Adapting to Adoption

When Dana Hale adopted her son four years ago, she says she had to "play hardball" with her boss to get the same paid leave granted colleagues who give birth. The Washington employment lawyer knew then that if she and her self-employed husband adopted again, it would be under new management. So Hale began researching adoption-friendly workplaces, and soon focused on Capital One. The big financial-services company, headquartered in McLean, Va., offers $5,000 in assistance per adopted child, plus six weeks of paid leave. More important to Hale, the company fosters a supportive culture for adoptive parents, who network through a corporate intranet site. "I specifically chose Capital One so I could adopt more children," says Hale, 44, on the eve of a trip to Ukraine to bring home two teenage sisters.

Adoption has become an employment issue. Because more women delay parenthood to pursue careers during their prime childbearing years, some seek alternative avenues to build their families. With each adoption costing up to $30,000 and often demanding mounds of paperwork and weeks of travel, workers are asking their employers for help. They're getting it, mainly from companies in competitive industries hungry to attract and keep talent. Google, JPMorgan Chase, Abbott Laboratories, Avon and Motorola have all added adoption assistance to their buffet of benefits. In 1990, only 12% of 1,000 companies surveyed by Hewitt Associates offered financial assistance for adoption. By 2006, 45% of companies did. Rita Sorensen, executive director of the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption, estimates that in 2007 fully half of employers provide adoption benefits and that within five years those offerings will be considered standard.

Dave Thomas, founder of Wendy's, may have kicked off the trend 15 years ago when he began urging other CEOs to assist employees with adoption. Himself an adoptee, Thomas started his foundation to help find permanent homes for children in the U.S. foster-care system. (More than 140,000 currently await adoption, according to Sorensen.) This year the foundation began tracking corporations and ranking them according to the generosity of their benefits. Of companies that provide adoption assistance, it found that $4,700 is offered on average per adoption and about double that if a child has special needs or is from foster care. Companies are also giving workers an average of five weeks of paid parental leave.

Even as employers retreat from providing expensive benefits like lifetime health coverage, they are finding that adoption assistance is relatively inexpensive--and yields disproportionately high rewards in employee loyalty, community goodwill and solid-gold p.r. Unlike maternity benefits, adoption assistance isn't covered by medical or disability insurance, meaning the entire cost must come directly from an employer's pocket. Still, only 0.5% of employees tap adoption benefits, but the assistance is so appreciated that workers gush about it to colleagues, spreading the warm, fuzzy corporate feelings. "Not to cheapen it, but it's cost-effective goodwill," says Sorensen, "one that doesn't hit the bottom line very hard." Greg Rasin, a partner with Proskauer Rose who advises employers on benefits, points out that at the very least, the Families and Medical Leave Act compels employers with more than 50 workers to provide up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave. Legal bonus: offering adoption benefits might shield them from lawsuits by workers seeking parity with those who receive maternity leave.

Offering adoption assistance was an easy call for Steve Steinour, CEO of Citizens Financial Group and the father of two adopted children. "We knew from experience that for most Americans, adoption is an unaffordable option," he says. Citizens-- a bank based in Providence, R.I., with 25,000 employees--provides up to $21,000 in aid, a sum that helped put it at the top of the Dave Thomas Foundation's list of adoption-friendly workplaces. Though Steinour says retention is much greater among the 100 or so workers who have used the benefits, he admits that this impact is hard to quantify for shareholders. "You can't translate everything into a direct payback," he says.

Payback comes in the form of loyalty and gratitude from employees like Paula Cavallaro, a Citizens trust administrator. Already the parents of Amanda, 12, Cavallaro and her husband had "talked and talked" about adopting another child. The Cavallaros received $10,000 from Citizens to adopt Anny, 13, from Colombia last summer (employees receive more for special-needs adoptions). "We would still have done it, but having the benefit just made it so much easier," says Cavallaro, 48. "I will always, always, always be grateful for the help."

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• Capital:Washington D.C.
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