Companies that offer employees paid leave days, not just for sickness, but to provide care for a child or elderly parent, have been able to ultimately improve their bottom lines and increase staff engagement, according to a repot from U.S. News Money.
This concept is refreshing, especially as the population ages and the there are a growing number of employees who double as caregivers for their aging parents.
Accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) recently changed its leave policy four years ago, allowing employees to take unlimited paid sick leave not just for illnesses but also to care for older adults and children. The results translated into a decline in the average number of sick days taken at the company.
“If you’re engaging your workforce—and that doesn’t matter if it’s next-fen millennials versus baby boomers, male, female—does not matter,” said PwC Chairman and Senior Partner Bob Moritz at the White House Summit on Working Families in June. “If you’re engaging them, you’re going to get 75% more productivity.”
However, many employers are lagging behind implementing similar initiatives at their companies.
Compared to 2008, employers have cut back on the ways employees can take time away from full-time work to handle personal responsibilities such as thorough job-sharing, working part of the year or taking career breaks, according to the 2014 National Study of Employers from the Families and Work Institute.
Read more at U.S. News Money.
Written by Jason Oliva
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