that’s the true solution. With Trump entering the White House and a Republican controlled Senate, our hope for national paid leave policy feels further away than ever. The reality is that 44% of US workers don’t even qualify for unpaid FMLA leave, and only 27% of workers nationwide have access to paid family leave (much less other types of leave). A growing number of states have passed paid leave legislation, but the US remains as one of only seven countries in the world with no national paid leave program for parents or otherwise. 

The problem is so dramatic that even US Surgeon General, Vivek H. Murthy, in September issued an Advisory on the mental health and well being of parents, calling for government regulation to “establish a national paid family and medical leave program and ensure all workers have paid sick time,” and for employers to “expand policies and programs that support the well-being of parents and caregivers in the workplace.” We support this vision so everyone can take care of themselves, their families, friends, and community.

After the election results it's easy to feel like we'll be waiting at least another four years before national paid leave becomes a reality. But during the election it was clear that support for families was top of mind for all Americans, and all candidates. Though not a tentpole issue during his campaign, in his prior term, President-Elect Donald Trump signed a defense bill passed by the Senate that expanded paid parental leave for federal employees to 12 weeks. He also doubled the child tax credit amount to $2000–a change he said he would make permanent when in office again. Comments by J.D. Vance in the vice presidential debate in early October also indicated a shift in tone for the Republican party, saying that, “we should have a family care model that makes choice possible.” But it remains to be seen who would have access to which choices. With no meaningful federal action taken since the 1990s’ FMLA, we hope President-Elect Trump will take heed of Surgeon General Murthy’s advisory, and the pleas of millions of Americans.

Being realistic in the meantime, however, we know that political leaders are unlikely to take swift and sweeping action, which is why we’re taking some matters into our own hands to help fund the push for paid leave. Here’s how it works:

To celebrate over 10,000 leaves taken with Cocoon since we launched in 2021, we’re starting with a $10,000 donation. Then, for every leave managed in Cocoon from now through the end of 2025, we’ll add $1 to the donation pot.

Here's how you can get involved:

1. Use Cocoon for leave management and every leave run through Cocoon contributes to the cause. 
2. Donate an amount on behalf of your employer, or make a personal donation here.
3. Share this message with others in your company, industry, and network—the private sector can influence the public sector.

Where are the donations going? We’ve chosen to split them equally between three leading organizations whose visions of equitable and accessible paid leave for all align closely with ours: Moms First, Chamber of Mothers, and Paid Leave for All.

Though it will take time, dedicated efforts, and funding across the public and private sector, we firmly believe we not only have the power, but the obligation, to make progress toward the future of paid leave that we envision. It’s time to actively guide the conversations and shape the decisions that will lead the US to join the global community in providing its citizens the ability to take care of themselves, their families, and loved ones. Join us in the push to do so.

Anyone who has administered a leave (especially without Cocoon) knows how antiquated the system is. This can be even trickier and more time-intensive for intermittent leaves, which can be somewhat unpredictable, but still require consistent tracking. Luckily, Cocoon gives you just the right tools to stay on top of intermittent leave tracking and management. Guided by Staff Product Manager, Alice Luu, we’ll walk you through our approach to intermittent medical and caregiver leaves, why it’s a game-changer, and how we built it with simplicity and visibility in mind.

What is an intermittent leave?

In a nutshell, an intermittent leave is an FMLA leave taken in varying, inconsistent, or sometimes unpredictable blocks of time for a single qualifying reason, often in time increments shorter than a single workday. Or, an employee might work a consistent but reduced schedule. This is in contrast to a continuous leave, where a leave-taker is fully away for the entire length of the leave. For example, if an employee has a medical condition that flares up, they might take intermittent medical leave to receive treatment and flow between working and recovering as their condition fluctuates.

Check out our intermittent leave guide to learn more about what it is, qualifying conditions, tracking requirements, and more.

Why is tracking intermittent leave so hard?

Though it’s tough to perfectly plan and schedule any leave, some medical and caregiver leaves might be more unpredictable than, say, a parental or bonding leave. There will be some things you can plan for (like a scheduled appointment) and some things you cannot (like a sudden wave of debilitating nausea). Because the FMLA allows up to 12 weeks of job-protected leave, diligently tracking intermittent leaves is important so a leave-taker only uses the time they need, and so employers can keep track along with them.

Unfortunately, many intermittent leaves are tracked and reviewed manually, making them prone to errors, extra work, and delays. Inconsistencies in tracking also means pay calculations and compliance can get off-track, too—which are typically the hardest problems to resolve. Even if a third-party provider is managing your leaves, that doesn’t quite solve the issue, because then it puts the reasons for leave, approvals, and schedules into a black box. That often leaves People teams, managers, and employees in the dark about what’s going on and how decisions were made. This can be disruptive for business overall, but especially for team and work cohesion.

But where there are tough problems, there are big opportunities—which is why we think employers and employees alike will benefit from our approach to intermittent leave tracking.

How does intermittent leave tracking work in Cocoon?

Across many conversations with key partners, customer champions, and our Legal Team, it was clear we could simplify the way intermittent leave gets tracked and communicated, with more compliance guardrails, while putting admins in the driver's seat for clearer and better decision-making. In Cocoon, this means:

• Leave-takers can enter their time away down to one-minute intervals whenever it’s convenient for them.
• Cocoon sends prompt reminders for time reporting to the leave-taker so managers and People Teams don’t have to.
• Admins can easily review each leave request and corresponding medical documents to make informed decisions (see how it works here).
• Cocoon automatically approves absences that are reported in connection with an approved leave to avoid approval bottlenecks.
• As time gets reported, pay tracking updates automatically in Cocoon for accurate calculations.
• Cocoon reconciles time away with what was projected to flag any potential issues so employers can address changed circumstances with employees.
• Cocoon is a one-stop-shop for tracking FMLA balances and managing intermittent leaves alongside all others.

Let’s see it as an example

1. Denise is taking intermittent FMLA medical leave. 
2. Her doctor has estimated that she will be away from work for a full week, then about three times a week for two hours at a time for the next month. 
3. For scheduled appointments, or when taking time away for recovery, Denise reports leave time taken after the fact when it’s convenient for her. 
4. She forgets to enter her times twice in the pay period, but Cocoon notifies her so she can submit it in time to not impact her next paycheck.
5. After two weeks, it’s looking more like Denise is taking three hours at a time so Cocoon flags this for her and an HR admin to discuss. 
6. She gets an updated doctor’s note and devises a new schedule that works better for her and the team.
7. After 35 days, Denise returns to work. 
8. Though she needed a little more time than what was originally projected, because of the proactive steps and accurate time tracking in the meantime, everybody was on the same page.

Why Cocoon’s approach to intermittent leave tracking is an evolution (and will continue to evolve)

A layer deeper than mere product functionality is our unique approach to automating intermittent leave management, while still giving employers visibility for better decision-making. When done in-house without the right tools, People Teams and managers get bogged down in manual work reviewing spreadsheets or nudging employees to submit them. Yet completely outsourcing leave management to a third-party creates a black box around why someone was, is, or will be away or back at work and why. With Cocoon automating things like entitlements, pay tracking, and sending reminders, employers have all the information at their fingertips to make decisions appropriate for the situation to ultimately support leave-takers and their teams—without the taking on more tedious tasks. 

In the short term, we plan to add capabilities to simplify tracking for future and recurring appointments and help admins request additional medical documents—so be on the lookout for them soon! In the long term, we plan to guide employers to be consistent in how they make decisions and have a history of decisions that lives in Cocoon. With improved and more automated intermittent leave tracking, leave-takers can track their time and know where they stand, all in a few clicks. People Teams can better manage intermittent leaves with the information they need to stay equipped and supportive when things don’t go according to plan or they’re in a new situation—ultimately giving everyone the peace of mind they need.

Whether you manage leaves of absence internally or outsource them; use spreadsheets, third-party reps, or software—the most important thing is that you have some sort of system in place that works for People Ops and leave-takers. We think the best approach automates the tough stuff—like pay calculations and ever-changing leave laws—while still giving People teams and leave-takers visibility and control (which we know is biased, because this is Cocoon’s approach). However, we know that not every team and company might be ready to bring in a software solution, and that’s okay. That’s why we’ve created a dynamic leave tracking spreadsheet template for you, along with some of our best free tools and guides to ensure that no matter how you manage leaves, you’re doing the best you can.

Pros and cons to managing leave internally

There are various approaches to administering a leave. Some teams choose to outsource it completely to a third-party provider, which means all decisions and paperwork generally stay between an employee and their assigned rep. Other teams work with leave management solution partners like Cocoon that provide software, tools, and automation to simplify and streamline so employers can focus on their employees. Others choose to manage it in-house, with a designated “expert” or multiple teammates handling the different parts of leave. 

Managing leave internally is often seen as a cost savings measure—especially for smaller companies that might not have many leaves to manage. Doing things in-house without support can also be easier if your company doesn’t operate in multiple states (or states with mandatory leave laws) which cuts down on compliance complexity. It also gives People Ops teams the opportunity to tailor their approach, ensuring they can control the process for an employee experience that aligns with their company culture. 

Regardless of whether you insource or outsource, there are still many responsibilities employers need to stay on top of and the perceived cost-savings of managing it in-house can go out the window as People teams try to:

• Understand and keep up with changing state leave laws and federal/FMLA regulations.
• Track time and leave entitlements accurately to calculate pay properly.
• Effectively support employees before, during, and after a leave.
• Manage different leave types and concurrent leaves, and reconcile them with various laws and internal policies.

Best practices for managing leave internally

Though the challenges above can be tough, People Ops teams can implement these best practices to meet challenges head-on and be proactive:

Periodic actions to take

1. Review and update your policies at regular intervals. What worked two years ago might not work now.
2. Set a regular communication cadence to keep employees in the know about any updates, general reminders of what your policies are, and what’s available to them.
3. Conduct periodic audits of leave data to understand how employees are using your leave benefits (or not) and to benchmark yourself against others in your industry.
4. Take time to catch up on legal changes that have happened or that might be in the works.

Have an established process

1. Establish clear leave policies that stand up to legal reviews and are competitive with companies similar to yours. 
2. Set up a tracking system so you can manage and monitor upcoming leaves, as well as those in progress.
3. Train HR teammates and managers on your policies, and how to appropriately communicate with and support leave-takers.
4. Provide a clear process for requesting and approving leave. (Check out our free leave planning tool to get an idea of the information you’ll need to ask an employee.)
5. Ensure you are staying compliant, with the correct documentation throughout the process with a detailed checklist.

While it’s easy to write this list, it’s much harder to carry it out effectively—but that’s why Cocoon was founded in the first place, and why we like to give employers and employees as many tools as they can to plan and manage leave to the best of their abilities. Many of them are linked above (and on one page here), while below you can get a more in-depth explanation of how to use the tracking template.

Simplify leave tracking with our template

Here’s how in-house teams can better track leaves with our dynamic and customizable tool:

1. Make a copy of the Google Sheet.
2. Head to the Company leave policies tab and fill out the information based on what your company offers.
3. For each new leave, head to the Master tracking sheet and fill out:some text
   1. Employee name
   2. Leave type
   3. Leave leg start and end dates
   4. FMLA eligibility
4. We’ll reconcile that with the info you provided in step two to calculate the rest for you.
5. To see all planned, current, and upcoming leaves in a sleeker timeline view, head to the Employee leave summary view.

A caveat here is that this tracker is only one step of the process. For example, it won’t calculate pay for you. The full Cocoon experience goes beyond basic calculations to automate the most complex parts of a leave like compliance, payroll, claims, reporting, and more.

Signs you may need more than a home-grown solution

If things are going swimmingly between your own processes and our free dynamic planning and tracking tools, excellent. But there are a few indicators that might mean you should start the search for a more robust leave management solution sooner rather than later:

• You have missed compliance notices or had a compliance violation.
• Leave-takers consistently don’t file claims on time, or at all.
• You’re unsure if your company is taking advantage of state and private benefits.
• Your company is growing quickly or expanding operations in other states.
• You see higher turnover or tension with leave-takers.
• Your team spends too much time administering each leave at the cost of other objectives.
• Your team struggles with pay coordination across all benefits, causing issues with leave-takers and Finance.

💡 See exactly how Cocoon helps you tackle these problems with ease and power by checking out different features in our interactive Demo Library. No sign up, no sales.

The future of better leave management is now

Though there are stellar People Ops teams who are proactive, knowledgeable, and supportive when it comes to managing leaves, there are many more who are struggling to simply get through it. For some teams, our free tools will be a huge step up, but our larger vision is to evolve how technology is leveraged to automate, calculate, and plan the most complex parts of leave—which go far beyond mere spreadsheets. Ultimately, that’s what will give leave-takers the peace of mind they need to put their focus on the reason for their leave, while giving employers the opportunity to better support them with less effort and risk. So whether you’re just handling your first leave or are looking to really scale up and shape up your approach, Cocoon is excited to be your dedicated partner.