Caliper’s  SVP of HR, Margie McLaughlin, and I had a wonderful experience last week which I‘d like to share with you. We were invited to join a panel at the Ford Foundation in New York City that dealt with Paid Family Leave. My role was to present the business side of the issue while Margie spoke about Caliper’s experience in offering paid Family Leave even before it became part of New Jersey law. She shared that over the past 5 years at Caliper we’ve had 22 employees take advantage of our Paid Family Leave program, with all but 2 coming back after taking leave.

I’ve had many discussions on this subject with business owners who have tended to oppose paid family leave because of “perceived” costs. As the founder and CEO of a 50+ year-old business, I like to point out that while there are certainly some costs, the value far outweighs them.

Companies that offer a Paid Family Leave program show their commitment to work-life balance. That is a major incentive for both new and existing employees. So when employers think about costs, one of the first things they should consider is the enormous cost of replacing current top performers who decide that without paid leave there just isn’t much incentive to commit to coming back to work. Ultimately, they could spend money on searching for new people, going through the whole hiring process, awaiting the new employee’s learning curve—and hope they’ve made the right decision—or they could spend some money for paid leave and experience the enormous cost savings from retaining that top talent.

To me, offering a Paid Family Leave program is an additional arrow in our quiver. It is a clearly advantageous program for business that I hope more of my colleagues embrace in order to help shape our civic laws so they are good for the people, good for their companies and good for their communities.

by Herb Greengerg, Caliper Founder & CEO