Here at Vena, we realize that adding a member to your family is a big change—to both your home and work life. The journey from parental leave to working parenthood affects everyone differently and that’s why it’s important for us to create a culture of inclusion and equitable support around parental leave.
"When we were looking to revise our parental leave policy, promoting diversity and inclusion, which is reflective of our workplace culture, was top of mind,” says Monica Illiopoulos, Senior Total Rewards Manager at Vena. “We wanted to take a gender-neutral approach and factor in family diversity, realizing that all parents, whether birthing or not, should equally be entitled to paid time off. We also asked our current and exiting employees what mattered to them and made adjustments based on what they told us.”
Some of this feedback was received through company surveys. Others provided feedback during exit surveys, while others offered their experiences upon return from parental leave.
As a result of this direct feedback, we identified a need to improve the inclusivity for all family structures in our programming so that regardless of how a dependent comes into your life, (e.g through birth, adoption, surrogacy, etc.), all Vena parents are able to enjoy the flexibility needed in our program. Our employees also told us that more education and resources were needed to support parents upon their return to work and that more options to decide when and how they return to work would be beneficial.
In order to best support new parents and to continue honoring the needs of working parents, we were driven to make enhancements to our Parental Leave Program which put inclusivity, equity and flexibility front and center in our policy.
Vena’s New Parental Leave Program
We’ve taken action on all the feedback we received and have made the following changes to our Parental Leave Policy at Vena:
Top-Up Program:
- Our Top-Up Program applies to ALL parents equally, whether birthing or not, regardless of gender
- All parents receive 20 weeks of top-up pay at 80% of salary
- Alternative: 10 paid Parental Days if not participating in top-up pay
The choice to opt-in for:
- Gradual return to work flexibility
- Leveraging accrued vacation days before/after leave
- Staying in touch on Vena updates while on leave
Resources for Parents:
- What To Expect Guide: resources by country; details on leave planning
- Family Essentials Spend: monetary gift from Vena
- Wellness Spending Account for dependant-related expenses
- Headspace App for parents/dependents
- Access to an internal Vena Parents Slack community
Regardless of how our employees are choosing to grow their families, we remain committed to supporting them in creating a career and family strategy—with paid leave, flexibility and job security—that works for them.
Did you know? Vena was named one of Canada’s 2022 Top Small and Medium Employers? And last year, Vena won Comparably Awards for Best Company Culture, Best Company for Diversity, Best Company for Women, Best CEO and more. For the full list of Comparably awards Vena won in 2021, click here.
Come Grow With Us
Vena is hiring. We are a hybrid remote-office workplace with offices in Toronto, Canada and London, United Kingdom. Visit our newly launched Careers site for current job openings and to learn more about life at Vena.