Zillow expands its family leave policy

SEATTLE, Wash. — It seems like every week, there’s a new tech company expanding its family leave policies.

Zillow is the latest.

Last week, it was Amazon.

Before that it was Microsoft and Netflix.

They're jumping on the bandwagon or trying to one up each other as another tool to retain and recruit talent.

It’s a welcome surprise for Andrea Smolin, a Zillow employee who is 12 days out from her due date.

She already has a 4-year-old, so she's excited about Zillow's new maternity leave policy which allows new birth moms to take 16 weeks of paid time off, and all other parents can take eight weeks off paid.

They're also throwing in a $1,000 gift card to buy baby items.

The policy actually takes effect next year.

But they're giving the benefit early to workers like Smolin, who are due this quarter.

“It just makes it that much easier to come back to work and feel fulfilled in both ways,” Smolin said.

Forty percent of Zillow's employees are women.

Zillow's chief operating officer, Amy Bohutinsky is also a mother of two.

She's serious about supporting a healthy work life balance at the company.

For instance, Wednesday was basically bring your kids to work day at Zillow since kids were off from school.

Bohutinsky believes this is another way to recruit and retain top notch talent.

“It can be a competitive hiring environment so anything we can do to make Zillow a more attractive place to work comes back and benefits us,” Bohutisnky said.

“It's great they have the benefit, but frankly those are the people who can afford to take some unpaid time off,” Marilyn WAtkins said.

Watkins from the Economic Opportunity Institute hopes this rash of tech companies expanding family leave benefits will catch on with lawmakers.

“What I'm hopeful that will happen is that this will then encourage our state Legislature to act and move forward on adopting a paid family leave program that would cover everybody,” Watkins added.

For now, companies like Zillow are filling in the gap.

“They've joked about how there's going to be a huge baby boom and I can probably see it coming,” laughed Smolin.

KIRO