Why healthcare lags behind other industries on parental leave

Women make up about three-quarters of healthcare workers in the US, but those who have kids may struggle to access parental leave, according to a recent report.

The report, from The Best Place For Working Parents, looks at trends in “family-friendly policies” being implemented by employers across the US, including paid time-off, onsite childcare, and flexible work. It considers benefits offered by more than 1,200 companies in the organization’s national network, which focuses on “providing support for working parents through evidence-based strategies.”

Businesses in the healthcare sector were the least likely to offer maternity or paternity leave, with 59% and 35% of organizations surveyed doing so, respectively. By contrast, 100% of employers in the safety, security, and legal; motor vehicle; and agriculture, forestry, and wildlife industries offered maternity leave. The agriculture, forestry, and wildlife sector also performed well on paternity leave, with every business surveyed offering it.

Healthcare is historically weak on parental leave. Other recent studies provide further evidence that healthcare organizations have room to improve when it comes to parental leave. Hospitals ranked in the top 20 by US News & World Report offered 7.9 weeks of paid leave on average to birthing parents, according to an analysis published in Women’s Health Reports in April 2023. That’s shorter than the 12 weeks recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics, the researchers noted.

Nearly three-quarters of physician mothers (73.3%) surveyed in December 2018 felt that the time they were given for leave was insufficient, a separate research paper published in the Journal of the American Medical Association Network in 2019 found. The majority (89%) surveyed “would have preferred 11 weeks to 6 months of leave vs. the 5 to 12 weeks (often not paid) most commonly available,” the authors wrote.

“We know that healthcare overall is really strained at this time,” Sadie Funk, national director for The Best Place for Working Parents, told HR Brew. “And I think [parental leave] is going to continue to be a policy and an issue that bubbles up for healthcare…How are they really able to address this deficit when so many other industries around them are, and they’re already struggling to retain their talent at this time?”

One benefit identified in the report as a “stand-out” in healthcare was flexible hours. Flexibility is increasingly seen as a key way to attract and retain workers in the profession, HR Brew previously reported.

For HR pros seeking to introduce flexible options in their workplace, Funk cited a flexible benefit provided by Cook Children’s healthcare system in Fort Worth, Texas, as one that stood out to her. The system adjusts their start time later on the first day of school to accommodate working parents. “That provides everybody the flexibility to really be present as they’re dropping off…and then come into work, no penalty, and everybody just starting on the same page,” Funk said.