Treating Workers Fairly at Rent the Runway by @Jenn_RTR @RenttheRunway @nytimes #makerbusiness
Opinion | Treating Workers Fairly at Rent the Runway – The New York Times. Co-founder and CEO Jennifer Hyman from Rent the Runway explains decision to roll out equal benefits to all employees and calls on fellow leaders to follow suit – fixing this inequity benefits people, companies, and society as a whole.
I am ashamed to say that until recently I was part of the majority: I am the chief executive of a company that gave different benefits to different groups of employees.
Like so many companies before us, my company, Rent the Runway, had two tiers of workers. Our salaried employees — who typically came from relatively privileged, educated backgrounds — were given generous parental leave, paid sick leave and the flexibility to work from home, or even abroad. Our hourly employees, working in Rent the Runway’s warehouse, on the customer service team and in our retail stores, had to face life events like caring for a newborn, grieving after the death of a family member or taking care of a critically ill loved one without this same level of benefits.
I had inadvertently created classes of employees — and by doing so, had done my part to contribute to America’s inequality problem.
Adafruit has the same great benefit plan, health care, dental, vision, for every employee (low deductible), does not have temp/part-time employees, same great 401k for everyone (with matching), holidays, paid holidays, transit benefits, paid time off for charity, paid family leave, we recently added a mother’s room, we do not do “accrued time off only” (work x hours, only get x hours off) – folks get time off when they start and more. All the folks who lead the company started an entry level positions and trained up, grew to the role(s). There’s more we want to do, and will, we’ll keep trying to make Adafruit the best place to work together.
Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards
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I saw her on Bloomberg the other day, such an inspiration.