This Company's New Parental Leave Policy Will Give Working Parents FOMO
Dow Jones has long been described by employees as being a family-friendly employer — but they’ve just upped their game. The 125+-year-old company, which publishes The Wall Street Journal and Barron’s, among other publications, has just announced that beginning Jan. 1, 2018, employees will be eligible for enhanced childcare benefits.
Primary caregivers, who currently get 12 weeks of paid leave, will now be able to take 20 paid weeks off. And while the policy officially goes into effect after the new year, employees who have birthed or adopt a child between Oct. 1, 2017 and Dec. 31, 2017 will also be eligible for the 8 additional weeks of paid leave in 2018.
In an email announcing the new policy to employees, Dow Jones’ Chief People Officer Mark Musgrave wrote: “We are continuously looking for ways to enhance programs that will positively impact and benefit large segments of our employee population. This expansion puts us in the upper quartile when benchmarking against other U.S. companies.”
In addition to offering more paid time off, the new policy has been tweaked so that employees now only need to have worked at Dow Jones for six months in order to qualify for paid leave (currently, they need to have worked at the company for one year.
Perhaps it’s no surprise that women have such wonderful things to say about working at Dow Jones. Not only does the company continue to find ways to support new parents, but it also remains devoted to supporting parents even when their kids grow older.
Raakhee Mirchandani, a senior content development editor at Dow Jones and the editor-in-chief of Moneyish.com, another Dow Jones media brand, told Fairygodboss that as the mother of a toddler, she feels specially lucky to work at such a family-friendly company. “Flexibility is not even something we talk about; it’s just understood,” she says.
She’s able to drop her daughter off at school every morning, sometimes she works remotely, and she’s able to regularly block off family time in her calendar. “I’m a mom, I’m a gym-goer, and I’m able to be all of those things,” she says.
“This is a great place to work if your first priority is maintaining a good work/life balance,” another employee wrote on Fairygodboss. Another, who also said she enjoys working there because of the “great work-life balance,” added that “management will work with you when unexpected emergencies come up.”
For those of you who are starting to feel jealous, we have some good news — Dow Jones is hiring a ton right now, so start browsing jobs there today!
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