Work-life balance at DocuSign: Expanding our parental leave benefit to six months

Part of making DocuSign one of the best places to work includes ensuring our employees have the opportunity for great work-life balance. Today, we’re happy to announce that we are expanding our parental leave benefit to a full six months of paid time off for employees with at least six months of service and who are new parents effective February 1, 2018. This benefit will be available to employees within the first year as primary caregiver to a new child, whether through child birth, surrogacy or adoption, and includes continuation of the employee’s full benefits during the time on leave.

We reached out to some of our expectant employees and employees with children to hear their thoughts on the expanded benefit:

Our CEO, Dan Springer, is a parent himself, and offered his thoughts on the parental leave expansion. “As an executive who has taken time away from my career to raise my two teenage sons as a single father, I’ve seen first-hand the value of spending time with, bonding with and caring for one’s children – it’s personally enriching for both parent and child. One of my biggest passions in business is creating a culture and environment that is each and every employee’s best place they’ve ever worked. Extending our parental leave policy to give parents a full six months to spend with their new child advances the right example across the tech industry and helps further DocuSign as an employer of choice.”  

Mother of two and DocuSign Director of Global Social Media Strategy & Operations, Caitlin Angeloff, said, “This message about parental leave says that our leadership team cares about the employees of DocuSign. We bring our whole selves to DocuSign, and to be able to do that, it means we feel good about leaving our loved ones at home.  

“To have the first six months at home with a child -- whether (s)he is adopted, or a child you’ve given birth to -- those are formative points in time for their lives. Our management team and leaders are demonstrating that it’s important to give all employees an opportunity to come back to work when they’re ready to work and when they feel good about those early days of getting their children off on the right foot.”

Director of Customer Readiness, Erin Smith, is expecting her second child this year. She said, “I think it’s wonderful. Both for the company, for our ability to recruit, and then personally as an already-mom and going to be second-time mom soon.  

“With my first child I only took off about 9-10 weeks. Honestly, it felt so rushed at the end to come back and not have the time to know he was well set up. This program allows parents to get level set before they go back to work. And also, to make sure their child is sleeping well, and sleeping a little more through the night, before they come back – so they can really give their best to their work.”

Expanding parental leave to a full six months is a key component to building our company culture and enriching the lives of our employees. Efforts like these geared towards fostering great work-life balance also helped us earn an  Employees’ Choice Award in Glassdoor’s Best Places to Work in 2017 as one of the top 25 companies to work for with more than 1,000 employees.  

In the words of some of our employees as posted on Glassdoor, DocuSign is a "great opportunity to make a significant contribution that will impact the future of the company" and "a once-in-a-career opportunity." Employees note that “work-life balance is a reality in this company” as “from the outset at the interview, you sense you are working with a company who carefully considers their employee experience.”  

Overall, employees rate DocuSign on Glassdoor at 4.3 out of 5, with a 4.4 rating on the company's culture and values and a 4.3 rating on work/life balance .  

Our expanded parental leave program adds to the extensive list of benefits that we offer our employees, including:  

• Generous Paid Time Off (PTO) & Holidays
• Paid Volunteer Time Off (VTO)
• Employee matching of qualified nonprofit donations  
• Paid bereavement leave  
• Total rewards compensation including pre-IPO equity grants  
• Pre-tax and post-tax retirement benefits/pensions  
• Comprehensive health benefits (free for employees, 50% paid coverage for dependents)
• Life and Disability income protection plans

• Learning and development training  
• Subsidized commuter benefits  
• And more  

Want to learn more about career opportunities at DocuSign? Please visit http://www.docusign.com/careers.