Paid parental, medical, and caregiver leave have become table stakes for the modern and competitive employer. We see this trend in our own data, where 68% of companies offer employees paid parental leave on their first day of employment, doing away with tenure requirements. While it's promising to see employers moving in this direction, there's more to implementing these policies than just having them on paper. If company leave policies are going to have the desired impact, HR leaders need to clearly articulate them to employees so that they know how to access them in times of need. They also need to be able to effectively and reliably manage employee leave. However, this is much more fragmented and complicated than it should be.

For HR teams, the job of managing employee leave extends far beyond helping individual employees navigate the process. Employers have to juggle countless tasks at the organizational level: determining the best policies, ensuring equity and compliance across employee types and geographies, making sure they're not leaving money on the table, and more. Most of this work is performed manually.

The next frontier for employers isn't just adopting robust paid leave policies—it's operationalizing them. That is—figuring out how to efficiently and thoughtfully execute leave, and the policies that support employees during critical life moments.