Campbell Soup's New Parental Leave Policy

Campbell Soup just took a major step in announcing the company’s first parental leave policy, a gender-neutral policy that provides 10 weeks of paid time off for a primary caretaker, and 2 weeks of paid time off for a secondary caregiver for the birth or adoption of a new child.

CEO Denise Morrison (one of the few women CEOs in the Fortune 500) explained to the Huffington Post that the time was right because so many millennial mothers were their consumers. “We are all about millennial mothers, and this is really good for consumers.” In other words, their customers and the views of their customers seemed to be a driving motivation. Although we’ve seen other companies explain the way millennials have impacted their parental leave policies, this is one of the first times we’ve seen the rationale for an internal policy be driven by external stakeholders.

The Huffington Post also observed that Campbell’s acquisition of the company Plum Organics, a B-corporation, may have had something to do with their decision. Plum Organics, as a subsidiary of their company offered a more generous leave policy (8 weeks of paid maternity leave and 2 weeks of paternity leave) than it’s parent company until this announcement.

Earlier this month, two other giants in the consumer packaged goods industry, Coca-Cola and Anheuser-Busch announced expanded parental leave benefits. Coca-Cola announced it’s first paid parental leave policy which was gender neutral, and driven by millennial employees. Anheuser-Busch also expanded it’s leave for primary caretakers to 16 weeks. Now all three companies have given new moms a reason to feel better about their products when it comes to their weekly shopping!

P.S. If you’re interested in seeing more about the recent history of announcements on corporate parental leave policies, you might want to follow along with our Parental Leave Tracker, where we’re keeping tabs!

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