Estee Lauder Now Paying Employees $10,000 to Adopt

Estee Lauder will now pay employees who adopt children up to $10,000 toward their costs and offer them 20 weeks of paid leave — including fathers.

The company will expand its family benefits program as of May 1, Business Insider reported. Employees previously got 12 weeks of paid leave when they had a child, and they will continue to be offered up to $20,000 per year toward the cost of fertility treatments and child and elder care at a reduced rate.

Both salaried and hourly workers are eligible for the benefits if they work at least 30 hours per week and have been employed at the company for three months or more, BI reported. 

The cosmetics giant also will launch a new back-to-work transition program where for the first six weeks after returning from parental leave, employees will be given additional flexibility to work from home or work shorter or different hours to accommodate the new responsibilities of parenthood, BI reported. 

While the benefits apply to both men and women, Estee Lauder’s American employees are 84 percent female, and women tend to take parental leave more often than men, BI pointed out. But the company reasons that it wants to support diversity in families and cover all the bases for how parenthood is done in today’s culture. 

"We're seeing a general shift away from focusing on more traditional benefits, like medical and dental," Estee Lauder Executive Director of Global Benefits Latricia Parker told BI. "Now, it's all about the individual, rather than employers dictating what's right for them. Employees want to understand the options available to them. ... We [Estée Lauder] don't want to dictate what their families should look like." 

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