As the startup Bobbie officially launched its “European-style” infant formula and started scaling its business—during the pandemic, no less, and on the precipice of a formula shortage—cofounders Sarah Hardy and Laura Modi wondered how they could build a better support system for the new parents who worked alongside them.
“The way that we showed up to support parents really started within the roots of the company,” says Hardy, cofounder and COO of Bobbie. The majority of people at Bobbie were parents at the time, and even now, most employees have children under the age of five. It seemed clear to Hardy and Modi that Bobbie should try to reimagine how workplaces typically handled parental leave.
“It was not rocket science,” Hardy says. “We knew one of the highest leverage things we could do was to rethink: How do we support parents going on leave and coming back to the workplace?”
Bobbie’s parental leave policy
Bobbie landed on an unusual leave policy that offered new parents four months of paid leave, along with the option to take up to eight additional months of unpaid leave. The idea was to give returning employees some runway—and flexibility—as they eased back into work. But Bobbie also went one step further, sharing its policy more broadly in 2022 as an open-source playbook dubbed TakeOurLeave and calling on other companies to shift their approach to parental leave.
This year, Bobbie has also expanded its advocacy on parental leave to put a spotlight on the families who are most impacted by the lack of federal paid leave in the U.S., through a campaign featuring tennis star Naomi Osaka and a grant program that has provided a monthly stipend to hundreds of parents.
“We ended up with a policy that personally I’m just very proud of, [which] we’ve seen over the last two years has been incredibly effective,” Hardy says of Bobbie’s flexible leave program. “Becoming a parent is a two-year journey. So we took a step back and really asked ourselves: What does that two-year journey look like, and how do we design for that end-to-end?”
A new playbook
Beyond the technicalities of drawing up a new policy, Hardy says the company also considered the cultural elements that were necessary to ensure the policy was a success—fostering “psychological safety” so employees felt comfortable disclosing their pregnancy, for example, and training managers to help their direct reports plan for leave.
Several tech employers offer flexibility to parents who are returning to work, including the likes of Apple and Amazon. But those policies usually only include a short grace period—say, four to eight weeks—where parents can set flexible hours or work part-time while they adjust to being back at work (albeit while being paid like full-time employees). It’s also rare for startups as young as Bobbie to offer the type of generous benefits that are typically the purview of big, established tech companies.
Since Bobbie implemented its policy, 20 employees at the company have gone on leave. (Bobbie now has a staff of more than 170.) On average, employees have chosen to take more than seven months of leave. The policy change has also helped Bobbie attract new talent: After launching TakeOurLeave, Hardy says Bobbie’s recruiting pipeline “literally doubled” and that the company saw a 50% uptick in applications.
Grants for families
Other employers have taken a cue from the policy and adapted it to fit their needs: Bobbie reports that its playbook has been downloaded more than 1,500 times by companies that employ 790,000 workers. “We published the playbook to break down some of the complexity that can feel really overwhelming,” Hardy says, “and to give people the courage and the confidence to start somewhere, [by] looking at what more can they do to evolve the policy that they have in place.” Since reviewing Bobbie’s playbook, companies like the pasta brand Banza now offer employees a flexible return to work and help cover the cost of shipping breast milk.
Even as companies like Bobbie draw attention to the issue, however, the vast majority of workers in the U.S.—a whopping 73% of private sector employees—are still denied paid leave. (Only 13 states and Washington, D.C., have passed laws that mandate paid leave.) That’s why, over the past few months, Bobbie has also used its platform to ask companies to extend support to families in need, through a grant program that provides a stipend of $580—the minimum amount recommended by the Family Act, the paid leave bill that was first introduced more than a decade ago.
Hardy says that upon announcing the grant program, the company received an overwhelming number of applications from families. “We were gobsmacked,” she says. “We had over 11,000 grant applications that came in.” Bobbie decided to fund 50 families and put out a request for other employers to join the cause. To date, a total of 200 grants have been funded. “It’s easy to [say], ‘Well does $580 really matter?’” Hardy says. “I can tell you with confidence: It matters. Half of the applicants had zero access to paid leave at all. When we asked how [they] would use $580, it was for essentials and bare necessities. I’m talking diapers, rent, bills.”
Fight for federal leave
Looking ahead, Bobbie’s advocacy arm is starting to formalize the coalition of 40 companies that came together to fund the grants—a group that includes maternal health startup Perelel and baby registry site Babylist—and brainstorming next steps. As Bobbie joins the chorus of voices calling for federal paid leave, Hardy hopes that the company can use its position to keep up the pressure on both lawmakers and corporate employers alike. “We firmly believe that we use that partnership between the private and public sector to figure out how we can support American parents,” she says. “It’s not like this hasn’t been done in other countries. What we’re begging for is just the bare minimum to get us a step in the right direction.”
