Choices & Flexibility

Marissa Mayer announced that she’s pregnant with twins and plans to take a short maternity leave (two weeks) when she delivers in December. The chatter about this news is all over social and mainstream media. Endless numbers of people are weighing in on her decision. I caught part of a discussion about it on the TV news while waiting for an appointment. Should she take a longer maternity leave? Did she have a responsibility to do so since women have fought long and hard for expanded benefits? Shouldn’t she serve as a role model for all women? The same morning the Washington Post’s column “On Leadership” was also talking about her parenting decisions.

As CEO of Yahoo, Ms. Mayer has some decisions to make – both about how to parent and about how to run a company. She’s not the first CEO to make such a decision. Chad Dickerson, CEO of Etsy, the on-line commerce sites, took a full paternity leave when he and his wife adopted a child in 2012. In each case, both CEOs had to weight the circumstances of their situations – which were similar, but not identical – to make their decisions. For Dickerson, the timing of his leave was at the height of the holiday shopping season. He had to go to the board to explain the importance of taking this time off and provide a plan for their approval. Mayer’s company, Yahoo, is going through a critical period in its life cycle, spinning off Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce company, a transition that will be completed by the end of this calendar year. Their situations are unique in comparison to the situations of other employees in their respective organization who are facing the same decision about parental leave. Their positions in their companies are not distinctive and not representative of the typical parent (mother or father). 

As I listened to the debate on the TV about Mayer’s choices, I couldn’t help but think that there’s not a cookie cutter approach for how new parents deal with the demands of their growing families and the responsibilities of their jobs. It’s yet another aspect of diversity. Jena McGregor, the columnist who wrote the piece on Mayer, rightfully pointed out that as CEO, she may not have as many choices as other expectant mothers at Yahoo might have.

Organizations in this country are making great strides in offering more robust benefits to help all employees, not only new mothers and fathers, have better work-life integration. The stigma surrounding men taking paternity leave is dissipating. We’re making progress, but still have more work to do as a country on this issue. Despite how far we have, or haven’t come, it’s a journey that continues. More choices are available than a generation ago and more should be available to all working parents. Flexibility continues to be an important issues for workplaces today. In the meantime, it’s important to respect the decisions that individuals choose to make. 

Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For

Each year when the Fortune 100 Best Companies to work for list issue is released, I pour over it to see if something new is revealed.  While I always learn something, what comes through loud and clear is that it isn’t the things these firms do for their employees—it is the organization’s culture that really makes the difference.

You may not know that the primary tool Fortune uses to select and rank organizations is the Great Place to Work’s Trust Index (TI).  The TI is sent to a sample of employees at each nominated company so, as Fortune puts it, “in effect, the workers vote their companies onto the list using criteria related to their workplace cultures.”  It really makes the ranking meaningful to know that the organizations aren’t selected just by what their leadership says—the employees themselves participate and share how they feel about their company.

One of the lessons from this year’s list is that the best employers are focusing more attention on workplace culture as a competitive tool.  And, the great news is that most of the companies on this list are also doing really well in their business segments. 

One thing that amazed me is that 12 companies have made the list every year since it started in 1998.  That is a real achievement.  Since 1998, the 100 best companies are “shining examples of a different way of doing business that puts to rest the old notion that treating employees well might hurt the bottom line. “  These 12 companies prove it is just the opposite!

I worked for Marriott for many years and that organization (on the list again this year as a Great place to Work) follows the advice we all learned from the founder of the company, JW Marriott who said, “take care of our associates and they will take care of the customers.”  It was true when he said it and it certainly is true today.

Each of the companies on the Fortune list this year has leaders who sincerely listen to their employees.  They hear what is important to their work force and then do their best to provide benefits and policies that meet their employee’s needs at this point in time.  Some of these companies have amazing perks for employees but none of them merely add things to their benefits package just to be nice—they do it because it makes good business sense to take good care of the people who take care of your customers!  Fortune quotes the founder and CEO of Ultimate Software, Scott Scherr who says, “The true meaning of a company is how they treat their lowest-paid employees.”  How true!

Of course, many organizations on the list do amazing things for their employees but nothing stands out to me more this year than Google (six years as number one on the list!).  This year they increased their parental-leave benefits—new parents, regardless of gender, can now get up to 12 years of fully paid leave along with $500 of “bonding bucks” to all new parents to use during the first three months of a child’s life.  That is the kind of commitment to employees that really tells the employees how valued they are! 

Consider what you do each and every day for your employees.  Is there something you might do differently to let them know how valued they are?