Welcome to the Transform Awards Winner Spotlight Series, celebrating innovation and leadership in reshaping industries and workplaces globally. These awards commend individuals and companies at the forefront of transformation, setting new standards and challenging the status quo. Recognized for their people-centric and visionary approaches, our awardees are the global changemakers pioneering advancements in business, entrepreneurship, and beyond. This series shines a light on their achievements and the impactful ways they’re moving the world of work forward.
About Transform Wellness Advocate: Well-being Program of the Year Award
This award recognizes the company that takes the most holistic approach to supporting individual and family mental, physical, and financial well-being.
About Our Transform Awards Winner Datadog
Datadog is the monitoring and security platform for cloud applications. Our SaaS product is used by organizations of all sizes across a wide range of industries to enable digital transformation, cloud migration, and infrastructure monitoring of our customers’ entire technology stack, allowing for seamless collaboration and problem-solving among Dev, Ops and Security teams globally.
Initiative Background
Q: What is a brief description of Datadog’s award-winning Wellness Program initiative?
A: Datadog’s employee well-being program strives to provide resources and benefits that support well-being; however, that looks for individual employees. We believe Datadogs should have the support they need to maintain work/life balance, grow personally and professionally, and save for their future. We offer a range of industry-leading benefits that are aimed at strengthening the health, well-being, and financial wellness of our employees and their dependents.
Over the last few years, we’ve innovated and adapted our family planning and support benefits to proactively represent the changing landscape of what family means today. To encourage an inclusive environment for parents and caregivers, we no longer utilize the terms maternity and paternity leave but rather have an overarching parental leave program as part of our family benefits, which gives birthing parents up to 16 weeks of paid leave and non-birthing parents up to 12 weeks. We want both birthing and non-birthing parents to have the same opportunities to experience the joy of growing and supporting a new family and encourage employees to explore family planning at a time that feels right to them. We partner with Maven Clinic to provide employees access to a wide network (30+ specialties) of midwives, OBGYNs, lactation consultants, back-to-work support, and more.
Employees are also eligible for up to $10,000 annually in Fertility Reimbursement and Adoption Assistance and $3,000 annually towards a reproductive care wallet. To support child care costs, we offer Dependent Care FSA benefits and $2,000 annually to assist with child care. We lovingly call the children of our Datadog employees “pups,” and our Parents channel is one of the most joyous Slack channels we have internally, where this community of caregivers and parents alike can come together to share advice, resources, support, and all the adorable photos of their “pups.”
Q: How does this initiative impact workplaces, team cultures, or communities?
A: We strive to create a diverse and inclusive workplace at Datadog where employees feel supported professionally and personally. We recognize that family planning can be a joy and a challenge for many people across our global communities. We’ll never fully understand what another person is experiencing or going through, so we aim to support all Datadogs across our communities to explore family planning and childcare options privately through our benefits program.
Yes, we’re engineers, salespeople, recruiters, and leaders, but many of us are also moms or dads when we walk into the doors of our homes. As an organization, we’re here to support Mom and Dad as much as we are those engineers, salespeople, recruiters, and leaders. Within our Datadog offices, we have “wellness rooms” for new mothers to be able to pump in peace during an in-office workday, and we also support a hybrid work culture, with employees coming in 3 days a week to be able to create a work-life balance that best fits their needs. We want to encourage more women representation across our global workplaces, and that starts by creating a workplace and culture that supports the families we’re all working so hard in our careers to support in return.
Initiative Journey
Q: What inspired the creation of your Wellness Program initiative?
A: At Datadog, we never want employees to feel that they have to choose between growing a career and a family, so we’ve built a strong program of family benefits to support the many parents and caregivers who work across our global organization.
Our benefits package is driven by the feedback shared by employees in our annual workplace benefits survey and bi-annual employee engagement survey. A few years back, we recognized from these surveys that we wanted to implement stronger programs to support employees facing challenges in growing their families and those facing the economic impact of the rising cost of child care. We also noted a need for better mental health support when the world entered a global pandemic.
Today, we offer ten free therapy sessions annually to employees and their dependents through our partner, SpringHealth. Additionally, a favorite benefit of our employees is the pet adoption stipend, which allows employees to grow their family in other ways by adopting a furry friend into their home at a discounted price.
Q: How does this Wellness Program initiative align with your company’s mission and vision?
A: Breaking down silos is in our DNA, and that extends to the systemic silos that have historically limited underrepresented communities from accessing the tech industry. We want to remove barriers and give equal opportunity to women and men to grow a successful career while simultaneously growing a family.
Impact and Benefits
Q: Who benefits from your Wellness Program initiative, and in what ways?
A: Every employee at Datadog globally benefits from our wellness programs. From parents to caregivers, early career employees to senior leaders, we strive to build programs and offer benefits that support employees at every stage of their careers and life. We want employees to feel they belong within Datadog and are a direct contributor to the company’s mission and impact while offering financial support to enjoy the life they work so hard to live. We offer a 401k match towards retirement. Additionally, we make every employee an owner by granting them stock upon hire, and also offer an Employee Stock Purchase Plan for employees to have the opportunity to make additional investments in the organization’s success.
Q: Can you share examples of the positive impacts your Wellness Program initiative has made on your company/employees/candidates/customers?
A: One of Datadog’s most loved benefits is our pet adoption assistance program, which many employees take part in to adopt a furry family member into their homes. Marketing Team Lead Riley S. took part in the program upon joining Datadog during the COVID pandemic, when life looked very different for many employees within the company. She shared: “Living in the city in isolation proved to be incredibly trying for my mental and physical wellbeing. I’d joined Datadog right before the world shut down those first months of 2020 and had barely had the opportunity to meet coworkers in my new workplace. Adjusting to a new role, in a new company, in a new apartment following a difficult end to a relationship, I felt lost amidst the isolation. Knowing that Datadog offered a pet adoption stipend, I took advantage of the program and adopted a rescue pup with the benefit. While owning a puppy proved to be much more of a challenge than I ever expected, my new dog, Bear, also brought immense joy. Having a dog to this day forces me to take care of my mental and physical health by stepping away from my laptop even during the busiest of work days to take Bear out for a walk. Or even those moments after a tough call or bad day (because we all have them), having a dog, or any animal, there to provide that unconditional love, support, and plenty of cuddles is such a comfort. Animals bring so much happiness into a home, and I’m forever grateful I took advantage of that pet adoption stipend to adopt my furry family member. Now she’s almost 4, and cuter than ever when she makes appearances on my Zoom calls, bringing that same joy and happiness to my coworkers.”
Advice and Reflections
Q: What advice would you give to other companies looking to create similar positive change with a Wellness Program?
A: Don’t assume you know what your employees want or need from their well-being and benefits program. Ask them in focus groups or surveys for direct feedback so that you can build a program that employees are proud of and feel positively supported by.
Reflection and Vision
Q: Describe a memorable moment or achievement during this Wellness Program initiative that your company is particularly proud of.
A: We continue to explore ways to expand Datadog’s inclusive benefits offerings, working in partnership with our dedicated Community Guilds (our internal ERGs) to find opportunities to support employees better. This year, we’re proud to have launched two new well-being benefits to support our LGBTQ+ and Veterans communities. We now offer employees up to $10,000 in Gender Affirming Care. Designed to support gender-affirming therapy and procedures, this program covers various expenses for various eligible products and services. Additionally, our U.S. Military Leave & Pay Differential Benefit Policy supports those who serve in the armed forces. Datadog provides employees who are members of the United States uniformed services with a pay differential for up to 8 weeks when they are called to active duty or mandatory training.
Check out our other Transform Spotlights on the blog to learn more about our Global Ambassadors. People-First Leaders, Authors, Award Winners, and more!