Adobe joins tech industry move to offer better parental leave benefits

Adobe Systems Inc. announced on Monday that they are making changes with their parental leave policies similar to other tech companies that made a similar move earlier.

Employees of the company will be offered the benefit to enjoy 26 weeks of fully paid maternity leave while fathers and adoptive parents will enjoy 16 weeks of leave at 100 percent payment.

Adobe senior vice president for People and Place, Donna Morris said that they are doing this because they want to provide better support to their employees "during major life changes" and at the same time increase their workforce diversity.

The VP said that this change was not in any way a response to the same move that Microsoft and Netflix announced a week earlier but that the company have been brewing on this plan for some time. The changes in parental leave policy will take effect come November.

It can be remembered that Netflix also changed their parental leave policy by giving their employees a year of full paid parental leave within the child's first year of birth or adoption. New parents will also be offered the flexibility to return to work full or part time.

Microsoft also recently updated their parental leave benefits. Adoptive parents and fathers will be given 12 weeks leave with full payment. Birth moms will enjoy 20 weeks of maternity leave with 100 percent payment. On top of that, pregnant employees are also given two weeks leave before her due date. These changes will be in effect this November.

The changes created by these tech companies are viewed as an influential move in providing benefits to employees. Compared to other developed countries, the US provides a significantly shorter duration of paid parental leave, which is usually around 30 days.

Adobe employs 6,500 people in the US and 13,500 globally and 30 percent of the workers are women.