Netflix Employee Benefits Now Include 1 Year Paid Parental Leave? Benefit Too 'Generous' By Silicon Valley Standards?

Netflix seeks to boost employee benefits by offering "unlimited" paid time off to married staff during their first year as new parents.

This was announced on Tuesday and has been touted as one of the most generous parental leave packages offered by a tech company thus far.

It appears that Netflix decided to impose this new policy in hopes of retaining valuable employees in such a competitive landscape, CNET learned.

With the said policy, the video-streaming company would allow mothers and fathers to take as much time off as they want within the first year from their child's birth or adoption. They would earn their normal salary while on leave.

"Netflix's continued success hinges on us competing for and keeping the most talented individuals in their field," Netflix's chief talent officer Tawni Cranz said in a blog announcement. "Experience shows people perform better at work when they're not worrying about home."

According to a recent survey conducted by The Atlantic, Netflix's updated employee benefits rank among the most generous in a fiercely competitive industry. Among those in the survey is Twitter, which offers 20 weeks of paid leave to mothers and Google, which offers mothers up to 18 weeks of paid maternity leave (or up to 22 weeks if there were complications at birth).

Most tech companies offer free meals and other perks on top of generous salaries to computer programmers and other tech workers, but the Chicago Tribune said Netflix's big announcement on Tuesday is apparently too generous even by the high standards of Silicon Valley.

On the other hand, Susan Wojcicki, YouTube CEO, have long ago stated that expanded parental leave could have a positive impact on employees.

She was purportedly one of the first employees to go on paid maternity leave at Google, and she told the Wall Street Journal that when Google increased its paid maternity leave from 12 to 18 weeks in 2007, "the rate at which new moms left Google fell by 50 percent".

The announcement regarding Netflix's expanded employee benefits came on the same day the company's stock hit a new high, closing at $121.15, an increase of $8.59, or 7.6 percent.

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