If you have a baby while under the employment of Activision Blizzard, you get a $1,500 high tech crib that lulls babies to sleep with gently rocking and keeps them safe by swaddling. According to Milt Ezzard, the company’s VP of global benefits, “the end result is, on average, babies sleep two hours more per night and parents get two more hours of sleep per night.” Sounds like a great idea, and part of the reason the company feels able to experiment with such benefits is the general standard of healthcare in the US.
New parents at Acti-Blizz get Happiest Baby’s SNOO Smart Sleeper for six months – roughly the time it takes newborns to outgrow the bassinet for a proper crib – in a sort of loan from the company. Ezzard says “It costs me a few dollars a day to rent it, but we get this value that when the employee comes back, they’re a happier employee.”
Parent benefits even go so far as to give moms travelling for business breast milk storage and delivery services, in addition to lactation rooms and support. The company further offers tech tools to help manage diabetes and other chronic illnesses.
In terms of more traditional benefits, Ezzard tells Employee Benefit News that Activision Blizzard moved to eight weeks of paid time off for new parents several years ago, and offers the same eight week period for bereavement leave – whether that’s to spend time with a terminally ill family member or in the case of a sudden accident.
Given the current standards of employer benefits in the U.S., Ezzard says any good solution is a step up. “When we see an opportunity to jump into an efficient solution, [we take it]. The bar is so low in our healthcare ecosystem right now that anything we do is going to be a win.”