SEATTLE – Amazon.com has boosted its maternity leave to up to 20 weeks of paid leave for new birth mothers, joining a growing trend of tech companies expanding benefits to retain hard-to-find technical talent.
The company sent an internal email Monday outlining the changes. The changes take effect Jan. 1.
Under the policy, new parents, regardless of gender, who have worked at Amazon for at least a year will get six weeks of paid leave. Added to the 14 weeks birth moms already were offered, moms now have up to 20 weeks of paid time off.
Amazon also introduced a “leave share program” that allows employees to gift all or part of the six-week leave to a spouse or partner who does not have paid parental leave through his or her own work. That means the Amazon employee would come back to work, and their partner could get paid by Amazon to stay home and care for the child.
The announcement comes in the wake of Netflix’s highly publicized policy change earlier this year, which gave employees up to a year of paid leave after birth or adoption of a child. Microsoft followed suit almost immediately after, adding eight weeks of paid leave for new parents.
Amazon’s expanded benefits also come not long after a New York Times investigation finding that some Amazon employees were critical of the company’s work culture and were not happy with the benefits offered. The company has disputed the account.
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