Here are the Top 50 companies in America for new dads

Being a new dad is stressful enough. Suddenly, every hour of your life is dedicated to keeping a helpless little human alive. Compounding that stress is the fact that you may not have enough hours to do this. Workplaces in America are notoriously unsupportive of fathers, discouraging them from taking paternal leave or taking their share of childcare duties. Dads complain that workplaces still expect them to put their jobs ahead of their children. But there are some companies who are doing it right. Fatherly’s 2018 list of the best workplaces for new dads is a model of how other companies should be doing it.

Surveying U.S. companies with more than 1,000 employees, Fatherly analyzed thirteen different policies to determine its list, including weeks of paid leave, the availability of parents’ support group, fertility aid, adoption expenses, flextime, onsite childcare, childcare subsidy, backup childcare, sick days, student loan assistance, bereavement leave, ramp-back time, and elder care planning. The tech sector continues to be a pioneer for supporting working fathers. Out of the top 50 places surveyed, 40% of them were tech companies.

The best workplaces helped working fathers at every stage of their life — as they raised toddlers and as they helped their aging parents. “The top-ranked company, American Express, not only has an exceptional leave offering, but a program designed to encourage new fathers to take advantage of it and other programs intended to provide additional assistance,” Fatherly’s editor-in-chief Andrew Burmon told Ladders. “There’s no shock here: The companies that provide the best working environments for new parents are the companies that take great pains to do so.”

1. American Express

Beyond offering 20 weeks of paid parental leave (The U.S. government still only offers you a grand total of 0), American Express is there to help you before the baby is even there with family planning assistance. “Amex offers would-be parents a maximum benefit of $35,000 to finance fertility treatments, surrogacy, and adoption. Parents can take advantage of that perk twice,” Fatherly reports.

2. Lenovo

Lenovo offers fathers eight weeks of paid paternity leave, but where it shines is in its flexibility. “Where Lenovo really sets itself apart is in providing its employees with flex time and flexible leave to handle any sort of family emergency (as well as backup childcare through Bright Horizons),” Fatherly reports.

3. Spotify

With a generous six-month parental leave policy for employees, Spotify sets itself apart for recognizing what studies already know: when Dads are an active presence in their baby’s life, they are better fathers later in their life.

4. Etsy

Headquartered in Brooklyn, New York, Etsy offers all full-time employees 26 weeks of paid parental leave. Although it lacks on-site childcare, it does provide assistance programs for adopting parents and parents of special needs children, in addition to unlimited sick leave for you to use if your child gets the flu.

5. Twitter

Beyond its 20 weeks of paid parental leave, the social media giant wants to hook up its employees with a parent discount. “When new parents return to work, they are eligible to join a group called Twitter Parents, which provides support to all parents in the company and works with many partners to provide discount rates on goods and services specifically for moms and dads,” Fatherly reports.

6. Unilever North America

Unilever offers fewer weeks of paid parental leave than its contemporaries on this list with a total of eight weeks of paid parental leave. But it does excel at other benefits: “The company reimburses would-be parents for adoption-related expenses up to $7,000 per year and offers onsite childcare and backup dependent care, a massive boon to those with little ones,” Fatherly reports.

7. IBM

Dads, partners, and adoptive parents get up to 12 weeks of paid leave that they can use in their child’s first year.

8. Netflix

The video streaming company offers a whopping 52 weeks of paid parental leave that parents can use at their discretion. But how many employees are taking advantage of this policy? We don’t know. “It’s worth noting that Netflix does not offer statistics on how many people take advantage of its full offering, which is the sole reason that the company does not currently top out this list,” Fatherly reports.

9. Deloitte

The company recognizes that every family structure is different, and its 16 weeks of paid leave are purposefully gender- and generation-neutral. “Any eligible professional may use the program to bond with a child through birth or adoption or to care for a spouse/domestic partner, parent, child and/or sibling with a serious health condition,” the company states.

The program has been popular with employees. “I don’t have children but I do have aging parents and I am very happy to see that included as an option for the future if needed,” one employee shared.

10. Bank of America

Beyond childcare subsidy, the company offers its 16 weeks of paid parental leave to both full-time and part-time working fathers. “According to the company, an unusually high 96% of eligible male employees who welcome a new child take advantage of this benefit, which clearly speaks to a healthy work culture,” Fatherly reports.

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When parents do not have to worry about caring for their children, they can focus more on their jobs. Beyond the top 10 places, the rest of the best workplaces also shared characteristics of a healthy work culture: they were more likely to offer generous paid leave, childcare subsidy, flextime, support groups, and bereavement time.

“The top-rated companies tend to have policies and cultures that recognize the importance of parental leave – and the importance of supporting fathers as they come back into work and over the course of their children’s lives,” Vicki Shabo, Vice President for Workplace Policies and Strategies at the National Partnership for Women & Families, told Ladders. “Although it is heartening and encouraging to see that these companies have adopted some best practices in supporting fathers at work, I’m continually reminded that creating supportive workplace policies and culture needs to happen on a much larger scale.”

Here is Fatherly’s complete 2018 list of the best workplaces for new dads:

1. American Express
   2017 Rank: 3
   Number of Employees: 20,000 in the United States, 32,000 globally
2. Lenovo
   2017 Rank: n/a
   Number of Employees: 4,338 in the United States, 50,000 globally
3. Spotify
   2017 Rank: 4
   Number of Employees: 3,000
4. Etsy
   2017 Rank: 2
   Full-Time Employees: 1,043
5. Twitter
   2017 Rank: 6
   Full-Time Employees 3,300
6. Unilever North America
   2017 Rank: n/a
   Full-Time Employees: 7,851
7. IBM
   2017 Rank: 40
   Full-Time Employees: 366,000
8. Netflix
   2017 Rank: 1
   Full-time employees: 4,000
9. Deloitte
   2017 Rank: 10
   Full-Time Employees: 55,608
10. Bank of America
    2017 Rank: 8
    Full-Time Employees: 200,00
11. Square, Inc.
    2017 Rank: 11
    Full-Time Employees: 2,438
12. Lyft
    2017 Rank: n/a
    Number of Employees: 2,600
13. Pinterest
    2017 Rank: 12
    Number of Employees: 1,200
14. Patagonia
    2017 Rank: 9
    Number of Employees: 1,550
15. CA Technologies
    2017 Rank: 14
    Number of Employees: 5,675
16. LinkedIn
    2017 Rank: 37
    Number of Employees: 11,800
17. VMware
    2017 Rank: 7
    Number of Employees: 12,267
18. NVIDIA
    2017 Rank: 15
    Number of Employees: 6,519
19. NBA
    2017 Rank: n/a
    Number of Employees: 1,500 globally
20. Genentech
    2017 Rank: 22
    Number of Employees: 15,000
21. Microsoft
    2017 Rank: 17
    Number of Employees: 124,293 globally
22. eBay
    2017 Rank: n/a
    Number of Employees: 14,100
23. Facebook
    2017 Rank: 5
    Number of Employees: 37,666
24. Airbnb
    2017 Rank: 19
    Number of Employees: 4,000+
25. IKEA U.S.
    2017 Rank: 45
    Number of Employees: 18,838
26. Johnson & Johnson
    2017 Rank: 21
    Number of Employees: 134,000
27. Prudential Financial
    2017 Rank: n/a
    Number of Employees: 17,413
28. Akamai Technologies
    2017 Rank: n/a
    Number of Employees: 3,500 in the United States, 7,650 globally
29. Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of NJ
    2017 Rank: n/a
    Number of Employees: 5,570
30. Boston Scientific
    2017 Rank: n/a
    Number of Employees: 14,142 in the United States, 29,000 globally
31. BASF
    2017 Rank: 23
    Number of Employees: 18,200
32. Google
    2017 Rank: 32
    Number of Employees: 72,000
33. The PNC Financial Services Group
    2017 Rank: n/a
    Full-Time Employees: 53,000
34. Ultimate Software
    2017 Rank: n/a
    Full-Time Employees: 4,200
35. Mastercard
    2017 Rank: 24
    Full-Time Employees: 13,400
36. Paypal
    2017 Rank: 31
    Full-Time Employees: 18,700
37. Zillow Group
    2017 Rank: 27
    Number of Employees: 3,250
38. S&P Global
    2017 Rank: n/a
    Number of Employees: 5,462 in the United States
39. Cooley LLP
    2017 Rank: n/a
    Number of Employees: 1,770
40. State Street Corporation
    2017 Rank: 26
41. Capital One
    2017 Rank: 20
    Number of Employees: 42,600 full-time, 1,100 part-time
42. OppenheimerFunds
    2017 Rank: 48
    Number of Employees: 1,956
43. Lexmark International, Inc.
    2017 Rank: n/a
    Number of Employees: 2,220
44. Intel Cooperation
    2017 Rank: 30
    Number of Employees: 50,682 full-time
45. 3M
    2017 Rank: 28
    Number of Employees: 36,364
46. RSM
    2017 Rank: n/a
    Full-time Employees: 9,550+
47. Bain & Company
    2017 Rank: 33
    Number of Employees: 8,000
48. Booz Allen Hamilton
    2017 Rank: n/a
    Full-Time Employees: 24,750
49. Dow Jones & Company
    2017 Rank: n/a
    Full-time employees: 2,819
50. Vanguard
    2017 Rank: 41
    Full-time employees: 15,745