Colonial Life’s parent company, Unum, has been recognized as one of America’s Best Employers for Women by Forbes. The ranking is based on an independent survey from a sample of 60,000 U.S. employees, including 40,000 women.

Employee benefits leader Unum scored particularly high for its pay equity, family support, and parental leave policies, and diversity among top executives and board members. Unum employs 1,400 at its Colonial Life headquarters in Columbia.

“Our commitment to inclusion starts at the top,” said Liz Ahmed, executive vice president of people and communications at Unum. “Supporting and advancing women in the workplace is a critical part of our larger focus on inclusion and creating a world-class workplace for our 10,000 employees.”

Unum has a Women’s Professional Network employee resource group dedicated to increasing the richness of opportunities for women and nurturing a gender-intelligent culture. Last year, the company introduced six weeks of paid parental leave for all new parents. Additional resources for new moms include flexible working policies, lactation rooms at each of offices, free Milk Stork services for mothers traveling for business, a simplified tool to help new moms plan for maternity leave called LeaveLogic, and a Working Moms network.

Unum was previously recognized by the Bloomberg Gender Equality Index for efforts to advance women in the workplace, and the Women’s Forum of New York and the 2020 Women on Boards organization for female representation on the corporate board.

As part of the Forbes study, companies across 24 industries employing at least 1,000 people in their U.S. operations were evaluated, and the 300 hundred employers receiving the highest scores were added to the 2019 ranking. To see the full ranking and learn more about the methodology, visit www.forbes.com/best-employers-women.