Report suggests it’s time to re-evaluate employee paid-leave programs

The number of employees taking medical leave has increased by 5% in the past four years, while the duration of those leaves has jumped 44%. That’s according to Sparrow, provider of an end-to-end leave-management solution to help employers assist their employees during major life events.

Citing data from “The State of Employee Leave: Sparrow’s Annual Benchmark Report,” Samarth Keshava, the company’s co-founder and chief technical officer, recently told BenefitsPRO why it’s more important than ever for bosses to provide leave.

“Over the last few years, Sparrow has seen a steady increase in medical leaves. Within our customer base, we also see various trends,” he says. “For example, larger companies [with more than 1,000 employees] tend to have a higher medical leave rate. That also means that the increase in medical leaves is not spread evenly across companies, and some employers can be affected disproportionately by this trend.”

The report looks at who has access to state-run paid leave programs, what type of leaves are included in policies, how much leave employers offer, and how much leave employers take.

According to the WORLD Policy Analysis Center, the United States is just 1 of 6 countries in the world without national paid leave. But by 2026, 13 states and the District of Columbia are expected to have laws on the books supporting paid family and medical leave for residents, Sparrow reports.

“Paid leave is only one aspect of state, local, and federal leave laws,” according to Sparrow’s new report. “Notably, most legislation that enacted paid leave also includes provisions for job protection for employees.”

While the report indicates that more than 95% of all paid employee leaves are for birthing/non-birthing parental, medical, and caregiver, it also emphasizes other types of leave that many companies — at least for now — do not provide. They include:

• Bereavement leave to allow employees to grieve and make arrangements in the event of a family member’s death.
• Safe leave to provide victims of domestic violence, stalking, or other crimes to seek assistance, relocate, or take legal action.
• Voting leave to ensure employees can participate in democracy without facing repercussions at work.
• Jury duty leave to allow employees to fulfill their civic duty when called for jury duty without facing repercussions at work.
• Organ and bone marrow donation leave to allow employees to undergo surgery or another medical procedure to donate an organ or bone marrow to a recipient in need.

Related: Many employers plan to implement big changes to leave programs, study finds

Keshava believes paid leave is becoming a bigger part of employee benefits — “which means,” he says, “that it’s particularly important for companies and their ‘People’ teams to better understand these trends to be able to effectively manage through them. This can sometimes be a challenge as there can be limited visibility into the underlying causes. For example, under CFRA [a California regulation similar to the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993], employers cannot ask employees for their diagnosis, to help protect employee privacy.”