Changing Eligibility Requirement for GitLab's Parental Leave Policy

Why is this change being made?

We have discussed in Slack the option to remove the 6-month eligibility requirement for GitLab's Parental Leave and have it available to all team members on the date of hire as long as their child was either born or adopted while they were employed at GitLab. This change would be specific to GitLab's Parental leave policy, as some countries have their own statutory policies with their own tenure requirements.

From a recruiting perspective, this policy change will make it more appealing to candidates and give them peace of mind that they will be able to utilize the full 16-week benefit from the moment they join GitLab rather than only being able to take a small portion and then needing to return to work. Because eligibility exceptions were already being requested, by removing this requirement exceptions will no longer be needed and this policy will be much easier to scale as GitLab continues to grow.

Author Checklist

• Provided a concise title for this Merge Request (MR)
• Added a description to this MR explaining the reasons for the proposed change, per say why, not just what
  • Copy/paste the Slack conversation to document it for later, or upload screenshots. Verify that no confidential data is added.
• Assign reviewers for this MR to the correct Directly Responsible Individual/s (DRI)
  • If the DRI for the page/s being updated isn’t immediately clear, then assign it to one of the people listed in the Maintained by section on the page being edited
  • If your manager does not have merge rights, please ask someone to merge it AFTER it has been approved by your manager in #mr-buddies
• If the changes affect team members, or warrant an announcement in another way, please consider posting an update in #whats-happening-at-gitlab linking to this MR

Sample message for the whats-happening-at-gitlab Slack channel:

Hello! I have a very exciting update to announce regarding GitLab’s Parental Leave policy! In a continued effort to support our team members on their journey through parenthood, we have removed the 6-month eligibility requirement for GitLab’s Parental Leave policy.
Effective immediately, team members (regardless of gender identity) who become parents through either birth or adoption, while employed at GitLab, will now be eligible for the full 16-week Parental Leave benefit on day one of employment! Team members can find all the details related to our Parental Leave policy here or can reach out to #people-connect or leaves@gitlab.com with any questions.

---