• Starbucks is expanding its paid parental leave policy for baristas, the latest change under its new CEO.
• It'll offer up to 18 weeks of paid parental leave for birth parents and 12 weeks for nonbirth parents.
• However, baristas will reportedly get smaller raises this year due to the company's performance.

Starbucks is giving baristas up to three times the paid parental leave they previously had access to.

Starting in March, the coffeehouse giant said it will offer up to 18 weeks of paid leave for birth parents and up to 12 weeks for nonbirth parents.

The expanded benefit applies to US store employees averaging at least 20 hours of work a week. In general, Starbucks' parental leave policy applies to parents welcoming children by birth, foster placement, or adoption.

The company currently offers US store employees 6 weeks of paid parental leave and up to 12 weeks unpaid.

"Our benefit was already the best in retail, but after hearing from some partners who shared the leave as new parents wasn't adequate, we reviewed the program and have decided we're making a change," the chain's new CEO, Brian Niccol, wrote in his announcement Monday.

The expansion is the latest change amid Starbucks' turnaround effort under Niccol, who took over in September after leading Chipotle, which offers its workers up to 12 weeks of paid parental leave. Starbucks retail employees trying to unionize at various stores across the country have named increased parental leave as one of their requests.

Starbucks Workers United said its union partners had put forth a bargaining proposal seeking to double parental leave. "We are proud of this victory for all baristas," Starbucks Workers United partner Michelle Eisen said in a statement.

It's been a tough year for the chain, which saw sales decline in multiple quarters. In its fiscal fourth quarter, the company reported its steepest quarterly sales drop in four years.

On the heels of the company's disappointing quarterly reports, baristas will reportedly get smaller raises this year compared to last and many corporate employees will only get 60% of their bonuses, Bloomberg recently reported. Starbucks did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Shortly after becoming CEO, Niccol, whose pay package includes up to $113 million in total compensation, wrote an open letter about his plan to improve the business.

"A visit to Starbucks is about connection and joy, and of course great coffee. Many of our customers still experience this magic every day, but in some places — especially in the U.S. — we aren't always delivering," he wrote. "It can feel transactional, menus can feel overwhelming, product is inconsistent, the wait too long or the handoff too hectic. These moments are opportunities for us to do better."

• Netflix is reportedly reining in some of the generous employee perks it's known for.
• This includes its parental leave policy, salaries, and even merch, the Wall Street Journal reports.
• The changes signal a culture shift at a firm that's grown considerably and faces investor pressure.

The tech industry's war on perks seems to have switched to its newest channel: Netflix.

The media and entertainment giant is reportedly trying to rein in some of its employee perks, including its parental leave policy, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.

The company is trying to discourage employees from using the unlimited time off it gave parents for a year following the birth or adoption of a child, the Journal reported, citing internal communications and interviews with current and former employees.

"We did not plan for employees to use 1-year as the starting point for evaluating how much time away they needed for bonding and care, nor did we assume that employees would view this as a 1-year-leave," one HR official wrote to managers, according to the Journal, which said that Netflix has been trying to curb usage of the full year of leave since 2018.

Among employees, taking more than 6 months of parental leave is now "widely understood to be an unwise career move," the Journal reported. A Netflix spokesperson told the Journal that over the last four years, US employees at the company averaged 6.3 months of parental leave, and employees outside the country averaged 7.5 months.

A Netflix spokesperson told BI in a statement, "Employees have the freedom, flexibility and responsibility to determine what is best for them and their family. Our parental leave policy has always been to 'take care of your child and yourself.'" Sergio Ezama, Netflix's chief talent officer, said the company has "not pulled back" on its parental leave policy.

The company has also implemented a limit of $300 in company swag such as coffee mugs or sweatshirts per year that each employee can order, the Journal reported.

Meanwhile, the streamer has asked managers to tighten the purse strings on compensation. It previously let them pay above market rates to attract and retain talent; now, managers are asked to ensure salaries stay within 50% to 95% of employees' peers, per the Journal, citing emails.

Netflix updated its well-know culture memo in June, removing the "freedom and responsibility" section and adding one called "People Over Process" which spoke of hiring "unusually responsible people" who thrive on openness and freedom.

Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said at The Wall Street Journal's Tech Live conference in October that he received pushback for changing the memo.

"We are constantly working on improving the culture," he said. "And so when anyone says, 'Hey, the culture is changing.' Yes, of course it needs to. We definitely change the culture. We wanted to reflect how we work, not dictate how we work."

He said that the company had fewer than 300 employees when he and Netflix cofounder Reed Hastings wrote the memo. While the initial memo was "perfectly suited" for the company's size at the time, the revised version "actually reflects much more today our 14,000 employee business culture," he said.

The changes signal a culture shift at the streamer as it contends with pressure from Wall Street and other challenges. The company has recovered from shedding subscribers for the first time in a decade in 2022, but in recent years has cracked down on password-sharing to boost its subscription numbers.

Netflix isn't the only company reining in perks. As a focus on efficiency sweeps the tech industry, spurring mass layoffs and cost-cutting initiatives, other companies are cracking down. Meta recently fired some employees who misused its $25 Grubhub meal perk. Google told staff last year it was reducing café hours on campus and shifting fitness class offerings and shuttle schedules based on usage.

• An ex-Goldman Sachs banker has won a sex-discrimination case after being dismissed by the bank.
• He said he was unfairly treated when he said he was struggling to balance work and parenthood.
• A tribunal heard that one of Reeves' bosses repeatedly told him to "figure it out."

A former Goldman Sachs banker has won a sex-discrimination case after he was dismissed by the investment bank soon after returning from parental leave.

Jonathan Reeves, who was a vice president in the bank's compliance division in London, said he was unfairly dismissed shortly after returning to work in 2022.

The bank had said he was dismissed for performance reasons.

An employment tribunal ruled in Reeves' favor, saying Goldman Sachs subjected him "to sex discrimination when it alleged that he had performed worse than his peers, reduced his remuneration and dismissed" him.

Reeves told the tribunal that during a call in early 2020, he told his bosses he was finding it difficult to balance his childcare responsibilities for his first child with his job while working from home during COVID-19 lockdowns.

He told the tribunal he was repeatedly shouted at to "figure it out" by his superior Omar Beer.

The tribunal heard that another of his bosses, Tin Hsien Tan, said she had not heard this particular phrase being used but said: "I am sure it would have been more like, 'You're a grown man; you can sort this out.'"

"Mr. Beer appeared to be unwilling to acknowledge to the particular hardships or difficulties that some people, including those with very young children, might have experienced during COVID lockdowns," the judgment said.

Reeves also told the tribunal that Goldman Sachs bosses were "more empathic towards female employees in relation to childcare" than with men.

In late 2021, Reeves told his bosses that he and his wife were having a second child and that he planned to take six months of parental leave between November 2021 and May 2022. Before his leave began, Reeves said Beer told him that he was "jealous" and that he should "take advantage" of the leave.

He was dismissed soon after returning from this leave.

"There was no attempt by the Respondent to carry out any fair process before dismissing the Claimant," the tribunal said.

A spokesperson from Goldman Sachs told Business Insider: "The firm is deeply committed to supporting working parents, with hundreds of Goldman Sachs fathers having taken up our market leading 26 weeks paid parental leave since it was introduced in 2019. We are carefully reviewing the judgment and the reasoning supporting its findings."