- Key insight: Discover how personalized, flexible benefits align employee well-being with cost efficiency across geographies.
- Expert quote: "Comprehensive, life‑stage benefits drive utilization and value," — Doniel Sutton, Pinterest CPO.
- Forward look: Prepare for expanded family, fertility, and PTO benefits shaping employer value propositions.
- Source: Bullets generated by AI with editorial review
Meeting the many needs of a global workforce while maximizing cost is not easy. Pinterest's mission to prioritize well-being, flexibility and inclusivity helps it make
"We strive to support our employees, both on a personal as well as professional level," says Doniel Sutton, Pinterest's chief people officer. "We have an incredibly diverse workforce at various stages of life, so we try to make sure our benefit offerings are comprehensive enough to support every employee, wherever they might be in their life journey."
This means providing the company's more than 5,000 employees, around 25% of whom work outside the U.S., with benefits that support their mental, physical and
"We're constantly looking for ways to be ahead of the curve from an industry perspective, while also optimizing cost and spend," she says. "We want to make sure the things we offer drive not only utilization, but value, and that we are receiving positive feedback from our employees that what we're offering is working."
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Benefits that set Pinterest apart
Flexibility
PinFlex is the company's flexible work model, which allows employees to pick whether they work from home, or come into one of its 24 global offices. Leaders are given the autonomy to decide when in-person meetings are essential to work outcomes, granting teams the ability to work virtually otherwise.
"The PinFlex program is probably the most highly-revered benefit," says Sutton. "The fact that we have maintained our commitment to flexible work, especially in an environment where a lot of companies are mandating return to office, allows us to attract wonderful talent from around the world."
Time off
Pinterest's PTO policies support what employees care about, as well as personal time when they need it most. Along with flexible vacation days, the company offers five paid volunteer days, an end-of-year break between Christmas and New Year's and a minimum of 20 weeks parental leave.
They also offer 20 days of bereavement leave, regardless of the relationship to the deceased — far more than the average 3 to 5 days, and sometimes the flexibility, provided elsewhere.
"In other companies, they've made distinctions between immediate family versus extended family; we've removed that qualifier — it's anyone who is of value to you." Sutton says. "When you think about the time we give people to care for a new child, but we don't offer much to grieve the loss of a life, there's tremendous imbalance. It's important to allow people time to grieve."
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Wellness
To support employees' mental well-being, Pinterest provides them and their families with access to free counseling services through Lyra Health. Workers also get a quarterly $150 wellness stipend that can be used for anything from professional training to yoga. Sutton emphasizes the importance of allowing people to choose how to invest in their wellness, and giving them multiple ways to meet the demands they face both at work and at home.
Starting in January, Pinterest will be offering access to fertility and family-building platform Maven to support women and families in areas like IVF, surrogacy and adoption and menopause.
"Because wellness is personal, benefits are personal," she says. "We don't know the challenges employees may face or the magnitude and the diversity of the needs that exist, therefore, giving people flexibility and choice really does matter, and it goes a long way."
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Communication and feedback
Outside of open enrollment, Sutton points to benefits-related onboarding, for which HR partners closely with the internal communications team, and the company's intranet as primary tools for benefits education, awareness and engagement.
A benefits survey, which the company recently made an annual effort, helps solicit feedback that keeps leaders up to speed on what employees are using and what they still need. Sutton notes that it's important to have strong benefit leaders who will hold vendors accountable for high-quality service, to welcome employee experiences using these vendors and to switch to a better-aligned alternative if necessary.
By keeping tabs on what matters to employees and actively working to be an employer of choice, benefit leaders can make informed decisions about what's most effective, Sutton says.
"I'm proud that we as an organization embrace offerings that we know speak to different phases of our employees," she says. "We are willing to be bold, ambitious and do things that make sense and speak to the individual."
Read more about benefits that leaders are excited about:
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