The Cocoon blog

A rapidly growing workforce requesting more parental leaves breaks down Benchling’s process

With headcount doubling in one year and a company initiative to switch from Benchling’s professional employer organization (PEO) to its own systems, Kari Gould, HR Operations Specialist, and her team had their work cut out for them. It was becoming increasingly difficult for Benchling’s systems to support its rapid growth, and in addition, Kari shares, “our employee demographics were changing. We went from a younger average age with fewer parental leaves to a slightly older employee population with a much higher volume of leaves.” 

Given that Benchling’s then process for requesting and managing leaves was “a lot of work, a lot of time, and not very smooth,” Kari knew it would only further break down as they grew. Though she also counted on one HRBP, a global controller, and an HR consultant as part of her “pre-leave team,” Kari says, “employees still didn’t have a good sense of who to go to, where to get the information, what type of pay to expect, how long they could go on leave, or what they really needed to do to kickstart the process,” she said. “And it’s not something you can just lay out perfectly in the employee handbook.” 

Cocoon offers the promise of a smoother, easier process to manage leave

As Kari was searching for leave solutions, Vivek Reddy joined the Benchling team as Senior People Operations Manager. In addition to a system that made leave easier for both employees and the People team, Kari and Vivek wanted to find a solution that was employee-centered and future-proofed. 

Vivek explained, “One of the things that caught our eye in terms of Cocoon’s approach was their software that enabled a smoother process for leaves. We didn’t want to sacrifice employee experience.”

Staying on top of ever-changing HR trends and legal shifts in parental leave

“Using Cocoon has been one of the best decisions we’ve made in terms of enabling Benchling to be the most employee-forward and progressive organization that we possibly can be,” Vivek said. “When employees go on leave it is one of the most personal times for them and ensuring that they have an excellent experience is immensely helpful for us in terms of building credibility and trust, and ensuring that our employees feel as if they can do their best work and they can bring their whole self [to work].”

It doesn’t hurt that Cocoon has made life easier for Kari’s team, too. That process with four people and employees not knowing where to go? Now, Kari said, “All I have to do is direct the person to the Cocoon platform and I know that they are in good hands.” 

In addition to making the leave process simple for both Benchling’s People team and employees, Cocoon stays on top of changes to federal and state laws affecting leave so Kari and Vivek don’t have to. 

Vivek said, “Cocoon has really helped us in terms of understanding how we can design more progressive policies and benefits while making sure that we’re staying competitive with the market.”

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About Benchling

Benchling began over a decade ago in an academic lab, when its founders realized that the technology needed to support the complexity and pace of science wasn't available—so they created their own. Today, Benchling serves the world’s biotech leaders and innovators, big and small. Its team wakes up every day focused on helping its global customers unlock the power of biotechnology faster, whether they're developing new medicines, crops, foods, or materials. The biotech revolution is happening today and Benchling powers the possibilities of tomorrow.

There are constant, stark reminders that the world around us is in crisis. How this impacts each and every person is different, making it hard for someone to get the support they need, much less from their employer — but that doesn’t mean we have nothing at our disposal to help.

That’s why we implemented a comprehensive, paid compassionate leave policy at Cocoon, to support employees through some of life’s most challenging and vulnerable moments that might otherwise go unaccounted for. To help other organizations that feel compelled to do more, we’re also sharing our policy language below (vetted by our compliance lawyers) so you can get started.

What is compassionate leave?

"Compassionate leave gives employees the flexibility and privacy to determine their own priorities, rather than a rigid policy dictating which periods of life are 'important enough' to warrant time away from work."

Since the early days of Cocoon, a set of operating principles have guided our culture. While we already offer fully-paid parental, medical, and caregiver leaves, we know so many of employees’ most important priorities, friends and family members, and big life moments fall beyond the protections of these more typical leave types and what the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) legally covers. Compassionate leave gives employees the flexibility and privacy to determine their own priorities, rather than a rigid policy dictating which periods of life are “important enough” to warrant time away from work. Compassionate leave could be used for bereavement, pregnancy loss, legal proceedings, caring for a relation not covered by FMLA. While some organizations offer one to three days, our policy covers four weeks.

Our compassionate leave policy philosophy

1. Paid, protected time is critical in vulnerable moments 

The most life-changing periods of a person’s life can make or break their experience at work. The data is clear that generous, accessible parental leave policies improve retention and help attract new talent—we want to see those same benefits for people going through equally life-changing moments who may not get the same support. 

In today’s productivity-driven culture, the typical employee is expected to manage work, family obligations, their own health, and whatever curveballs life throws at them with consistent output and a smile. But what happens when their capacity is overloaded? For many, the answer is to leave the workforce entirely (something that especially impacts women and BIPOC employees), burn out in their personal and professional life, or find work that could allow them this space. We think of leave (of all types) as a tool to help employees reset their capacity and return to work when that capacity is feeling more manageable, instead of abandoning them in their moment of need. 

2. We trust our people and respect their right to privacy 

As part of our policy, no employee is obligated to share the reason for their compassionate leave. We believe each individual is the expert in their own wellbeing. It is not up to us as company leaders (or an HR team, or a manager) to judge the “severity” of another person’s situation and whether or not they may need time away. 

Our team culture trusts employees to use their own discretion when they need to use the policy. We also know that fear of judgment and the administrative burden of providing evidence of need has historically prevented employees from fully taking advantage of otherwise generous policies (pregnancy loss or mental health leave policies, for instance).

3. All employees deserve compassion 

Regardless of tenure, all full- and part-time employees are eligible for compassionate leave at Cocoon, because life doesn’t wait for you to accrue time off. This is true of all of our leave policies. While the majority of our team members live in California, we do have several remote employees across the United States. Rapidly changing state laws mean that our employees are not necessarily guaranteed safe, equitable medical care. The health and safety of our team and their families is our greatest priority. That’s why included in our compassionate leave policy is additional support for employees seeking appropriate, equitable medical care outside of their home state. This may include abortion care, racially-concordant care, or gender affirming care for our employees or their family.

Our open-source compassionate leave policy

We welcome any company that feels this policy reflects their values to adopt it for their own employees, and for People teams and company leaders to feel empowered to adapt it to best suit their needs. The point is, we want to give you a starting point so you can be prepared to act when your employees need it most. If you implement compassionate leave, we’d love to hear about it!

Compassionate leave policy example text

We believe employees should have access to paid, protected time off for pivotal life events that may fall outside of traditional leave types like parental and medical leaves. We believe it is important to empower our employees to make important life and self-care decisions privately and free from judgment or pressure. This policy explicitly acknowledges that we will interpret and apply our unlimited PTO policy in a manner such that no employee will be required to disclose the reasons for their absence to their colleagues, manager, or company leadership when their absence is for a compassionate leave purpose. The following outlines our vision for how we will implement this important benefit in any instance when employees need it: 

Employee Eligibility: All employees (full- and part-time) are eligible for this benefit regardless of their length of service with Cocoon.

Leave duration: Employees may take up to 4 weeks of paid, job-protected leave in a rolling-12 month period measured backward from the day any leave is sought. We will consider providing additional time if necessary. Leave can be taken intermittently in full-day increments.

Qualifying leave reasons (including, but not limited to):  

• Bereavement following the death of a family member or close community member 
• Pregnancy loss / miscarriage
• Abortion procedures, recovery, and related travel
• Legal proceedings (e.g. custody hearings, legal components of gender affirmation, proceedings concerning incidents of sexual violence or sexual harassment)
• Acute mental health distress (e.g. partial hospitalization or residential treatment programs, hospitalizations, recovery from traumatic personal or social event, manic or depressive episodes)

Requesting compassionate leave: Employees do not need to provide details regarding the reasons for compassionate leave. Employees seeking compassionate leave should simply inform their manager or company leadership that they will be absent for a reason covered by this policy and PTO will be approved with no questions asked about the reasons prompting the leave. We realize employees requesting compassionate leave may have limited ability to predict the need for such leave. With that understanding, we ask employees to simply provide as much notice as they can under the circumstances. We also request that, to the extent possible, employees work with their manager or senior leadership to develop a transition and leave plan appropriate for their anticipated leave period.

Additional benefits: Cocoon strongly encourages employees to obtain appropriate medical care. If employees believe appropriate and/or equitable medical care is not available in their home state, they should contact their manager or company leadership to explore ways Cocoon can assist them in obtaining appropriate care in other locations including San Francisco. Whenever possible under our group health plans, we will permit employees to continue group health plan coverage as if they were actively employed.  

Coordination of Benefits:  When required by law, Cocoon will administer overlapping federal, state, or local paid and unpaid leave benefits concurrently with leave under this policy.  However, given the purpose and goal of this policy, we are committed to doing so in a manner that reduces as much as possible any burden employees might have to complete leave paperwork and/or respond to information requests. 

Allie Mintz and Sara Long do a lot together. They both joined HoneyBook nearly seven years ago as the first People and Finance hires, respectively. And since then have grown in parallel to lead ever-expanding teams as HoneyBook’s Director of People Operations and Controller. They even got married just a few months apart. So it only makes sense that in 2021 they were each expecting their first child in quick succession—both welcomed new baby girls that summer.

For years, Allie and Sara co-managed all of the employee leaves at HoneyBook. Wading through payroll, claims, and how to care for employees together along the way. In 2021, with both of their parental leaves close on the horizon, the duo knew they needed a partner to pick up the complexities of planning and managing leave. Now, after being back to work for several months, Allie and Sara have new insight into the experience of taking leave and being a working parent.

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“There isn’t a template for managing leave”

HoneyBook offers employees a generous policy of 4 months of paid parental leave with the option to take two additional months of unpaid, protected time. As many HR leaders know, though, often the most employee-friendly policies are the toughest to manage on your own. Allie and Sara spent years juggling the leave management process for the whole company as it grew—deciphering taxes, state and local policies, filing claims.

“Many years ago we actually tried to build our own version of Cocoon in spreadsheets,” Allie shares. Sara adds, “We tried to build a template, but everybody’s different. It was just a mess.”

After years of managing other employees’ leaves, thinking about their own was an entirely new challenge. “As we were both approaching maternity leave, we were like, ‘who’s going to handle this?’ We were so in it. Of course we had people on our teams to help us, but can we fully give up that control for ourselves? We had seen how hard it was for people out on leave,” Sara says. 

Luckily, they found Cocoon right before they went on leave and were able to be some of the first HoneyBook employees to take a leave supported by Cocoon. “I didn’t have to do anything on leave. That’s incredible,” Sara remembers.

“Parental leave isn’t a vacation”

For working parents, taking leave after welcoming a new child is hardly a break. Partnering with Cocoon meant that Allie and Sara could truly commit to all their new duties as moms, instead of “chasing payments all day.”

Allie says, “That really gnarly first month is when you’re also supposed to be figuring out all your leave payments. Especially as a first time parent, to just not have to experience that and to be able to go through a really high touch experience [with Cocoon] was just invaluable. I hope that all working parents get to experience that.”

Allie describes being hit with a “trifecta” as a breastfeeding mother: 1) recovering from giving birth, which was “really intense;” 2) the learning curve of caring for a “tiny human;” and 3) the challenges of breastfeeding. There is so much demanding new parents’ attention at home, they have to trust that their team is going to get the work done, even if it’s not the way they might do it.

“Parental leave shifts priorities”

Since returning to work, Sara’s priorities shifted. “For years I was building a company and had a grind mentality, sometimes working 70 hours a week. I’m still grinding all day, but now I can’t wait to close my computer and go be with [my daughter].”

Allie agreed, “In the beginning, [a startup] is your baby—at least it was for me, for seven years. When I went on leave, it wasn’t a break. I just shifted my focus to my new baby. So now it’s about trying to balance these competing babies and to make sure each of them is thriving.”

"Now it’s about trying to balance these competing babies and to make sure each of them is thriving."
_{- Allie Mintz, HoneyBook Director of People Operations}

Allie’s experience returning to work after maternity leave made it clear employees returning from leave need a lot of support with flexible work hours and reintegrating into work. She says, “A person on my team made me a re-onboarding document for my return that kept track of big changes and updates at the company.” Now, the HoneyBook People team is piloting the same type of support for all U.S. employees returning from leave. 

For Sara, returning was harder than she expected. “I thought it would be really easy to jump back in—I couldn’t wait to have adult conversations. But it was really emotional being apart from my baby after being with her 24 hours a day. I really feel for parents that have to drop their kid at daycare every day.” 

Sara and Allie both agreed that new parenthood has reminded them that you never know what someone is going through outside of their workday. Sara says, “You always think of going home to your kids. I didn’t realize until having a baby that they wake up at 6 am and you’ve had three hours of work before you even start your official work hours—and sometimes that’s the only three hours you get to spend with your baby.”

About what Cocoon means for all their employees, Sara noted, “Having an easy and accessible way for people to explore their options for parental or medical leave helps support employees so much more. Employees need to take care of what they need to do for themselves and their family. With Cocoon, now there’s something here to help remove some of that burden.”

For both employees and People teams, planning and managing a leave can be confusing and often opaque. At Cocoon, we’re focused on increasing clarity every step of the way—whether you want to understand how pay works or who on your team has an upcoming leave. Read on for what’s new in Cocoon for employers and the team members they support.

What’s new for employers: Your single source of truth for leave administration

With Cocoon, managing leaves across spreadsheets, email chains, and phone calls is a thing of the past. New updates to the admin dashboard give People teams an even clearer view into employee leaves at their company—all in one place. Rest easy knowing information is consistent across your team and all employees.

1. New filter to quickly identify employees in different leave phases

Sorting through long lists of employee leaves gets unruly fast. Admins can now use an easy, one-click filter for a faster view into employee leaves. When your company has more than 10 leaves in Cocoon, admins can dynamically filter leaves by active, returning soon, completed, and all leaves. Stop scrolling and get the details that matter most instantly.

2. Improved visibility into leave design for admins

One of our most-loved employee features is now available for admins. View any employee’s pay timeline by simply clicking their name on the leaves page. Whether an employee takes leave all at once or intermittently, pay timelines break down the details of when an employee is on leave and how much they’re getting paid, from what sources. 

If employees have questions about pay, you can be sure your team is seeing the same pay details in Cocoon in real time. Hover over the pay bar to see how employee pay breaks down from different incoming sources.

What’s new for employees: Improving inclusion and education

Employees take leave surrounding some of the most challenging and important times in their lives—whether they’re welcoming a child, caring for a loved one, or addressing their own health. That’s why it’s so important for employees to feel seen and supported throughout the entire leave process. This quarter we’ve introduced new education and reminders to increase clarity for employees.

1. Better support for gender identity

For progressive employers, making sure every employee feels like they belong and are valued—regardless of their gender identity—is a top priority. Gender nonconforming, transgender, and genderfluid individuals are regularly left out on standard government and medical forms. While we file claims with entities that still only allow employees to select “male” or “female,” we know that gender is nonbinary. That’s why we’ve added helper text to provide additional context to why we ask the question the way we do and to make sure all employees feel seen.

2. In-product leave pay education videos

Lack of pay transparency is one of the top reasons employees decide not to return from a leave. During an already-stressful time, understanding how much money to expect, when, and from where is absolutely essential for an employee to feel supported by their employer.

The pay timeline in Cocoon is one of the best ways for employees to see a breakdown of how pay works. Now, we’ve taken pay education a step further. When employees plan their leave, new in-product videos further explain how pay works when they’re on leave. Videos help answer important questions like, “Why is my paycheck lower than usual?” and “Why do I have several pay sources?” With even more pay clarity for employees, People teams can focus on supporting their teams, not just fielding questions. 

3. In-product support for self-reporting benefits

For employers that offer paid leave, calculating how much to pay employees versus how much state or disability benefits provide is an ongoing challenge. Some entities—like the California Employment Development Department (EDD)—send checks directly to employees, which means employers don’t always have visibility into exactly what employees are paid. In the past employers were left to estimate what they should pay employees on leave. When those estimations are off, employees can be left without pay or in a position to pay their employer back thousands of dollars of overpayment, ultimately eroding trust.

Cocoon facilitates a process for employees to self-report payment from state and private disability providers so employer payroll files are accurate and up to date. Before employees submit their leave, we educate them about how and why they’ll self-report the benefits they receive. Throughout their leave, employees are prompted in-product and via email to upload a photo of each claims payment to the Cocoon Documents page. With self-reporting integrated into the employee product experience, we can make sure employers know exactly how much to pay employees every step of the way.

2023 leave benchmarks are here! Check out the updated data set for more insights on parental, medical, and caregiver leave policies.

Time and again, one of the most common questions we hear from People leaders is “how competitive is our leave policy?” In today’s highly competitive talent market, it’s not surprising that tech companies are hyper aware of what their policies communicate to candidates and current employees as well as how they benchmark against their peers.

In an effort to get a leg up, we’re seeing companies expanding their existing policies to better support caregivers and working parents, plus introducing more progressive types of leave. To better understand just what these policies look like, we dove into the data of 108 venture-backed tech companies’ parental and medical leave policies in 2022. 

Parental leave policy benchmarks

Paid parental leave is table stakes for employees working in tech. The vast majority of companies in our analysis offer 100% pay for the full duration of parental leave. Supplementing the benefits an employee may receive from their state or their company’s disability insurance is one of the best ways People leaders can make sure employees have as smooth a leave experience as possible. 

Across companies of all sizes in our data set, the average leave policy for birthing parents is 14.9 weeks and 10.8 weeks for non-birthing parents. Here’s a look into how that breaks down as companies grow:

Early stage (5-200 employees)

• Birthing parent policies ranging from 4 to 26 weeks with an average of 13.8 weeks of parental leave
• Non-birthing parent policies ranging from 2 to 18 weeks with an average of 9.8 weeks of parental leave
• As companies grow from very early stage with just a handful of employees towards the 200-employee mark, their policies tend to increase by 30-40%

Growth stage (201-1,000 employees)

• Birthing parents at growth stage companies are offered an average of 16 weeks of parental leave
• Non-birthing parents are offered an average of 11.8 weeks of parental leave
• Companies with 501-1,000 employees have notably more generous policies for birthing parents offering an average of 17.5 weeks

Late stage and public (1,000+ employees)

• Birthing parent policies range from 4 to 20 weeks with an average policy of 15.4 weeks
• Non-birthing parent policies span from 2 to 18 weeks with an average policy of 11.7 weeks

Medical leave policy benchmarks

Paid medical leave is less common in our data set. Of the 108 companies in our data set, 58 shared medical leave policies. All of these policies include top-up pay for employees while they’re receiving disability payments so they receive 100% of their normal pay while on medical leave.

• Across all companies the average medical leave policy is 3.4 weeks
• For early stage companies, the average is 4 weeks
• For growth stage, the average medical leave policy is 2.5 weeks
• For late stage and public companies, the average is 4.7 weeks

Creating competitive leave policies beyond time off

If you feel like your company is already offering competitive leave, it’s important to look at which levers you can pull beyond actual time off. One increasingly popular way to do this is by easing team members back into work with ramp back programs, supporting them with more flexible hours as they adjust to their new normal. 

One of the best of such a program is Dropbox, where employees receive 100% pay for working at 60% capacity in their first week back. This helps employees transition back into their role after a long leave, and focus mostly on catching up and getting settled with new responsibilities like childcare and pumping time.

And, if such a generous policy sounds like a hard sell to your leadership team, the facts may surprise you. A significant portion of your 100% paid policy can be funded by state and insurance policies (and Cocoon can help you figure out exactly how your employees on leave get paid, and from where). Additionally, competitive leave policies help attract and keep talent, so the benefits are far-reaching where it comes to engagement and retention.  

And if you’re hesitant that it may be too soon to implement such competitive leave policies, many of the best people leaders craft policies based on where they expect their company to be a year from now. Proactively planning for the future allows companies to attract and retain talent going into the next phase of scale. 

Competitive paid leave is more or less table stakes for tech companies, so it’s important they find new and innovative ways to support employees taking leave. 

Looking ahead

It’s clear that people leaders are responding to the needs of their employees and recognizing the importance of employee benefits, especially where they impact major life events. By understanding how other companies are managing leave, people leaders can craft policies that are competitive, compassionate, and supportive.

“500 Gem ready” is the phrase Heather Dunn uses when she is thinking and talking about scaling. After joining the team as Chief People Officer in late 2021, her first task was to look at every stage of the employee lifecycle. Over 45 days, she talked to every single Gem employee to determine current state, future state, and what gaps the people team needed to fill. 

Her goal? “To get every People program, process, and experience ready for when we are 500 Gems.” Some processes, like onboarding, Heather knew she needed to tackle head-on. For others, she said she was “in a fortunate position that the company had invested in People early and laid a great foundation.”

Managing leave at scale

Gem’s People team had already set employee leave up for success at scale when Heather joined. Lara Poncia, Director of Human Resources at Gem, was a one-person HR team when Gem was a 77-person organization, pre-Heather. 

One of the first things Lara asked when she joined the team was how Gem handled leaves. She said, “I researched and compared several different leave management providers and found the team at Cocoon to be the most knowledgeable.” 

Onboarding was smooth, with a dedicated customer success manager (CSM) walking Lara through the implementation process. Lara said, “[Our CSM] provided us with some great benchmarking data to help us understand what other companies at our stage and size were offer

The impact of leave on the employee experience

As a seasoned HR leader, Heather had lived through leave nightmares at other companies. She said, “I’ve had a couple of experiences where [my team] was using the best leave management tools available at the time and there was still always a common complaint. The process felt impersonal and people didn’t understand how to do it.” 

She described how harmful it can be when a leave goes badly, saying, “When someone's going through a huge life change, and they have confusion and anxiety about the process, it can absolutely be damaging to the relationship between that individual and the workplace.” 

“When someone's going through a huge life change, and they have confusion and anxiety about the process, it can absolutely be damaging to the relationship between that individual and the workplace.” 
_{- Heather Dunn, Chief People Officer @ Gem}

Always looking toward future-proofing for 500 Gems, Heather said, “I wanted us to be on the leading edge of what leave looks like. Let’s make this a differentiator for us and invest in a really thoughtful, thorough, articulated process and program.”

The importance of partnership 

The partnership the Gem team has with Cocoon leaves them feeling confident they’re set up for success now—and as the organization grows. Heather said, “We invested in Cocoon early [for Gem] in the sense that we’d probably only had one leave beforehand. Now, we have the process, program, and assurance that Cocoon will take care of our employees.” 

In addition to implementing changes based on Gem’s feedback, Cocoon also demonstrates partnership by guiding Gem toward competitive offerings based on data. 

“We want to learn what’s best in class for our size and stage and Cocoon has been an incredible thought partner in how to evolve our leave process. That’s so helpful for a people leader in a complicated, sensitive space,” Heather said. 

Enhanced employee experience and cross-functional collaboration

While the human aspect of leave is incredibly important, it’s also crucial to the employee experience that the logistics are taken care of, too. “I cannot overemphasize how painful it is,” Heather said of working with payroll without Cocoon. “We could never get it right. It’s important that someone knows they’ll get paid the right amount at the right time.”

With Cocoon, workflows are made simple for both People and payroll teams.

Heather said, “Without Cocoon, our payroll team could be sitting there trying to calculate what we pay versus what the government pays—that’s a nightmare. So there’s a huge impact not only on [the People team] but we’ve gained trust from our Finance team in the sense that we all understand exactly what Gem needs to pay and have the confidence we won’t make errors.”

Understand how your leave policies compare to Gem and 100+ other progressive employers with our 2023 employee leave benchmarks.

“Call Cocoon. I’m serious.”

After more than a decade as a progressive People leader, other People leaders turn to Heather all the time when it comes to advice about leave. Her response? 

“Call Cocoon. I’m serious. Over the years, I’ve seen a lot of leave management companies that do about 60% of it. And Cocoon is solving the other 40% of that painful process. To me, that’s a no brainer.”

About Gem

Gem is an all-in-one recruiting platform that integrates with LinkedIn, Gmail & Outlook, and your applicant tracking system. It enables world-class recruiting teams to find, engage, and nurture top talent—all with best-in-class data integrity.

It is safe to say that employee expectations for work-life balance, office life, benefits, and manager interactions have changed forever with the pandemic. In order to stay ahead of the curve in the uber-competitive talent market we see today, organizations are reevaluating what role their seasoned leaders have in creating the employee experience the next generation needs to thrive at work. 

Last week, Cocoon’s COO, Lauren Dai, sat down with Carolyn Frey, Chief People Officer at Curology, and Q Hamirani, Global Head of People Operations at Airbnb for a conversation facilitated by PEER 150 to tackle the lofty question of how leaders can best to support their employees to deliver a world-class employee experience, foster loyalty and retention, and chart a course into the future of work.

Here are some of the learnings gleaned from these incredible people leaders around how they’re rethinking manager training and developing support systems that empathetically serve employees of all ages and backgrounds.

Tip: To access the full conversation, check out the full recording of the conversation here. 

Finding purpose in your work is everything

All of the panelists agreed that purpose at work has never been more important than it is now. For some people, that’s working for a mission-based organization or taking a role they feel has a meaningful larger impact. For many others, it’s choosing to work for an organization with values aligned with their own. 

Carolyn said, when all the bells and whistles [of the workplace] went away with COVID, work became naked. How people spend their time and who they spend it with, both personally and professionally, fell under a spotlight. And when people don’t like what they see, they’re more motivated to change something. Purpose seems to matter to everyone, regardless of where they are in life. 

Creating support systems for all team members

In partnering with so many forward-thinking leaders, Lauren observed how the pandemic has been a moment of significant empathy building between generations. Whether someone is having their first baby, taking care of a child home from school due to COVID exposure, or caring for elderly parents, the pandemic has impacted all of us. 

These different ends of the spectrum have helped create empathy between generations. From the employer perspective, organizations are realizing that competitive parental leave isn’t enough. A range of leave types and benefits demonstrates empathy by supporting all of your team members. What this looks like in practice will depend on your unique organization and demographics, but each panelist offered examples of how this works at their organization.

Curology builds support through trust and mandatory time off

At Curology, Carolyn’s team switched from unlimited PTO to mandatory minimum time off (MTO). Many teams can relate to the problem they were solving for: During the pandemic, with travel plans on hold, people weren’t taking time off. This led to widespread burnout and ultimately contributed to The Great Resignation. Carolyn emphasized the importance of setting the example from the top and leadership actually signing offline, not responding to emails, or calling into meetings when on MTO. 

Another way Curology builds support is by starting with a foundation of trust. While many leaders worried, and some still worry, about employees’ productivity while working from home, Carolyn emphasized the importance of trusting employees. She said, “If we don’t come out of this pandemic with the belief that people can work from home successfully, we have failed.” 

Airbnb supports its team with transparency and flexibility

From childcare cancellations to caring for sick family members, COVID has had a massive impact on every workplace in the U.S. In order to support its team members through the pandemic, Airbnb added 15 emergency days off on top of PTO for any pandemic-related activities (e.g. childcare or caregiving for a loved one), with wellbeing days on top of that. 

It’s important to recharge and find time for joy with PTO, and Q’s team knew that having to use vacation time for stressful situations would ultimately drain team resources and morale. 

Additionally, during the early days of the pandemic, Airbnb’s leadership team held Q&A sessions where team members could ask the CEO anything. Q said that nothing was sugar coated, and this transparency—even in the face of uncertainty and a constantly negative news cycle—helped build trust among the Airbnb team. 

Cocoon helps companies make the leave process stress-free for their employees

The importance of paid time off—both in terms of vacation time as well as longer term leave—came up a lot throughout the conversation. People take leaves during major life events, so how a company supports someone through the experience is crucial. 

Cocoon makes it easier to support team members through leave by handling compliance, payroll, and everything in between. Instead of spending time wading through paperwork, your team member on leave can focus on the reason they took time off in the first place.

Carolyn reiterated the support her team gets from Cocoon, emphasizing the importance of partnering with vendors that help you scale empathy within your organization. By making the leave process more seamless, she said it helps show employees that Curology cares about their personal lives and wants their leaves to be carefree and successful. 

Leading for the future of work

The future of work acknowledges that not everyone works in the same way, and supports people with empathy and flexibility. Q encouraged us to remember, however, that there’s a difference between empathy and entitlement. Leaders can listen to feedback without implementing everything employees ask for. The key is responding with transparency. 

Even without implementing everything employees say would improve their work experience, it’s possible to lead in a highly supportive way. 

Now more than ever, purpose is crucial in the workplace. People want workplaces that align with their personal values, and those are easier to create and maintain with empathy and flexibility. 

For more great tips on leading for the future of work, check out the full recording of the conversation here.

At Cocoon, we constantly talk to People leaders about the ways they approach progressive employee benefits. Adapting employee leave to fit modern priorities and families is something we hear time and again from the teams we work with. Making employee leave accessible and easy to manage is a great way for employers to demonstrate empathy and retain talent. Today, paid progressive parental and medical leave policies are table stakes—the most competitive employers are considering leaves that reimagine the modern workplace. 

What’s the difference between leave and PTO?

One question business leaders may ask when approached about increasing types of leave is, can’t people just use vacation time (PTO)? It’s important to stress that just about any reason someone would take a leave is a life changing one. Even joyful changes, like having a child, come with huge lifestyle adjustments that take time to figure out. Leaves like bereavement, for example, are by definition, very different from a vacation and should be viewed through a different lens. 

Giving people dedicated leave time enables them to adjust, grieve, or focus on the huge life change they are undertaking without worrying about the optics (i.e. it looks like they’re out on a weeks-long vacation) or using up valuable PTO which should be used to rest and recharge.

Benchmarking your employee leave policy 

Depending on the size of your organization and current leave policies, you may reevaluate leave at different intervals. We asked the people leader of a ~300 person company in the cannabis industry how her team approaches when and why it may be time to reevaluate leaves. 

The leader explained how her team may consider adjusting leave policies during an annual review, with a new fundraise, or simply when an idea is brought to the team. Additionally, she said, “Our team reviews feedback from our employee surveys, reviews benchmarks and articles, attends conferences, and reviews our employee population to see what leaves would be most beneficial for them today and in the near future. We also listen to our People Business Partners for trends they're noticing. We may reevaluate our policies as we see unique employee situations arise.”

Employees are involved in the process via survey feedback, and ultimately decisions are made with the people ops team and executive leadership. 

A good starting point may be determining what types of leave are common within organizations in your industry and/or that are similar in size.

Cocoon’s benchmarking data shows parental, medical, and caregiver leave policies broken down by company size and industry. Understanding how your peers approach leave helps ensure your offerings are competitive. 

Employee leave beyond parental and medical leave

Here are a few examples of types of leave modern employers are considering and implementing to retain top talent.

1. Pregnancy loss leave

One leave type we’re hearing about with increasing frequency is bereavement leave specifically for miscarriage. Pregnancy loss has long been shrouded with stigma but can be a very real and heartbreaking experience for expectant parents and one that traditionally, our society has done very little to acknowledge or honor. Depending on how far along the pregnancy was at time of loss, surgery may be required, so physical as well as emotional healing is important to consider when establishing how much time off to give for a miscarriage or pregnancy loss leave. 

2. Military family leave

Military family leave (different from military leave under USERRA) is probably the least-known FMLA leave type, but that doesn't mean it's not as critical as the others. Employees are entitled to job-protected time for two broad reasons:

1. Military caregiver leave: for employees who need to take care of a covered service member with a serious injury or illness.

2. Qualifying exigency leave: for employees who need time to handle urgent issues that have come up because of a family member’s active military duty or their impending call to serve.

While not required by law, many companies offer paid military family leave policies to empower employees to take the time they need (many companies also use Cocoon to manage these leaves, too).

3. Mental health or compassionate leave

Some companies are turning to designated mental health leave both to mitigate fraud around medical leave and acknowledge the importance of mental health in the workplace. One of the people leaders we spoke with mentioned that their organization is looking to implement both a four week mental health leave, as well as “compassionate leave” for people experiencing difficult life events such as navigating divorce. 

4. Caregiver leave

Modern companies are making an effort to make leave more inclusive for people of different backgrounds and at different life stages. For example, consider a caregiver leave that can be used to care for one’s children, but also to care for aging parents. Both situations can be stressful, emotional, and time—and energy—consuming, and it’s important to consider the needs of all team members, not just new parents. 

The COVID-19 pandemic put a spotlight on the need for caregiver leave as so many people became caregivers school closures, illness, and travel restrictions turned so many people into caregivers overnight. The silver lining: employers are stepping up in a big way.

5. Gender affirmation leave

The people who will best inform what types of leave will be most welcome in your organization are your team members. One of our People leaders is in the process of finalizing leave to provide time off for employees who are transitioning. This can include time off for gender-affirming medical procedures, but also time off to address employees' mental health or legal requirements for finalizing transition.

Employees remember their leave experience

When it comes to progressive employee benefits, it’s no longer enough to offer paid parental leave. The pandemic has caused our personal and professional lives to merge like never before, and people value flexibility and work-life balance.

All of the leaves we’ve discussed—and there are plenty more important life changes we haven’t mentioned which might also require a leave—are around pivotal life moments. How employers treat people during these moments has a huge impact on how they will feel about your organization. Increasing loyalty and retention while treating team members with empathy and building mutual respect? Sounds like a win-win to us.

When I joined Stripe in early 2012 – when the company was just 10 people! – I was struck by how intentional and principled the team was about building both the product and the team. Through the years of intense growth, I saw these values repeated over and over again: knowledge sharing and learning, rigorous thinking, and an emphasis on end-to-end ownership that formed the backbone of the incredible culture and product excellence. 

Fast forward to today: we’re just getting started with Cocoon, and the customer and product momentum we’ve seen in our first year has been extraordinary. We went from launching in January 2021 to working with many of the fastest-growing companies in tech, including Notion, Carta, and Superhuman. 

The hardest part of building comes after you’ve found your initial product-market fit. How can you sustain a high quality bar of product, team, and culture for decades to come? Much of this revolves around having the right team of folks who care deeply about building the right product and company together (we’re hiring!), but we’re also spending a lot of time being thoughtful and deliberate about how we work. 

Here are some of the underpinnings of our early company culture. If any of these resonate, we’d love to work with you.
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We’re building something that matters

We’re not building software for software’s sake. Our product has a direct, positive impact on people’s lives, in an area in desperate need of something better. When Lauren, Mahima, and I first started hearing about “leave” and what a huge problem it was, we were baffled: how could something that seems so incredibly common be so painful? 

The status quo is not an experience we’d wish on anyone. We learned that going on any type of leave required hours of wading through government and insurance bureaucracy. These are some of the most emotionally exhausting moments of people's lives, and everyone had a nightmare story to tell—whether it was trying to find a fax machine in the hospital or calling into insurance hotlines at 7:59am every day hoping to get someone on the phone—and we wondered to ourselves why nobody had solved this.

That’s why we do what we do every day at Cocoon. When we hear feedback from users like: “I'm so grateful that I'm able to talk to someone about this. I've been holding it all in and have been so stressed, and I didn't know anyone who I could turn to about it”, we know we’re making a real, meaningful difference in their lives. 
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Everyone works on product

Being at Stripe for 8 years taught me a love of diving into messy, regulatory areas, and simplifying them into magical experiences, and that's exactly what we’re doing with Cocoon. 

Everyone’s deeply involved, whether you write code, design, sell, or directly support our users or team. We’re a team of doers who are excited to roll up our sleeves, dive into the nuts-and-bolts of how things work, and who thrive in having a high level of craftsmanship in everything we do. We obsess over the details, whether it’s getting that user experience, code abstraction, or copy just right. 

Most importantly, we’re all building this company together. 
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We debate (and reflect) without ego

We want to work with folks who are kind, open-minded, and generous, but who aren’t afraid to passionately debate for what they believe in or raise a concern. We care deeply about what we're working on, and we also have high trust and mutual respect for one another. While we may disagree and debate, we do it to push each other, our product, and company to the limits we know we’re capable of.

This also means that we trust our team to move quickly and make the right judgment calls for the company. When things break or we make a mistake, we strongly believe that these are due to a system (or lack thereof) that has failed a person, not the other way around. As a team, we highlight and examine things that went wrong (without blame or judgment) so we can learn from them and do better next time. 
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Transparent by default

We care about writing things down to force rigorous thinking and reflection, and enable better context and knowledge sharing. This helps us be radically transparent: we have open email lists and documentation, and share strategic context like board meetings notes and fundraising plans internally so everyone is empowered with the same information.

Without a strong, shared writing culture, information becomes siloed (even with the best of intentions!), goals become unclear or misaligned, and it’s hard to execute efficiently. Many companies default to adding more and more review or “sign-off” processes in order to make sure the right decisions get made, which is the opposite of the autonomous culture we want to build. 
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Our personal priorities come first

When Lauren, Mahima, and I first started talking about founding a company together, one understanding between the three of us was that work was not, and could not be, the most important thing in our lives. 

It’s not that we don’t care about what we’re working on, or can’t (or won’t) work hard. We’re extraordinarily ambitious about where we want to be and thrive in the work needed to see it through. 

However, nothing will ever be more important than our personal priorities. I had a baby six months into starting Cocoon—he’s now an energetic and demanding 8-month old who wants to eat everything—and I know that my family will always come first. Whether it’s someone else’s family, friends, pets, community, passions, or anything else, we’re building a culture where it’s okay to be transparent and explicit about the fact that those things should take priority above work.

Fundamentally, employee leave is about creating space in your work life to focus on whatever it is that’s going on in your personal life. That philosophy is ingrained in our day-to-day at Cocoon.  
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Come build the future of leave

If what we’re working on resonates with you and you’re excited about building this company together, we’d love to chat.

Nearly all leaves are due to a major event in someone’s life—having a baby, losing a loved one, undergoing surgery, and navigating mental health challenges are just some of the reasons someone may take a leave. That’s why it's important for managers to be thoughtful and intentional when welcoming someone back from leave.

Additionally, it costs 150% of someone’s salary to replace them, so there are also financial incentives for helping someone settle comfortably back into the workplace. Making sure an employee feels supported during this time is one of the best ways you can retain talent across your team.

Here are four tips for welcoming a team member back to work after a parental, medical, caregiver, or compassionate leave.

1. Review your company’s leave policies and create a 30-60-90 day plan

Whether or not you’ve taken a leave yourself, you need to put yourself in the shoes of the leave-taker, trying to imagine the stress they might feel before returning to work. Weeks or months of work have happened, including new hires, new projects, and maybe even new company goals or initiatives. Someone returning from a leave will likely have a ton of questions, and maybe even anxiety around the uncertainty. 

First, understand your company policies (review your employee handbook or set up a meeting with HR). Some companies may outline specific expectations for employees returning to work from a leave, or even have a return-to-work transition program. Affirm, for example, provides both birth and non-birth parents a 4-week ramp back program at full base pay. If someone is only coming in a few days a week for that first month, you’ll want to take that into consideration when building their 30-60-90 day plan (more on that later). 

After reviewing company policies, you can ease your team member’s swirling thoughts by taking the time to think through what they’ve actually missed. There will be time-sensitive updates and some that can wait a few days or weeks. Try to filter the information so as not to bombard them on their first day. 

Then, consider putting together a one-pager with any changes that have taken place within the team and organizations, and how projects have progressed during leave. You may want to review company policies for what you do and don’t need to share if any updates feel particularly sensitive (for example, if there were redundancies made during their time away).

Of course, your team member will be eager to see how they fit back into the fabric of the team and greater organization. Collaborate on a 30-60-90 day plan, as if they’re a new hire. Don’t expect them to jump right back in at their full capacity as they readjust and get caught up.

2. Listen with empathy and discuss boundaries

You can read all the advice on the internet and while you’ll likely find some helpful nuggets of information, nothing is as important as listening to your team member’s experience. Maybe after your parental leave, you felt intense brain fog and anxiety and dreaded ramping back up at work. But perhaps your team member views work as a welcome return to normality and is eager to jump right back into where they left off. Try not to make assumptions about what’s best for your employee upon their return.

Even before you share updates and create your 30-60-90 day plan, set up a one-on-one for their first day back. Ask direct and empathetic questions, and actually ask your team member how they want to approach coming back to work.

Also important to discuss: boundaries. While it may seem counterintuitive to help a team member set boundaries, having a mutual understanding of what these are and how to communicate them will be helpful to your entire team in the long run. Here are some ideas for phrases someone can use, which you might suggest if/when relevant:

• “I have a hard stop at XX time.”
• “I will not be available for the next 30 minutes.”
• “I won’t be able to join at this time, even with my video off.”
• “I can’t. I have to go pump.”

While these phrases may seem straightforward, actually communicating about what they mean and giving a sense of permission to use them can be helpful. If these don’t feel helpful or relevant, talk about other ways in which your team member can set effective and clear boundaries. 

It’s important, also, to manage your own expectations and lead with empathy—change is hard and they’ve likely just gone through a lot of changes in a relatively short period of time.

3. Rely on ERGs to build community

If your team member is open to it (remember to listen and minimize making assumptions), encourage them to seek community with others who may have recently taken a leave. For example, if they’re returning from a parental leave, you may want to highlight any parenting communities within your organization and encourage them to join if it feels appropriate. 

We spoke to working parents about what made a parenting employee resource group (ERG) a positive experience, and most agreed that it was helpful to have a safe space where their personal and professional lives could merge more openly. 

Olivia, a new mom working in HR for a software company, said, “I appreciate how the leaders of our parenting ERG send emails and Slack messages to managers when Covid cases are up. They notify them that schools may be closing and to check in with parents on their team to see if they need support. It’s also a great place for recommendations; it’s a safe space to ask about random things like portable baby monitors or a mask your 2-year-old won’t rip off.” 

Community is critical to feeling like they still belong within the company, and can even strengthen ties as they meet new people and engage in new sub-communities.

4. Ask questions across your team and organization

A team member’s leave impacts your whole team—and that includes you. You don’t have to know all the answers, lean on HR and other managers (either internally or externally) who have recently had employees go on leave, and don’t be afraid to ask questions. 

Additionally, be upfront with both your team members and organization leaders about adjusting expectations with reduced headcount. This is ideally a conversation that happens before someone goes on leave, but it’s worth having again when that person returns. 

Coming back from a leave can feel overwhelming, but there is a lot a manager can do to create a more seamless experience for their team members. From active listening to co-creating a back to work plan, welcoming someone back from leave is a team effort. ‍

Cocoon helps employees and their managers navigate every aspect of their leave, including their transition back to work. Learn how we can help support your team.