I was meeting with a client the other day to go over their updated employment policies. When we got to the policies regarding Parental Leave and Paid Family and Medical Leave, she smiled and said “can we pause here for a second? When I had my children 25-30 years ago I got only unpaid leave, and being able to return to work was not guaranteed. It is amazing how the policies and laws today support working families.”
This executive’s reaction is a far cry from the typical reactions I got as a young lawyer in the 1990s trying to explain to clients the “non-optional” job guarantees of the federal Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993. I heard everything from “only women can take this, right?” (wrong) to “The employee is probably not going to come back, so I can replace them, right” (wrong on both counts). I still hear concerns from executives of small organizations about the hardship of doing without an employee for several weeks, but they rarely begrudge the employee their right to time off – their concern is specifically focused on how to manage their team through the time period when they are understaffed.
The good news is that the world of parental leave, medical leave, and other family leave is a far cry from the “bad old days.” When I started working in a law firm, female colleagues didn’t tell anyone at work they were pregnant until the baby was practically crowning, lest their career advancement efforts be ‘mommy-tracked.’ One of my law firm colleagues came back to work two weeks after giving birth so she could work on a trial she had been preparing years for. And several men told me if they took more than the actual birth-day off, their bosses would question their commitment to their job.
The personal experience of one of our HRSAW team members exemplifies how things have changed.
At the risk of revealing my age, I gave birth to my daughter shortly before the implementation of the federal Family and Medical Leave Act. I was practicing law in Massachusetts and was entitled to eight weeks of maternity leave under state law. The catch? It was completely unpaid.
My husband? He received zero parental leave. No time off. No pay. Nothing. The state law allowing eight weeks of unpaid leave to have a child applied only to full-time, female employees.
The federal FMLA took effect shortly after I returned to work. The additional four weeks of unpaid leave it would have provided wouldn’t have helped me anyway – like most young professionals early in their careers, I could not afford more unpaid time off. When I did return after eight weeks, I was exhausted, worried about my premature baby’s health, and running on very little sleep.
Now let’s get back in the way-back machine and return to the present. That premature baby is a talented young professional who recently had a daughter of her own. Here’s what was different for her: four months of paid leave from her employer, with the potential for another two months of partial pay “bonding leave” through Massachusetts Paid Family and Medical Leave. Her husband received twelve weeks of paid leave from his employer, taking one month of it after my daughter went back to work.
I saw the difference with my own eyes. They had five months to adjust to life with a newborn without worrying about how to pay their bills. They had time to bond with their daughter. And a five-month-old adapts to babysitters and daycare far more easily than a premature eight-week-old. Compared to my experience, we are living in a different, family-focused world.
Over the past decades, paid leave for family and medical reasons has become a baseline expectation, particularly among younger workers. Working women in their 20s (a.k.a. “Gen Z”) rank paid leave as their top employee benefit priority, ahead of health insurance, according to 2024 MetLife data. In a 2024 Economist Impact report, 71% of Gen Z workers cited paid time off as a critical factor in selecting a job.
For the generation now entering the workforce, benefits like family support, mental health resources, workplace flexibility, and work-life balance are expected, not exceptional. Employees also evaluate employers holistically; they want to work for an organization that respects and accommodates their responsibilities outside of work, allows remote work where the job permits, and offers flexible schedules. They also tend to be more comfortable asking for accommodations and support for physical and mental health conditions.
Yet we recently noticed what might become a trend of large employers rolling back parental leave and other benefits. In April 2026, Deloitte announced it would cut paid parental leave from 16 weeks to eight for employees in one business segment, along with reductions or eliminations of benefits for PTO, pension accruals, and adoption/surrogacy stipends. Zoom Communications, Inc., trimmed leave for both parents. The rationale for these decisions is not unreasonable – rising healthcare costs, economic uncertainty, and pressure to control spending are all factors. But cutting these benefits risks alienating the generation now entering the workforce for whom these benefits are a top priority.
The market is not uniformly retreating – at least not yet. According to a 2026 Survey by the Society for Human Resource Management (“SHRM”), 46% of the 5,472 employers surveyed now offer paid parental leave — up 7% from 2025. While the headlines describe some large employers cutting benefits, the aggregate data show some employers adding to their overall benefits package.
Whether employers agree with these expectations is almost beside the point. Employers that ignore what employees want are likely to struggle to attract and retain the most talented workers.
No matter how sound the company rationale is, employees who lose benefits are likely to see that as a broken promise, and a message that their personal lives are not important to the employer. For employees who are entering the workforce now, it is not enough to work for an employer that values their professional contributions, they want a job that aligns with, and makes room for, their personal values as well.
The pandemic required employers to invest heavily in the foundations of a workplace culture built around flexibility, well being, and support for working families. Those values became part of many organizations’ employer brands. For a lot of employees, they are part of why they took the job, or why long-term employees have stayed.
Now, some of those employers are pulling back on benefits. Others have announced expanded return-to-office requirements, cutting into flexibility that had become a workplace standard. Changing the workplace norms now, after years of acclimation to the “new normal” of the post-pandemic workplace, feels like a takeaway and can lead to employee dissatisfaction and disengagement.
At HR Solutions At Work, we help employers develop and implement policies and job expectations based on what works best for their company culture. We would love to hear from you about your company’s policies around leave and other benefits, remote or hybrid work, whether things are changing in your workplace, and what reasons are being given for any changes. Scroll down to where you can provide your comments. You don’t need to provide your name or the name of your company, but it would help to know about how many US employees your organization has, and the type of employer you work for (e.g., privately owned, publicly held, government, for profit, not for profit, etc.).
Happy summer! Over the past couple of weeks, I have heard the following comments from in-house HR and employment law clients:
Remember when we thought of summer as a slow work time, allowing us to leave work earlier than usual and even take an “unplugged” vacation to refresh, rejuvenate and connect with friends and family? When was the last time you left work early or took a vacation that was truly “work free?” Is that even possible with the technology that finds us wherever we are? They say that “no one is indispensable,” but sometimes it’s faster and easier to answer a phone call than to prepare our colleagues to address questions while we are out. But HR teams should be modeling the behaviors we tell others are important. For example:
The reality is that summer goes by in the blink of an eye, and is never quite as productive as we had hoped it would be when we “parked” all those projects on our summer to-do list. The fact is that employees are up to 20% less productive in the summer! I get it – in the winter it’s dark when the workday ends and I don’t mind spending an extra hour (or two) getting caught up, but in the summer there are HOURS of daylight after traditional work hours. Working “one more hour” feels like punishment when the dog gives me the “let’s go for a walk” stare, the family wants to grill some burgers, and the restaurants all have outdoor seating that’s full unless we get there early.
It seems most people agree that it’s important to leave work behind and focus on self, family and friends from time to time. That said, HR Teams are often especially busy over the summer, and taking that time can be difficult without added support. Does this resemble what’s on your desk right now, in June 2026?
The HR team encourages staff to “unplug” when on vacation or away from work, so it is not a good look for you to be emailing while you are at your college reunion, visiting day at your kids’ camp rafting in Colorado with your family. But how do you avoid the “September Scramble” to catch up on the things you thought you’d get done in July and August?
These last two may require added support for a temporary period of time – don’t worry – we’ve GOT you!
Our team of HR professionals is always available to add bandwidth to your in-house HR team, whether it’s before, during, or after the summer! HRSAW does not require a membership or minimum usage, you only pay for the work we do. We can help while you sip cocktails on a cruise ship, walk on the beach, visit family, or “staycation” to soak up the summer sun before September (or, more likely, finish the at-home to-do list you’ve been writing since winter!).
Leave the tasks to us – we will do it in less time than it takes you to remember where you stored the boogie boards after last summer . . . .
Contact info@hrsolutionsatwork.com for a free 30-minute consultation and to learn how we can help you spring into fall with your summer checklist complete!
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