Introducing our parental leave program

In this post, we’ll share some of the details about the IAI Parental Leave Program, including how it came about over the past year.

Giving Parents the Support They Need

Our path to developing a parental leave policy began more than a year ago when we partnered with a team of consultants from Feminuity to review our recruitment process, which uncovered a couple of areas for improvement. Key among them were doing a better job of communicating the benefits we already offered, as well as adding new ones such as a parental leave plan.

To be honest, we initially thought that as an early-stage start-up, it might be too soon for us to launch a parental leave program. But, as we began to look around at what our peers and competitors were doing, we realized that wasn’t the case. In fact, we quickly decided to move forward and develop a plan. That plan was ultimately reviewed by the People Team in collaboration with an internal committee that we tasked with helping us land on the right program for our employees.

Throughout the entire process, our guiding principles have been to decrease the financial impact of having children on our employees so that starting a family is less of a barrier for those who want to. It was also important for us to ensure that our employees are not missing out on any opportunities to grow their career simply because they decide to take time off for parental leave. The program is available to all employees when they become parents (biological and adoptive parents).

The program we designed does all of this and more. Some of the highlights include:

• A supplemental salary top-up so that employees receive 75 percent of their regular salary while on leave
• Full healthcare coverage, which includes several benefits specific to new parents
• Flexible work schedules before and after coming back to work. Flexible work arrangements can be made to accommodate medical appointments. Employees work with their manager to develop a schedule that works best them.
• An optional program designed to help those employees who want to stay connected while on leave, which includes:
• A dedicated buddy to keep parents updated on a predetermined cadence
• Goal-setting performance reviews
• Access to work-technology so parents can choose to stay connected
• Dependent care expense reimbursement for reasonable dependent

There are many different ways to design a parental leave program, we focused on building a program that met the needs of our employees, supported parents in the workplace in a way that is scalable as we grow. We see this as the first step as the business grows and evolves so will this benefit.

Come Join Us

At integrate, we’re building a team of naturally curious people who want to make an impact and tackle complex problems head-on. We believe in fostering an inclusive work environment that welcomes people of all backgrounds and perspectives. We also value diverse experiences, ideas, and identities because we know they’re what help us make better decisions and drive great results.

We’re very pleased to now be able to say that our parental leave program is yet another way that we’re supporting our employees and creating what we believe is one of the best places to work in Toronto. Interested in learning more? Visit our careers page to see our open positions.

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