- An attractive benefit offering for older workers. Grandternity leave is a benefit that could serve as a valuable attraction and retention tool for organizations.
- An aging workforce. In the U.S., employees ages 50-plus make up more than a third of the workforce. Additionally, more than 2.7 million U.S. grandparents are raising their grandchildren.
- A natural extension of parental leave. Grandternity leave is a natural extension of parental leave and is similar to leave offered to a nonbirth parent.
- Assess workforce demographics. Before implementing a form of grandternity leave, organizations must determine if there is enough of a need based on their workforce demographics.
As the workforce ages and increasing numbers of grandparents care for their grandchildren, the concept of grandternity leave is an emerging trend that some employers are exploring as a retention tool.
More than a third (37%) of the U.S. essential workforce is age 50 or older, amounting to 16.1 million workers, according to AARP, and almost 15% of the workforce, 6.4 million workers, are age 60 or older.
Meanwhile, the number of single parents is rising along with the number of working women, causing grandparents to be relied on even more for childcare.
Indeed, more than 2.7 million U.S. grandparents are raising their grandchildren, triggering an increased need for grandternity leave. Thus, advocates of the concept promote the premise that family leave initiatives should encompass grandparents along with parents.
The new form of leave may serve as a signal of the true-market value of older workers. In a tight labor market where there are more than 10 million open jobs, many firms still struggle to keep their most experienced talent from walking out the door while also trying to recruit more in this cohort, which is prized for its historical knowledge and old fashioned-work ethic, according to the Wall Street Journal.
“Companies are trying to figure out what to do with older workers because we’ve never had this many,” said Bradley Schurman, CEO of The Super Age, a demographic strategy firm that uses age data to help organizations retain and attract talent.
‘Building a Culture of Belonging’
One company that became an early adopter is HireVue, which established grandternity leave in 2016 when the founder’s executive assistant became a grandmother and wanted to take time off to help her daughter and bond with the new baby.
The company formalized the benefit as a way to attract and retain a more diverse workforce, said Natalie Dopp, HireVue’s chief people officer.
HireVue now provides team members with one week of paid leave at 100% of the team member’s base salary to care for a grandchild. The leave needs to be taken within the first year of the child’s life.
“Attracting and retaining a diverse workforce should be top of mind for any organization,” she said. “Offering a range of benefits that help to build a culture of belonging is critical to this. In our case, we hope specifically calling out grandternity leave helps communicate that we value family time and our team members and at all different stages in life.”
It’s important with any leave program to ensure that the entire organization is aware of the benefit because oftentimes people are aware of maternity and paternity leave or a company’s PTO policy, but programs like grandternity leave can come as a surprise, Dopp noted.
A Grand Plan
While it does not currently cover grandparents, observers said the Family and Medical Leave Act could serve as a guideline for American employers devising a grandparent leave policy in lieu of an extant federal policy.
At global consulting firm Mercer’s Australia and New Zealand offices, 30% of its workforce is at least 50 years old. Mercer recently introduced one day of paid grandparent leave in that region, said Gaye Morris, chief people and culture officer for Mercer in Australia and New Zealand. The company is also considering offering paid grandparent leave more widely.
Rich Fuerstenberg, senior partner in Mercer’s health and benefits practice, said the concept of parental leave in general is still relatively new.
“In 2015 [Mercer research] found that only 25% of employers offered it,” he said. “Now in 2023, only 25% do not offer it. Parental leave has become table stakes for many organizations.”
Grandternity leave is a natural extension of parental leave and is similar to leave offered to a nonbirth parent, Fuerstenberg said.
Grandparents are uniquely positioned to play an outsized role in a child’s upbringing and early exposure to one another is key, he added.
“You just can’t outsource that bonding to a third party,” he said.
But when organizations are deciding whether to institute leave programs for grandparents and other groups, Fuerstenberg said, they must first consider the reasons behind the move and their workforce demographics.
“There are employers who are asked for leaves from their employees for a wide range of things,” he said, “and announcing a grandparental leave policy may not move the needle for younger workers or workers without grandchildren.”
Some employers that offer unlimited paid time off may balk at the idea of creating another avenue for employee absences, he said, adding that it may be too “niche” of an issue for others.
But carving out a special leave policy designed specifically to help working grandparents serving as caregivers to their grandchildren can also help bring attention to the issue, Fuerstenberg said.
“That shows that it’s different and gives it a spotlight,” he said.
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