Arizona's paid parental leave pilot program is saving the state money, HR director says

A few years ago, Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs decided to make the state government more “family friendly.” That meant a few things, including launching a paid parental leave pilot program, so employees who have or adopt a child can take paid time off to do it.

It was a revolutionary idea for Arizona, where there are no paid parental leave laws. The only law on the books here is the federal Family and Medical Leave Act, which requires employers to give new parents 12 weeks of unpaid leave. The key there is unpaid.

Nationwide, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 27% of civilian workers had access to paid family leave in 2023. It’s slightly higher among state and local government workers, at 28%. So most women use sick and vacation time when they have kids.

That’s familiar territory for Nicole Sornsin, Arizona’s statewide human resources director. She was the force behind this pilot program for the state’s roughly 35,000 workers. The Show spoke with her more about how it’s going two years in.

Full conversation

NICOLE SORNSIN: Well, it’s going really well. So the reason that we started out as a pilot program is we didn’t really know what the data would show. And something that we do at Arizona is we measure what we do, and we measure the success because we want to be good stewards of taxpayer dollars. So we had, as of Nov. 30, 2025, 2,557 employees have used paid parental leave, which is really pretty exciting, right.

Interestingly, the average use is only 11 weeks. So people make the decisions that work for their family. And the data that we’re most, is that 97% of our employees who took paid parental leave are returning to work. And that’s the impact that we hope to get is these are folks that maybe would have left the industry, would have left their careers and taken time off to be with their family, and they feel that they can still come back to the state and serve the state.

LAUREN GILGER: Wow. So that’s a big change, I’m sure, from what you might have seen before with no leave enacted.

Do you have data on how many is fathers versus mothers? I’m always interested in that and whether or not men take you up on this.

SORNSIN: So we don’t have data per se on the demographics, but we know that fathers are taking us up on this, and that’s certainly a message that we have been sending to our state employees that this is not just a mom paid parental leave. So we had some great stories from some of our fathers that took it, that talked about how it really gave them an opportunity to help those first few days.

If I could share one, one state employee shared with me that they were able to take intermittent leave for several months after his daughter was born. He said he was thrilled to have the opportunity to bond with his baby girl and support his wife with the care and the nurturing. They come back as better employees, more loyal employees, and they’re staying with the state.

GILGER: So this is not that many places in the country that offer a program like this, even for state employees. There are more coming online. I think it’s like 13 places around the country that maybe do this. I wonder why you think that is.

Like, usually you’ll hear cost brought up. People will say, “We can’t spend state taxpayer dollars on this kind of thing.” How much did it cost? Do you have numbers on that?

SORNSIN: So we don’t have numbers on the actual cost. We tried to crunch sort of an expectation of what that coverage might look like for employees that had to backfill. But by and large, this is a cost that agencies have been able to sort of adjust for in their staffing needs.

And when we look at it, we think about the cost savings.

So with 97% of our employees that use this program coming back to work at the state, that represents a number where you’re not having to lose that employee, lose the service that they’re providing while you recruit for another employee and then train another employee. And all of that represents a potential gap in service to the state of Arizona.

So far, it seems like there is a cost savings here. Because as a state HR director, I know intimately how expensive it is to constantly be recruiting and the cost of that turnover. And that’s what we’re trying to do, is reduce that turnover and keep the top talent in the state.

Amber Victoria Singer

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GILGER: I know you have some personal experience here. I do, too. We’ve both had children without leave, right? And you had kids, it sounds like before this policy came into place.

SORNSIN: Yes, I did. I’m a mom of two. I have a 4- and 6-year-old, and I was not able to take advantage of this program. I jokingly say that I briefly considered growing my family to take advantage of this program.

But when I was tasked with the opportunity to try to develop a program like this and make something more family friendly for the state of Arizona, I really used my personal experience and the barriers that I felt as a new mom to ensure that we were fixing some of those things.

So I had already mentioned that we were only able to roll over 240 hours, which I think is six weeks of leave. When I was pregnant with my first child, I’d been at the state for a few years. I had known that I was gonna grow my family, so I saved up those hours as much as I could.

I didn’t take those vacations and things like that. And at the end of the day, I still only had six weeks that I could take, right? I had some sick leave, but there were limitations on what is considered sick when you just had a new baby. So when you get out of the hospital, sure, you’re recovering, but not all the way up to 12 weeks.

And so I knew that was a barrier and I was frustrated. I expressed my frustration at that program. And so I had to come back, I think at about seven weeks. And it was a tough time. Looking back at the sick leave expansion and the limitation of the 40 hours. My daughter was sick when she was first born, and so it’s important to be able to have that flexibility.

It’s not just giving birth. It’s some of those challenges that can happen health-wise with a young boy or girl. So that was something that I really thought about. And then it’s been nice now that I’ve been here for, oh gosh, at the state I think almost eight years. It’s like I’ve finally saved up enough annual leave to be able to have those vacations because I was saving them and using all of my time off for pregnancy.

GILGER: Man, have I been there. How long will this remain a pilot program? It’s just a pilot program right now. Nothing’s been officially adopted. What’s next?

SORNSIN: So yeah, I can’t speak to what other changes may happen in the future, but the data is really positive. So we are transitioning into that phase of analyzing the data, looking towards, you know, are there any changes that we need to make that kind of thing. So far nothing comes to mind, to be honest.

It’s been wildly successful. We haven’t gotten negative feedback from our agencies that are out there dealing with having to cover for folks that are on leave. As a matter of fact, we’ve had a lot of positive feedback when it comes to decreasing turnover and keeping that top talent at the state.

GILGER: It’s interesting. Let me ask you lastly, I guess, a broad question. We’ve seen other states trying to do something like this. This is just for state employees. It’s not like a mandate for private employers to do this and does not exist federally.

I wonder why you think there seems to be a little bit of a changing of the tide here: some states like Arizona trying to make these changes within its own power, within its own government.

SORNSIN: You know, I’m not sure I can answer that question. We just know what works here for us. And there’s certainly a lot of fear when you come up with a new program like this. You don’t really know what the costs are going to be. You can look at the number of hours and times it by the salary, but that doesn’t give the true cost because it doesn’t take into account the cost savings in not having to hire in this and that.

So we have seen other states trying to get on board when they see Arizona’s doing it and they’re doing it successfully. You know, we did our own research as well before we did this program and saw that there are some local governments in Arizona that are getting on board, some more generous than others.

But you know, I think just to say someone has to do it, and they have to show that it’s successful to erase some of that fear of our other governments.