Tradify

When you're a startup, you initially focus on keeping the lights on. At what point did Tradify first start considering enhanced parental leave? 

At that point, we started having team members welcome babies, which prompted us to look at how we could do more for them. They were all partners, so at first, we focused on how to wrap around more support for them, at least in those first important couple of weeks. 

In 2021, we introduced whānau leave, which provided every new parent with two weeks of paid leave. For partners, we figured they could combine this with their annual leave. How they used it was up to them - for example, they could take it all at once or work shorter weeks but still be paid full-time for a few weeks. 

We quietly rolled out this new policy, which was a pleasant surprise for our employees.

How has the policy evolved?

We then had our first employee fall pregnant and then our second - which prompted us to look at how we could do better. At the same time, as part of our DEI initiatives, we focused on how we, as a company, can influence the representation of women in tech. We started to identify barriers such as parental poverty and the differences in retirement balances for women compared to men. This led us to review our parental leave offering globally (Tradify has offices in the UK and New Zealand) to identify how best we could enhance the experience for women to come into tech, stay in tech, and thrive in tech.

What process did you go through to formulate your new policy?

We started with: what would great look like? The New Zealand Parental Leave Register was a valuable resource to understand what’s available. 

We knew we wanted to offer a top-up to primary carers because it alleviates financial stress in the first six months. But we also wanted to look beyond that and create a policy that supports our people throughout their parenting journey, which can take different paths. That meant looking at how we could support our employees through family formation, pregnancy loss, their return to work and even retirement. We also wanted to clarify in writing that our people on parental leave would be included in reviews and pay increases.

We also learned from the experience of the first employee who gave birth while working at Tradify. For example, the annual leave issue came up, where her leave was worth $0 on the first day back, and she had to accumulate the value over the year. We quickly realised we needed to change that. Similarly, it was clear that returning to work was a transition for the whole family, so we enabled her to return part-time on a full-time salary before this was officially in our policy. 

Alongside this, I created the business case. 

What convinced the management team and the board that this was worth investing in?

Our CEO, Michael, was on board with this from the beginning. The leadership team, more broadly, was also on board in principle. They understood the why, particularly around influencing more women in tech. We also wanted to ensure Tradify is a place where people want to work and stay through their life transitions. We didn't want the temptation of a larger corporate parental offering to be the reason they may look to leave us.

It was still important that I created a clear business case and costing, especially if we were backfilling a role in addition to offering parental leave benefits. 

Our desire for a global policy also helped, as we adapted some aspects of the UK legislation already in play for the New Zealand context.

Tradify offers more than just paid primary carer and partner leave. Why was it important to have multiple types of paid leave to support people on their parenting journey?

It comes back to what we were trying to achieve. We’re trying to influence the end-to-end journey of parenting. The six-month top-up is great, but then if we didn’t pay annual leave at its full rate, returning parents couldn't really take paid leave for a year. Similarly, we know kids often get sick when they’re young to build their immunity, which is why we offer transition. Each of them feeds into the other. It was also the right thing to do because we believe in the well-being of our team. 

What has the feedback been like?

We had been working on the policy for quite a while because there were so many elements, and it took longer than I planned to get it live. A team member in the UK was heading off to have a baby late last year, and because I had received the verbal sign off, I could jump on a call with them and give them the news two weeks out from having the baby. It was the best call to make. We’ve just had the second person utilise the new policy. 

Additionally, we've been proud and privileged to support some of our Tradify whānau through IVF, which has been very meaningful.

We quietly rolled out our new policy because we wanted to learn and iterate. We’re only talking about it now more loudly because we are proud of its impact on the team, and it’s been great for retention.

What advice do you have for other businesses looking at their parental leave support?

Get buy-in into your why. For us, it was two-fold: we’re trying to influence diversity and inclusion in tech and look after our team.

You then need to build the business case and understand what you can do - and what you can't. Have a look at what others are doing. The NZ Parental Leave Register is great for this.

Work through the complexities of operationalising it with finance and payroll. In particular, we had to figure out how to roll it out in the UK, where it’s more complex. Ultimately, think through the end-to-end experience for the team.

See what parental leave benefits other organisations are offering their people.