Kristin Wardwell faced the dilemma millions of working women have faced through the years.

She believed she’d landed a great job with a great company—Coeur d’Alene-based marketing agency JEBCommerce LLC—but she and her husband wanted to start a family, and she worried about potential loss of income that might occur if they needed extended parental leave time.

Company CEO and co-founder Jamie Birch allayed the Wardwells’ fears when he announced in June the company was expanding its parental leave policy to three months of paid leave at 100 percent of an employee’s current pay with full medical benefits.

Additionally, Birch made the policy retroactive to the beginning of this year, thereby making Wardwell eligible to take advantage of the leave policy.

 “The biggest feeling we had was extreme relief,” says Kristin Wardwell, an affiliate manager with JEBCommerce.

In July, Spokane-based intellectual property law firm Lee & Hayes PLLC announced a new policy granting female attorneys and staff up to three months of paid leave in an effort to “cater to each family’s unique caregiver situation.”

Under the policy, both men and women attorneys will receive up to six weeks of paid leave as primary caregivers and two weeks as secondary caregivers following the birth or adoption of a child.

“Our goal is to create an engaged and inspired workforce,” says Shelby Ness, COO at Lee & Hayes.

Nicole Tedrow, chief legal counsel for Spokane-based Associated Industries, says JEBCommerce’s and Lee & Hayes’ expanded leave policies are part of a larger recent effort by employers to recruit and retain workforce talent.

“The trend right now is toward flexibility in the workplace,” Tedrow says. “For instance, a lot of our members will employ summer hours and allow their workers to go home early on Friday, before 5 o’clock.”

She adds, “In our own workplace, during the summer, we have every other Friday off. What professional employers are discovering is that if you let workers live their lives, they’ll be happier and more productive.”

Associated Industries represents about 1,000 businesses in the Inland Northwest, serving as a resource for members’ human resources and legal departments.

Associated Industries doesn’t statistically track leave and benefit policies for its members, but Tedrow says the 116-year-old organizations has a strong feel for trends among its member base.

She says the average employee roster of its members is 50 to 75 workers.

In January, overriding a mayoral veto, the Spokane City Council passed an ordinance requiring employers to provide employees earned sick and safe leave. The city joins an increasing number of local jurisdictions and states that mandate such paid leave.

Spokane’s ESSL law takes effect Jan. 1 and applies to nearly all private employers, including nonprofits in the city of Spokane that employ at least one worker within the city. Employees are entitled to accrue leave from the first day of employment.

“Bigger companies have more flexible options, especially in regards to parental leave policies,” Tedrow says.

However, she says  she doesn’t know of any other company here the size of JEBCommerce, with just under 30 employees, that offers three months off and paid leave for its employees.

Wardwell, 27, says she also worried about “losing her place in line” at the company where she has been employed for two years.

Birch says Wardwell’s workload will be divided among her peers with the expectation that she will return to her existing accounts. The Wardwells are expecting a daughter just before Christmas.

JEBCommerce is a 12-year-old marketing agency with a full-service digital marketing team that specializes in helping its clients build sales and develop new leads to increase revenue, says Birch, who co-founded the company with his wife, Sarah Birch.

JEBCommerce, located at 610 W. Hubbard in Coeur d’Alene, has a client roster that includes New York-based upscale grocer Dean & DeLuca and Seattle-based Zulily Inc., which specializes in daily online deals targeting mothers.

JEBCommerce operates out of 8,000 square feet and is in the process of adding another 1,500 to accommodate growth. Part of that new space is a designated area for nursing mothers, Birch says.

He says more than half of JEBCommerce’s employees are women, but the company’s parental leave policy applies to both men and women.

JEBCommerce has two sets of married couples working for it. Under the terms of the policy, those couples aren’t allowed to take leave at the same time, Birch says.

Until implementing its plan in June, “We never had a formal leave policy written down to be completely honest,” Birch says.

Up until then, employees were given six weeks paid leave, informally, before returning to work after the birth of a child.

In addition to the three months of paid leave, employees can opt to take an additional three months of leave at 25 percent of the worker’s current pay.

Says Birch, “I see people go back to work before they or their children are ready. Women too often work with the fear of losing their place on the ladder and getting left behind. I don’t want them to leave the company and start over with another company.”

Birch says about a year ago, he approached the company’s chief financial officer and asked what it would cost to give an employee an entire year off with paid leave.

From there they began working on a plan that Birch says ended up resulting in a “best-case scenario” for employees and the company, he says.

Birch declines to reveal JEBCommerce’s annual revenues.

At Lee & Hayes, Ness and law firm president Richard Denneny say the expanded leave was part of a progression of expanded programs the firm had been extending to employees for more than a year.

Based in Spokane, Lee & Hayes is a 150-person firm employing 87 attorneys and patent agents in Seattle; Portland; Atlanta; Austin, Texas; Rochester, N.Y.; and Washington, D.C.

“It started when we asked, ‘How do we invest in our employees to help them be better people? If we can help them be better people, then they will become better workers,” Denneny says.

Lee & Hayes encouraged employees to become more engaged in its wellness program. With the use of Fitbit trackers, employee initiatives and competitions were established to get employees more involved in physical activity.

After that effort gained traction, the expanded leave policy came next.

“We looked at federal and state law as a baseline and sought to get more aggressive from there,” Denneny says. “We’re fortunate, we have the financial wherewithal that allows us to go beyond what is customary leave time.”

The firm’s leave policy is available to the primary caregiver for attorneys and staff, Denneny says.

Attorneys have greater flexibility on the use of leave time as they work on billable hours.

“They can define how they re-enter the workforce,” Ness says.

Denneny and Ness say the firm looked at several Bay Area law firms to help craft their own leave policies.

Tedrow says Associated Industries supports individual companies being the ones to craft their own leave polices.

“One size just can’t fit all. Leave policies vary greatly by industry. We see more flexibility in the office place compared to manual labor and industry,” she says.