my company secretly gives parents thousands of extra dollars in benefits — Ask a Manager

Thanks to you and everyone in the comments for, before anything else, validating my opinions that this is bananas! A few notes/answers:

The child-free staff obviously noticed a lot of these things! Most of them, even! We just didn’t assume “our organization’s supervisors are running a secret benefits club” because that would be insane, right?!? Ha. To give some examples, most colleagues with kids made one weekly appearance in the office during the summer, so we attributed the extra remote days to their managers being nice, not a formal policy exemption. We’d see coworkers attend events as guests (and loved when they believed in our events enough to bring their families!) but we didn’t know they still got comp time. Honestly, the only people who took 100% advantage of every perk offered, no questions asked, were independently known to be … asshats. My favorite example: my boss is universally loathed in the office — they’re the kind of person who emails you projects on Saturday night, texts you about it on Sunday morning, then yells at you if it’s not done Monday morning before they hand me all their work to leave the office at 2 pm. The office has lovingly nicknamed them “NWC” for “No White Clothes” because you’ll never see them in the office between Memorial Day and Labor Day.

Someone in the comments questioned how the child-free managers felt about this and it helped me realize that every single person in the C-suite and director level had kids, as did probably two-thirds of the manager level. Most of the managers who didn’t have kids living with them were older empty-nesters who did have kids under their roof at one point, too. I honestly couldn’t think of a single parent who didn’t report to another parent. But I doubt that had anything to do with these policies (*rolls eyes as high as possible*). I should say, that didn’t impact who did or didn’t get promoted into certain roles: parents and non-parents alike were deservedly hired or promoted from within; it did obviously impact which supervisor was assigned to which person.

Yes, apparently if you have your first child while working there, you then get told about the “expanded benefits packages to accommodate your new family.” It seems the colleagues are so pleasantly surprised at all the benefits they aren’t retroactively angry (or maybe they are and feel it’s better to keep the secret).

We do have a small, understaffed HR department. One person who is basically the liaison between us and a PEO for benefits and payroll, and a director who mostly does interviews and handles complaints. Both parents.

To try and fix this (especially because I had been regularly interviewing to leave and didn’t want to do it alone in the event I got a new job and left it behind), I spoke to some trusted colleagues, one a parent and two child-free. The colleague who was a parent, I also learned, had joined as a parent and was not given a big “don’t tell the others” speech, it was just suggested they have discretion around benefits so we don’t “let money get in the way of teamwork.” The two child-free colleagues had no idea about this and were enraged. The four of us met and, the Monday after your answer, put together some language and emailed our HR department and managers to outline that we knew about the benefits differences and were 100% prepared to publicly share with the full organization and an employment lawyer if they did not work to balance out the benefits, or at least publicize the differences so non-parents can choose whether or not they want to work here. I got a response that they’d “be looking into it” and suddenly a number of directors and managers (including my boss), the C-suite, HR, and some board members were meeting for hours at a time that week.

That Friday, an email went out that basically said benefits would be changing to “match the changing needs of our organization.” However, it didn’t acknowledge previous differences. Generally it meant that non-parents got the extra time off, comp days are only given if you complete a volunteer shift, and we would have a universal in-office day of Wednesday during the summers, but be remote the other four days. However, some benefits weren’t changing: you were still only eligible for family gym memberships if you had kids (“there is no couples membership at Organization,” so non-families were just SOL), leaving early without taking PTO was only for school pickups, and no announced change to our retirement benefits.

If not happy with the response (we weren’t!), my colleagues and I were planning to tell everyone, but we didn’t even have to. Sadly I missed this while out of town for a wedding, but apparently a parent in the office got this email just before entering a Zoom. He didn’t realize there were some non-parents already logged on and said out loud to another parent something along the lines of “Did anyone else see this? I don’t get it, it’s just our benefits but now I have to be in on Wednesdays!” Cue the questions, cue the firestorm, cue everyone being told to log off and go home at noon on a Friday.

Since then, multiple people have quit out of pure rage (incluidng some parents who were also told to have discretion and were disgusted with the org), the C-level exec who originally spearheaded these benefits resigned, and all the non-parents have collectively agreed to refuse to go in the office until everything is more equal. Almost every benefit that was given to parents will now be offered org-wide (they are even creating a couples’ gym membership) but, interestingly, they have not touched the one thing that seemed to rile up the comments section the most: retirement matching! Apparently, because families with kids spend more money, and the changing economy means more young adults need financial support from their parents in their 20’s, parents need more money in retirement to make up for it. This is a sticking point the non-parents are really fighting against, and the org seems to be adamant they won’t budge on.

Lucky for me, the reason I’m not joining them in that good fight is that I’m writing this having submitted my two weeks. Found an interesting new job (and used your advice on interviews and in negotiations) and submitted my notice. There was still some drama: My aforementioned asshat boss NWC responded by taking multiple projects away from my fellow non-parents, saying “they can’t do it while on their remote strike” and assigning them to me (~120 hours of group work to be done alone in 10 working days). Extra lucky for me, I have a family member and a college friend who are both in employment lawyers; they helped me craft an email saying that because I’ve been assigned an unreasonable amount of work on an impossible timeline after being a whistleblower for the benefits issue, I could and would sue for retaliation. An hour later I got a call from HR letting me know that my work had been reassigned and that once I’d finished editing an exit doc for my successor, I could log off permanently and still be paid for the full notice period and get my vacation payouts. Currently basking in the glow of paid funemployment. (When I’m done writing this. my wife and I are going to get drinks and lunch! At 2 in the afternoon! On a Tuesday!)

Thanks again to the comments for the suggestions and making me feel less like a bewildered baboon, and to you for your sage advice with this question and so many others! I’m aware of my privilege in having understanding colleagues and literally being able to text two employment lawyers and get good, pro bono advice within a day. Not everyone has that, so thank you for providing the resource.