Audrey Gelman and Lauren Kassan, cofounders of the women’s work and community space The Wing, announced that they are implementing a new policy to treat employees fairly by providing benefits to all team members. Their decision to give medical benefits, a living wage and stock options to both part-time and full-time employees is uncommon — even for large corporations with bigger budgets and more resources.
A majority of companies only give benefits such as parental leave, paid sick leave, health insurance and family leave to salaried employees. An hourly employee would not be able to take time off to be with her newborn baby, recover from an illness or injury or care for a sick family member without fearing that she will lose her income and, possibly, her job.
The Wing’s new staffing model will make a majority of their employees full-time, and they will extend benefits to the remaining part-time employees so that the entire team has access to healthcare and livable wages. “As a growing employer with a majority female workforce, our goal is to provide sustainable, safe, good-paying jobs with benefits to our community of dedicated employees, and as a mission-driven company, it’s only right that our internal policies are reflective of that and the kind of world we to live in,” Gelman and Kassan wrote in an email announcing the policy to their team.
The Wing isn’t the only female-founded company to equalize employee benefits. Rent The Runway’s cofounder and CEO Jennifer Hyman recently wrote a New York Times opinion piece about her decision to give salaried employees and hourly employees the same benefits, citing statistics including that only 14 percent of civilian workers in the United States have access to paid family leave; one in every four new mothers go back to work 10 days after giving birth and that people who earn more than $75,000 a year are twice as likely to get paid leave as people who make less than $30,000.
Hyman realized that Rent The Runway’s corporate employees — who often come from privileged backgrounds — have access to “safety nets” that hourly employees do not and that “these missing safety nets contribute to unemployment and limit social mobility.” She shared a story about a woman at a Rent The Runway warehouse who asked if she could use the new paid family sick leave plan to take care of her daughter, who was scheduled to have a C-section. “Before that, she had been planning to simply quit her job, without ever telling us why,” Hyman wrote.
Like The Wing’s cofounders, Hyman hopes that the new policies inspire other organizations to offer benefits to all of their employees. “I want Rent The Runway to be an example of what a modern workplace should be — a leader in creating a more human workplace, where the heart is just as important as the head, and where we show that we care about each and every member of our team equally,” she wrote.
These female founders are paving the way for workplace equality for their own employees and, in doing so, will inspire corporations of all sizes to treat all employees fairly. As NYC Deputy Mayor for Housing and Economic Development Alicia Glen said of The Wing’s new policy: “This is what happens when you put women in charge.”
