Dive Brief:

• Swedish furniture retailer Ikea’s U.S. unit said Tuesday that it’s expanding its parental leave policy to include salaried and hourly workers, effective New Year’s Day.

• The policy will provide up to four months of paid parental leave to new mothers and fathers, including adoptive and foster parents.

• Ikea is also introducing a sabbatical program for workers without children, allowing them to take time off for “personal and professional growth and development.”

Dive Insight:

Ikea's leave packages vary according to hours worked and how long workers have been with the company: Those who’ve worked there for more than one year can take up to three months of paid leave and receive 100% of their base wage for the first six weeks and 50% for an additional six weeks. Those with three or more years' tenure can take up to four months of paid leave, receiving 100% of their base wage for the first eight weeks and 50% for an additional eight weeks. That’s in addition to the six to eight weeks of short term disability available to all workers regardless of tenure, the company said.

The new policy still doesn’t approach the even more expansive parental leave packages at Ikea’s European operations, but like Ikea’s minimum wage calculator, it's generous by U.S. standards. 

"At Ikea, we believe time with family and friends is so important for a healthy work-life balance and a happy and productive workforce," Ikea U.S. President Lars Petersson said in a statement. "This benefit, which applies to all parents, will give our co-workers the opportunity to spend more time with their families when welcoming a child. Our co-workers are our most important resource, which is why we continue to invest in helping them reach their dream."

Ikea's approach is even more notable given that hourly workers in the U.S. in particular are often unlikely to receive such benefits, despite a trend at many companies to expand paid leave for longer periods, to include adoptions and to accommodate new dads — benefits normally reserved for salaried workers in professional positions.

In all, just 13% of U.S. workers enjoy paid family leave, according to 2014 data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics cited by Fortune magazine, which noted that while 21% of the highest quartile of workers enjoy the benefit, just 5% of workers in the lowest quartile do.

Moves like Ikea’s reflect an economy that is finally seeing employment and wages rise and solidify. In addition to those pressures, retailers like Ikea, Costco, and Amazon that view their workers as an investment rather than a cost to be minimized are most likely to beat minimum wage and benefits requirements, experts say. Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher and retail expert Zeynep Ton, who studied Costco, Trader Joe’s, QuikTrip (a U.S. chain of convenience stores with gas stations) and Mercadona (Spain’s largest supermarket chain), says those chains enjoy “high productivity, great customer service, healthy growth, and excellent returns to their investors.”