Google increases parental leaves for employees, offers more vacation time

Tech behemoth Google has ramped up wellbeing benefits for its full-time employees across the world in 2022, increasing parental leave to nearly six months and offering additional vacation time.

The Sundar Pichai-led search engine giant on Thursday announced that it has expanded parental leave to 18 weeks for all parents (previously 12 weeks) and 24 weeks for parents who give birth (previously 18 weeks), media reports said.

It will also let employees take up to eight weeks of caregiver leave, doubling its previous allowance, starting April 2.

Also, employees will now get a paid vacation time to a minimum of 20 days a year, up from 15, starting April 2.

In an emailed statement, Fiona Cicconi, Google's chief people officer, said that more than 40% of their employees are in the 'sandwich generation,' where they might find themselves both bringing up their children and caring for aging family members.

"We want to support our employees at every stage of their lives and that means providing extraordinary benefits, so they can spend more time with their new baby, look after a sick loved one or take care of their own wellbeing," Cicconi said. 

"Today, we're announcing increases to our global leave benefits to ensure that parents and caregivers have more time to spend with their families and loved ones, and to encourage all Googlers to take more time for themselves, too."