Daniel Ek, Founder and CEO of Spotify. (Photo: Michael Loccisano/Getty Images for Spotify).
In
a presentation streamed to all of its international offices on Thursday
morning, music streaming service Spotify announced a program that
allows all full-time employees to take up to six months of paid parental
leave during the first three years after having a child.
“We
don’t want to be just a Google or a Facebook; we want to be a Spotify,”
the company’s CEO, Daniel Ek, said from a stage in Stockholm, where the
7-year-old music company was founded. “At the end of the day, what’s
going to make us succeed is all of you guys.”
The
announcement — which was followed by a conversation between the
company’s chief human resources officer, Katarina Berg, and senior
presidential adviser, Valerie Jarrett, at Spotify’s New York City office
— signals a growing trend for tech companies to offer competitive
benefits as a way of attracting talented workers. Netflix, Adobe and Microsoft
have all recently taken this step. It also demonstrates the White
House’s growing involvement in pushing for paid sick leave and parental
leave, something it argues is a profitable move for both small and large
businesses.
In
his State of the Union address in January, President Barack Obama
lamented the fact that the United States is the only advanced country in
the world that does not guarantee paid maternity leave. Since then, his
administration has pushed to pass the Healthy Families Act, which would
require companies with 15 or more employees to offer up to seven paid
sick days per year.
A 2014 National Study of Employees
found that U.S. employers offer an average of 12 weeks of parental
leave to new parents, as mandated by Family and Medical Leave Act of
1993. However, businesses are not required by law to offer full-time or
ev
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