Parental benefits use to essentially begin and end with maternity leave. But today, 94% of birthing parents return to work at Juniper and stay for at least six months after their leave because of the robust and ongoing benefits Juniper provides to parents that support their entire journey raising children—from pre-birth through the teen years. This year, we were recognized by Great Places to Work as one of the 2022 Best Workplaces for Parents in the U.S.
Our priority when it comes to benefits is ensuring every employee, regardless of demographic, receives comprehensive benefits. With so many working parents at Juniper, we are constantly looking for new ways to optimize benefits to support them as their parenting priorities and demands change – and it all starts with doing what’s right for our employees. Doing what’s right has always been the main driver behind our executive team’s benefits philosophy. When you genuinely support and care for people in meaningful ways, it enhances the employee experience and empowers employees to bring their best selves to work. The key is ensuring that benefits are truly valued by employees and evolve to match the changing world around us.
It’s Only a Benefit if Employees Use It
A benefit that employees don’t use is only a benefit by name. Part of building and providing a robust benefits package is selecting benefits intentionally with a knowledge of who your employees are, what they value and what formats and technology will make benefits easy and accessible to them.
For example, at the height of the pandemic, Juniper rolled out TaskHuman to provide coaching support for all our employees, including parents. During one of the most challenging times people may ever face as parents, we knew easy access to free resources was essential to support employees with children. Since we began offering access to TaskHuman, Juniper employees have logged more than 2 million minutes of use. Of those minutes, employees have utilized 375,000 minutes of one-on-one coaching on topics like family dynamics, prenatal fitness and yoga, embracing motherhood, child learning and more.
In 2020 we launched CLEO, a platform to guide and advise parents from pregnancy through caring for and raising their children. More than 400 families have received support from CLEO on some of the most challenging topics for new parents, like lactation, sleep, emotional wellness and preparing for birth. Seeing strong usage of these services is a key indicator that employees find value in the benefits offered.
“The support for parents and the culture at Juniper has been such a blessing for me and my family and has greatly influenced my decision to stay with Juniper as an employer over the last few years and as we considered becoming parents. I received overwhelming support when I became pregnant, which took a lot of the potential stress out of that period in my life. The resources available to me as a new parent during the early days of my son’s life were immeasurable, and Juniper continued to support me as I transitioned back to work as a thriving, working mom.”
– Alex Lomas, Sr. Marketing Manager
An Evolving Benefits Package
Benefits today won’t necessarily address the needs of parents in the future. A valuable benefits package that helps attract and retain employees is one that evolves to address the current state of the world, technology and culture we live in. In 2023, to address the demands of modern parenting, Juniper offers some of the most robust benefits for parents from pre-birth through college prep:
- Comprehensive fertility coverage through Progyny
- 16 weeks of new parent leave, including paternity leave and adoption leave
- 20 days of free backup child and elder care coverage through Bright Horizons (and we just added pet care!)
- SAT and ACT tutoring services for high school students
- Adoption Assistance
While parenting benefits can often be tied to a business case or HR metric, ultimately, if something feels like it’s the right thing to do for employees, chances are it will result in happier employees and improved engagement, retention and recruiting for your company. As we continue to optimize our benefits for everyone at Juniper as a critical part of our diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, being acknowledged as a great place to work for parents is an important milestone indicating that we are moving in the right direction.
