Deloitte Paid Family Leave Policy

Deloitte has just updated their paid parental leave policy and established a new family leave policy in the process. 

Deloitte has begun offering their employees 16 weeks of full paid leave to take care of their families. They responded to the gauntlet that was thrown down by EY in April of this year. 

Under the previous Deloitte parental leave regime, women were offered a max of 6 months of paid leave for child birth if you factor in short term disability and that has not changed. What has changed is that Deloitte implemented additional time for other family care. 

Deloitte went to Forutne and issued a press release that their paid leave policy is the most extensive family leave program in the professional services industry. 

I think they made this move because EY announced a similar move earlier this year and PwC has a family leave policy similar to the one that Deloitte used to have. Deloitte likely made this move to differentiate themselves. 

Cathy Engelbert, who is the head of the Deloitte US firm, stated the primary reason for the change was competition for talent. They know that this generation does not value being at work 24/7 the same way prior generations did. This generation values work/life balance and being with family. That is why Deloitte had to implement this program. If they did not offer this program, they would not be differentiating themselves from the other big four accounting firms as far as paid leave is concerned. They probably saw some of their recruits going to other big 4 firms such as EY and KPMG that had slightly better paid leave policies than they did.

I fully expect PwC to update their paid leave program soon in order to compete for talent.

Deloitte’s old paid leave program focused solely on new parents and only provided about 8 weeks of time off to primary caregivers. Non primary caregivers were allowed 3 weeks. 

Deloitte Paid Family Leave

The Deloitte paid leave program is offering their employees family leave of up to 16 weeks. The difference between them and other big 4 accounting firms is that they offer this for a wide range of life events including

• Birth or adoption of a new child
• Caring for your spouse
• Caring for a significant other
• Supporting aging parents

Deloitte through their family leave policy is also offering adoption assistance services and reimbursement of up to $5,000 per child. 

Deloitte is also offering up to 30 days of emergence back-up dependent care for children. 

Here’s how other firms stack up

PwC 

PwC currently offers an employee assistance program to help with your birth or adoption.

The PwC paid parental leave program offers six weeks of paid leave in addition to short term disability. Parents that have more than one child are allowed to take an additional 2 weeks.

The PwC paid leave program also offers up to $6,000 in reimbursements for eligible adoption expenses

EY

Ernst & Young announced in April that they would offer 16 weeks of paid leave for new moms and dads. This is probably where Deloitte got the idea of 16 weeks from and then just extended the policy to the whole family instead of solely to newborns. 

What differentiates EY is that they offer a $25,000 reimbursement for same or opposite sex couple fertility, surrogacy, adoption and egg freezing services.

KPMG

It’s a little bit hard to find KPMG’s paid parental leave policy on the web, but it appears that KPMG’s paid parental leave policy allows up to 16 weeks of paid leave for primary caregivers.

I found that they also do offer adoption reimbursement, but I could not found the dollar amount for that either. 

If KPMG doesn’t make this easy to find, then they really aren't taking advantage of the marketing potential of having it. 

What are your thoughts on Deloitte's new policy? Is this enough to make you leave your current firm and work for Deloitte. Let us know in the comments below.