HPE extends paid parental leave from two weeks to six months – Quartz at work

Antonio Neri was already a popular CEO at HPE, the server and IT services company where he had succeeded Meg Whitman last year. Apparently, he is perceived as a popular leader, so to speak, having climbed the ladder at the top of society since joining a call center in 1995.

But it must be all the more appreciated now: Neri has just cut the ribbon of HPE's new headquarters in San Jose, California, and announced a set of upgrades and additions to benefits including a fully paid parental leave of six months after birth or adoption. of a child, from two weeks under previous policy.

With this expansion, HPE becomes a Silicon Valley leader in generous parental leave policies. Neri explains to Quartz at Work that the HPE policy is the most generous policy among the companies she sees as her peers. In fact, three to five months of fully paid time off are the norm in technology companies like IBM and Cisco, as well as in places like Facebook and Google. (Adobe took six months of paid leave in 2015, but this only concerned biological mothers, the other new parents of Adobe have 16 weeks.)

HPE announced other benefits today, including a retirement transition program offering employees the opportunity to work part-time for a year before leaving permanently, a career redevelopment program for people re-entering the labor market. work and the Wellness Fridays program. Employees will be encouraged one Friday a month to leave their work three hours in advance. There is also the new head office – an unpretentious glass box outside, equipped with what Neri describes as cutting-edge connected technology, as well as indoor airy spaces for work and meetings. (Her lobby also features Neri's own works: an abstract metal sculpture designed by Neri himself.)

Nevertheless, parental leave is perhaps the best example of how Neri hopes to incorporate an improved culture into his leadership strategy and legacy, as he strives to convince the technology sector that HPE is underestimated.

The benefits for parents and families, he says, are "fundamental" to a culture change. The company landed at six months talking to employees and traveling the world to see what was becoming the norm elsewhere, Neri said. The United States imposes 12 weeks of unpaid family leave but does not in fact guarantee any paid leave (although some states have started to introduce their own requirements). At the other end of the spectrum, parental leave paid for a year or more is common in the Nordic countries, which Neri considered extreme.

"In the end, it's all about ensuring financial security, no?" Says Neri. "Listen, when you have a child, you obviously want the best for the child, but at the same time, if you have a mortgage and bills to pay, people sometimes sacrifice the child. ability to take care of the child. emotionally, because of the financial difficulties they may face, "he adds. Extending parental leave was a way to ensure "peace of mind".

Neri wishes that this benefit existed for him when he became a parent, especially because he and his wife had no other family at their disposal to help them when they moved to the United States and that they created theirs. "My wife and I left Europe and we had no one here. So we had to solve the problem ourselves, "he said. Neri, who is Italian and born in Argentina, and his wife, who is Dutch, got married and moved to the United States a week after their honeymoon, then had their first child in the year. Having two weeks to understand everything after starting a new life in a foreign country was not optimal, he said. His wife would have enjoyed six months, he says, and he would have personally wished to have at least a month off.

Recently, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation postponed their parental leave from one year to six months, after realizing that the one-year holidays caused too much disruption within the foundation, and that researches maintained that six months was ideal and child.

The question of whether six months is really the optimal time is open to debate; for the moment, however, HPE has set a new benchmark. Now we are looking to see if the benefits are attractive enough to recruit good people and prevent them from leaving, and if others follow Neri's initiative.