Why Progyny promotes staff even while they’re on parental leave

Paid parental leave isn’t yet the letter of US law, but it’s increasingly viewed as table stakes for companies seeking to attract and retain workers with families.

Even when companies offer paid leave to new parents, though, it can be hard getting employees to use the benefit in its entirety. Some 15% of employees recently surveyed by the distributed work company Remote said they elected not to take the full amount of parental leave offered to them, with 10% of women taking less than half of their maternity leave. The hesitancy stemmed in part from workers’ fears that their career progression would stall.

Progyny, a fertility benefits company, offers 16 weeks of paid leave to employees who are primary caregivers, and 12 weeks of paid leave to secondary caregivers. In 2023, about 20% of the company’s 575-person workforce took some form of leave, whether parental, personal, or medical, said Cassandra Pratt, SVP of people. She told HR Brew her team regularly promotes employees while they’re on leave, which she sees as a way to ensure it doesn’t interfere with their career growth.

Ensuring benefits are utilized. About three-quarters of Progyny’s workforce is female, said Pratt, and benefits utilization is top-of-mind for her team.

“We need to be mindful about how we communicate it, and how we enable people to use it,” Pratt said of the company’s leave offerings, “because it is something that, for our demographic, is really important.” She said her team trains managers to talk to their employees about leave, and encourages workers across the company—from individual contributors to senior-level employees—to take it.

It’s also important that employees understand that taking parental leave won’t negatively impact their career development, she added. Progyny typically announces most of its promotion decisions on July 1, “and we regularly promote people, during that time, that are on leave,” Pratt said.

“I want people to feel comfortable that if they go on leave, it does not negatively impact their career at Progyny,” she said. “It’s not going to lengthen your timeline, even by three or four months.”

What the data says. Employees have good reason to believe taking leave may negatively impact their career trajectories. Research indicates that this is often the case.

Women hired after the enactment of the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) in 1993, which allows workers to take 12 weeks of unpaid leave, were three percentage points more likely to remain employed, but eight percentage points less likely to be promoted than those hired before the FMLA, a 2021 analysis by labor economist Mallika Thomas found. The so-called “motherhood penalty” isn’t limited to the US. In a global overview of parental leave policies, Astrid Kunze, a professor of economics at the Norwegian School of Economics, noted, “career downgrading may occur as a result of mothers taking part-time work or due to forgone returns to work experience and promotions while on leave.”

Some companies are starting to be more mindful of supporting employees’ career development after they have kids, though. Salesforce, too, has been vocal about promoting workers while on parental leave. The consulting firm McKinsey offers a “reintegration program” designed to help keep up with their career growth after returning from leave.

Being out of work for three or four months can create “a lot of concern and uncertainty,” Pratt said. By continuing to promote employees while they’re on leave, HR can help ease some of these concerns, as well as send the message “that they are still materially important to the company.”