All the ways Netflix is paring costs and perks, from parental leave to corporate merch

Non-English shows on Netflix accounted for a third of its views in the year’s first half.

The tech industry’s war on perks seems to have switched to its newest channel: Netflix.

The media and entertainment giant is reportedly trying to rein in some of its employee perks, including its parental leave policy, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.

The company is trying to discourage employees from using the unlimited time off it gave parents for a year following the birth or adoption of a child, the Journal reported, citing internal communications and interviews with current and former employees.

“We did not plan for employees to use 1-year as the starting point for evaluating how much time away they needed for bonding and care, nor did we assume that employees would view this as a 1-year-leave,” one HR official wrote to managers, according to the Journal, which said that Netflix has been trying to curb usage of the full year of leave since 2018.

Among employees, taking more than 6 months of parental leave is now “widely understood to be an unwise career move,” the Journal reported. A Netflix spokesperson told the Journal that over the last four years, US employees at the company averaged 6.3 months of parental leave, and employees outside the country averaged 7.5 months.

A Netflix spokesperson told B-17 in a statement, “Employees have the freedom, flexibility and responsibility to determine what is best for them and their family. Our parental leave policy has always been to ‘take care of your child and yourself.'” Sergio Ezama, Netflix’s chief talent officer, said the company has “not pulled back” on its parental leave policy.

The company has also implemented a limit of $300 in company swag such as coffee mugs or sweatshirts per year that each employee can order, the Journal reported.

Meanwhile, the streamer has asked managers to tighten the purse strings on compensation. It previously let them pay above market rates to attract and retain talent; now, managers are asked to ensure salaries stay within 50% to 95% of employees’ peers, per the Journal, citing emails.

Netflix updated its well-know culture memo in June, removing the “freedom and responsibility” section and adding one called “People Over Process” which spoke of hiring “unusually responsible people” who thrive on openness and freedom.

Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said at The Wall Street Journal’s Tech Live conference in October that he received pushback for changing the memo.

“We are constantly working on improving the culture,” he said. “And so when anyone says, ‘Hey, the culture is changing.’ Yes, of course it needs to. We definitely change the culture. We wanted to reflect how we work, not dictate how we work.”

He said that the company had fewer than 300 employees when he and Netflix cofounder Reed Hastings wrote the memo. While the initial memo was “perfectly suited” for the company’s size at the time, the revised version “actually reflects much more today our 14,000 employee business culture,” he said.

The changes signal a culture shift at the streamer as it contends with pressure from Wall Street and other challenges. The company has recovered from shedding subscribers for the first time in a decade in 2022, but in recent years has cracked down on password-sharing to boost its subscription numbers.

Netflix isn’t the only company reining in perks. As a focus on efficiency sweeps the tech industry, spurring mass layoffs and cost-cutting initiatives, other companies are cracking down. Meta recently fired some employees who misused its $25 Grubhub meal perk. Google told staff last year it was reducing café hours on campus and shifting fitness class offerings and shuttle schedules based on usage.