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The City of Fort Worth has a new leave policy for employees who become new moms and dads.
The policy, approved by City Manager David Cooke and the City Council, offers six weeks of paid leave for maternity or paternity leave, including for adoptions and placements of children in homes. The leave is fully paid and not based on tenure of the employee. The policy goes into effect Oct. 1.
“This benefit will positively impact the hundreds of families that didn’t have these supports in place and help us stay on the forefront of attracting quality, competitive candidates to meet the critical demands of running a city,” Cooke says.
The city previously had no parental leave policy, including no formal maternity leave policy. The city estimates it has about 100 births annually among employees and employee spouses who access the employee health insurance plan.
Mayor Betsy Price and the City Council had put the city on course to add maternity and paternity leave, to lead in the ongoing development of the community’s Best Place for Kids and Best Place for Working Parents initiative. The city interviewed employees and researched comparative HR policies among municipalities nationally.
“As the city with the second highest percentage of families with children in the nation, introducing this policy is not only the right thing to do, but the smart fiscal decision for the City long-term,” Price says. “In order to have strong businesses, we need healthy employees and healthy families. It’s important that we modernize our HR policies to reflect the needs of working parents, because if they aren’t supported with benefits that recognize their commitment to work and their family — there will be other companies that will provide that critical support.”
