Breaking down employee benefits at top companies

Mary Childs, Co-Host of NPR’s Planet Money, joins Yahoo Finance Live to break down the importance of understanding you employee benefits and which companies provide some of the best benefits in the country.

Video transcript

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JULIE HYMAN: Well, it looks like employees and potential employees are in the driver's seat in this job market. We've talked a lot about this trend. But do they have all the information they need when they're looking for a job? Because as we know, pay is only one slice of that picture.

We are joined now by Mary Childs. She is the co-host of NPR's "Planet Money" and also the co-author of a new report on quartz.com that looks at benefits among financial firms. And Mary, I want to start out by-- you talked about on Twitter how you came to do this report in the first place. And I actually want to start there because I think it's really important, the sort of context for why you decided to look into this data. So if you don't mind, tell us sort of how this report came about.

MARY CHILDS: Sure. It was quite a journey. So I basically had dinner with some friends two and 1/2, almost three years ago. And, you know, four women having dinner, talking about, you know, a lot of them were considering having a baby.

And they all worked in finance. I'm a journalist. I kind of, you know, cover finance. But the three women that I was having dinner with, none of them could quite parse what their benefits policies were. They couldn't figure out what their parental leave policies would be.

So one of them-- literally, the only copy of the benefits was in, like, a physical binder in a desk drawer in the HR person's, like, area that you had to, like, rummage through their stuff to find out. And they didn't really have a policy for someone like her, who was considering surrogacy. And then another one ended up having to kind of bilaterally negotiate her leave with her boss. I think she was the second person in her firm's 30- or 40-year history to take maternity leave, which, like, I personally object to saying maternity. I have a whole thing that I can evangelize about later.

But basically, they just were discussing the degree to which they have no clue what they were offered. And finding out was really difficult. And so that, to me, was just like, wait, why do we-- why is this so hard? Aren't we supposed to think about benefits as this competitive advantage? Isn't this supposed to be a way that we attract and retain talent as, you know, this, like, very wealthy industry in a very wealthy country?

And yet if you bring it up in your nego-- you only find out, like, late stage in the negotiations for a new job, when you've, you know, probably are-- you're, like, really close to already signing, and you're like, oh, by the way, like, do you mind letting me know what kind of parental leave you have? And then you've, like, flagged everyone that you might have a baby, which people love.

So it just becomes this whole, like, snarl of difficulty. And I just kind of thought, like, why don't we have this transparency? Why isn't this on, like, Glass Door or something? And then I decided, somewhat cavalierly, that I would just go apply that transparency myself. Like, I'm a journalist. I could just go ask.

And that was far more work than I expected. But we ended up canvassing 101 different financial firms, just trying to ask for their policies. And we got 32 responses, which was far higher than I expected at first, frankly.

Like, at first, I thought I would get a lot. And then as I started getting, like, all this weird friction from the PR people that represent these firms, they're like, wait, why? Why do you need this information? How is it gonna be used? There are regulatory reasons why we can't. There are compliance reasons why we can't.

And I'd be like, what are those reasons? They'd be like, sorry, I misspoke. It doesn't seem-- I mean, there are regional differences for sure.

JULIE HYMAN: They just didn't want to tell you. That was the reason.

MARY CHILDS: They didn't want to tell me.

BRIAN SOZZI: They were like, go away, Mary.

JULIE HYMAN: Well--

MARY CHILDS: Exactly.

JULIE HYMAN: Well, no, I mean, that, to me, is so fascinating because you see stories all the time. You know, there was a story last week. Goldman Sachs is gonna raise the pay for junior bankers. They have no problem with that stuff getting out there, right? So--

MARY CHILDS: Right.

JULIE HYMAN: --that is fascinating to me. And I actually-- I mean, you were surprised at how many responses you get. But I was actually kind of surprised at how few companies responded to you, that they weren't willing to be more transparent about this. I mean, to me, does it read tone deaf in this environment, where, like, it's really hard to find people, and they are saying to you very loud and clearly that this stuff is important to them?

MARY CHILDS: Completely. And I think you're exactly right. Like, you know, it was such a dental appointment getting all this data from the firms. Like, they would not-- you know, I had to be on calls with, like, hundreds of different PR people trying to just, like, handhold to get the data.

And once we started to get it, you know, you'll see in the types of firms that did end up disclosing-- like, Point72 was one of the ones that was very happy that-- you know, Steve Cohen's firm-- and they say that they compete with tech firms. And so, you know, you look kind of across the way at technology firms that have, like, ping pong in the office or whatever, and they are accustomed, to some extent, to, like, touting their benefits. But it's always the silly stuff, like beanbag chairs or something. And you're like, no, I want to know if my medical premia are covered.

BRIAN SOZZI: And Mary, historically, there's been a lot of focus on Bridgewater's culture, Ray Dalio principles. Clearly, he runs the shop like a different type of company. What did you find here from a Bridgewater perspective?

MARY CHILDS: Bridgewater's were actually very compelling. They have a policy where you have to take 15 days of vacation per year, which, like, as a person who compulsively does not take vacation-- you know, I'm not a role model here-- like, absolutely would love for someone to force me to take vacation. And that's obviously increasingly critical as we as a society talk about burnout. And everyone working from home has blurred the boundaries of work and the rest of their lives.

They also have a policy where they have six Bridgewater-wide holidays, and they are attached to weekends. So what ends up happening is-- like, in normal cultures, if you take a vacation, your team might suffer. You might come back to the office and everyone's like, oh, thank God you're here. We couldn't do XYZ, we needed you, and so you're kind of on vacation, like, checking your email, making sure no one's in pain because you went on vacation.

These six Bridgewater-wide holidays mean that you end up not hurting your team. Everyone is off. So no one's gonna be like, oh, that guy, he's on vacation. So I feel like that's actually-- like, you know, for all the interesting Bridgewater culture-- and, like, I should note that I'm not-- I can't speak to how these are implemented.

You know, they mandate the 15-day vacation policy. But otherwise, it gets very hard to say, oh, you know, XYZ firm has fantastic parental leave. Like, do people actually take it? I don't know. And to report that out would be, like, incredibly difficult to the point of probably impossible. But I did-- I was kind of pleasantly surprised by what Bridgewater offered for sure.

JULIE HYMAN: Well, and then there's the question of if, when you're not on vacation, are you working an 80-hour week, right?

MARY CHILDS: Right.

JULIE HYMAN: That, I guess, is the other part of the equation. I am curious what you found on-- let's call it parental leave, right--

MARY CHILDS: Thank you very much.

JULIE HYMAN: --on that front. And not just traditional parental leave, but you also dug into things like adoption and surrogacy. What did you find on that front?

MARY CHILDS: Yeah, it varied pretty widely. I think firms are kind of waking up-- you know, one of the things that I found really interesting was the language that people use. I mentioned that I evangelize about saying parental leave instead of maternity versus paternity, because if we stop making that delineation, we are gonna, A, close off this like huge liability where, you know, if you specify your policy by gender, I just don't understand why you would do that, because, like, you're just opening yourself up for a lawsuit, in my view. You know, JPMorgan literally had a big settlement a couple of years ago over a primary versus secondary caregiver.

So I think the language that firms use is definitely, you know, in flux right now. People are trying to figure out-- HR is clearly trying to figure out across that board what the right terminology is to use and what the right policies are. But some of the firms-- you know, Goldman and UBS, I can highlight, have gender-neutral and kind of caregiver status-neutral leave policies, which is to say if you are the primary parent or the secondary parent-- which, you know, we can dig into that another day-- you get the amount of leave. You get 20 weeks off.

And that is, I think, so-- you know, I just had a baby, and it was absolutely bananas to me that, you know, my husband is self-employed, so he was able to work with me and help me with the baby. And I was like-- you know, at week, like, 18, I was like, wait, some people don't get this? Like, are you kidding me?

So, you know-- not to be the kind of person who thinks that this should happen for everyone because I just experienced it, but also, I did just experience it and it was super cute. And I think the migration in the-- I think we're making really good headway, societally, on parental leave. You know, the financial firms do lead the way in a lot of respects on that one. And we've seen really massive progress in the past three to five years.

JULIE HYMAN: We have. And as someone who has a lot more distance between myself and my own parental leave, I still feel very strongly that this is something--

MARY CHILDS: Yeah.

JULIE HYMAN: --short of all of us moving to Scandinavia, that American companies-- and frankly, the American government-- really need to get-- they really need to get on board with this. Mary, it's an awesome story, and everyone should go check it out on QZ.com.

It's great to catch up with you, Mary Childs, NPR "Planet Money" co-host. Thank you so much.