Seattle startup offers nanny, dinner to exhausted parents
Jan 18, 2017, 8:35 AM | Updated: Oct 11, 2024, 9:54 am
(Photo by Donnie Ray Jones, CC Images)
(Photo by Donnie Ray Jones, CC Images)
The United States is the only industrialized nation in the world that doesn’t give all new mothers paid leave. Most countries give a minimum of two months paid leave. Estonia is most generous, offering more than a year and a half of paid time off to new moms.
In 2015, the City of Seattle stepped up, offering both mothers and fathers up to four weeks paid time off after giving birth or adopting a child.
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But it’s individual companies that are doing the most to accommodate new parents. A Seattle startup called Outreach went above and beyond a couple months ago when it began offering benefits no other company in Seattle or Silicon Valley could match. For example, you get a good chunk of paid time off.
“Two weeks before the arrival of the baby,” said VP of Marketing, Katie Doyle. “Ten weeks after for moms and a total of four weeks for new dads.”
But what’s really unique are the perks at this Seattle startup. When you do come back to work, Outreach will pay for a night doula. That’s a baby nurse who will get up with your newborn, so you can sleep through the night and come to work fresh the next day.
“It’s on a stipend so it’s an $8,000 benefit for the doula,” said Outreach CEO Manny Medina. “You can have it as often as you want, we have it twice a week.”
Parenting and the Seattle startup
Medina is a father of three with a 2.5-month-old daughter, so he gets it.
“I’m going through it myself right now and the days that the doula shows up is a party at home because we’re going to get to sleep a full seven or eight hours that night,” Medina said. “You wake up and you feel like a new person. Having that available to new parents, as they’re easing back into work, we feel that goes beyond what you get from companies in the same space and with the same growth opportunities.”
As a Seattle startup CEO, Medina swears he didn’t come up with this policy to accommodate his own family.
“We did it because a good number of our potential employees, and our executives, are parents or want to be parents,” Medina said. “It’s very easy for a high-tech growth company to become a frat boy place where it’s nothing but dudes and nobody has a life outside of this and you’re working and going drinking with your buds.”
“We want to attract a broader set of people,” he said. “One of the things I care about deeply is diversity. I, myself, am not from the same cut of cloth as my other co-founders. I’m older, I’m Hispanic, I’m an immigrant. You won’t be able to attract a particular sect of the population if you don’t have this policy in place. I fully expect this to be copied within the next year or two.”
The other big perk at Outreach is a free dinner delivery service, provided twice a week, for eight weeks after returning to work. Doyle said she’s always felt like she had to decide between having a family and having a dream career at a start-up, where lots of working hours are part of the job.
“I think this is a really powerful message for women and I’ve already seen this when I talk to interview candidates, men and women alike, this is one of the things they site,” Doyle said. “‘I heard about your parental leave policy and that’s one of the reasons I’m attracted to Outreach.'”
Outreach also allows flex time after the baby is born, so parents can work from home part of the time.
“If today is the day when your kid gets sick and needs to be taken out of school, you should go and be with your kid,” Doyle said. “We give you the flexibility to do that. There’s no judgment, we trust each other.”
Outreach senior product manager, and mother, Anya Stitz, wished she had these benefits when she gave birth to her daughter Nora, 18 months ago. She says having two weeks off before you give birth is priceless.
“I was afraid I would go into the office and I’d have this really important meeting and my water would break and I’d start going into labor and I wouldn’t get to the hospital on time,” Stitz said. “I lined the inside of my car, the driver’s side, with garbage bags because I was afraid I was going to break water on my way to work.”
“As you get closer to your due date, just to be able to start to wind it down and get ready and have your bags packed and hang out at home,” she said. “Just enjoy the silence while you have it.”
Outreach is a two-year-old company, so Medina says it’s easy to bake in benefits like this now, so it’s a part of the budget and a part of the culture.
