Flexible hours. On-site day care centers. Telecommuting. Job sharing. The workplace has gradually become more sensitive to the needs of working parents, but only a few companies make work-life balance a top priority.
Every year, Working Mother magazine praises such companies with its annual list of “100 Best Companies for Working Mothers.” This year, nine Chicago-area companies made the list, and they offer a snapshot of the creative ways a workplace can be more family-friendly.
Northern Trust offers an on-site camp for children ages 6 to 12 during the winter holidays; Bank One and Household International offer free annual mammograms to female employees and male employees’ wives.
But not every employee can take advantage of these companies’ progressive policies. Some benefits–such as telecommuting or child care–are not available to all workers. Flextime technically might be available but in reality frowned upon by a workaholic boss. And women combining work and motherhood have to be prepared to make sacrifices in both their career and home life.
Take Alice McCaslin, a senior financial analyst at Abbott Laboratories, based in North Chicago. The single, adoptive mother of two girls, ages 8 and 5, took six weeks of paid leave when she brought her first daughter home and five weeks with her second, and has enrolled her younger child in Abbott’s on-site child-care center.
McCaslin works a compressed work week–four 9 hour days–so she can have Mondays off with her children. The schedule is fine for her job, she says, “as long as the work gets done.” During busy times, that can mean working at home long after her daughters go to bed. But she is willing to put in those hours if it means having one extra day with her kids.
“Abbott understands that employees have a life,” she says. “Our families are important–that’s what makes us whole.”
Among Abbott’s programs that make it attractive to working parents: the largest on-site child-care center in Illinois, according to Abbott, with 430 children currently enrolled); sick-child care and school holiday programs; even an annual informational fair for summer camps. Forty percent of Abbott’s employees take advantage of some kind of flexible schedule, be it a compressed work week, flextime or telecommuting.
“We want to attract the best and brightest talent, so we focus heavily on understanding our employees’ needs,” says Sharon Larkin, the divisional vice president for programs and business integration.
Big pluses for mothers
Flexible schedules are a huge plus for working mothers. At Allstate Insurance, 70 percent of workers take advantage of flexible hours, according to employee surveys.
“When an employee is in an environment where they feel supported, they are more likely to stay,” says Lilly Eng, the company’s director of diversity and worklife. “Today’s work force is looking for more than just a job.”
Allstate’s on-site child-care center seemed like a godsend for Eva Buenzow. When she was three months pregnant, the Allstate financial analyst put her name on a waiting list for child-care at the company’s Northbrook headquarters. Nothing had opened up by the time her baby was born, so she had to make other arrangements. Now, her son is 10 months old, and she still hasn’t received a call from the center.
Buenzow says that although she couldn’t get space in the on-site center, Allstate helped refer her to other child-care options near her home. Now, she says, even if there was an opening at work, she probably wouldn’t take it.
“I’m happy where he is now,” she says. “I like the teachers.” It’s a 45-minute commute from her home in Hoffman Estates to her office, and “I don’t like him being in the car that long.”
Progressive policies can definitely attract workers.
The number of resumes submitted to Abbott doubled after the company first appeared on the Working Mother list two years ago, Larkin says.
But no matter how much a company touts its generous benefits, working parents should be aware that those benefits aren’t necessarily available to everyone. That’s why Working Mother recently changed its methodology; rather than simply stating that a company offers flextime, the magazine now asks each company to supply actual usage rates.
Flextime does not lend itself to certain jobs; people working in a customer-service call center or at a front reception desk can’t all leave early. Employees at the top of the organizational chart may be expected to put in extra hours, but lower-paid clerical workers don’t have the power to negotiate customized schedules.
Managers should lead the way
Larkin says that while Abbott works to meet employees’ needs, the company must also “maintain the business objectives for their jobs.”
As Eng points out, flextime means nothing if managers don’t take advantage of it themselves.
“If the leaders are role models, the employees are encouraged,” Eng says. If the boss stays late every Friday, employees will feel pressure to do the same.
Still, all the companies that made the Working Mother list are making a genuine effort to support employees who are balancing work and family. Such benefits are still lacking in many U.S. workplaces. Every company that made the Working Mother list offers some kind of flextime; only 55 percent of companies nationwide give their workers flexible schedules, according to information provided to Working Mother by the Society for Human Resource Management. Almost all of the Working Mother companies offer either on-site child-care or referral services, versus 18 percent of companies nationwide, according to the society.
“We are laggards compared with the rest of the world,” says Ellen Bravo, national director of 9to5, National Association of Working Women. “Even far poorer countries in the developing world have national child care and family leave systems in place.”
That’s why she and other activists are working to make such benefits a matter of national policy.
“Every study I’ve seen shows that family-friendly policies are good for the bottom line,” she says. “But our society gains as well.”
Best companies in our area
These Chicago-area companies made Working Mother magazine’s list of 100 Best Companies for Working Mothers:
Abbott Laboratories (North Chicago)
Allstate Insurance Co. (Northbrook)
Bank One Corp. (Chicago)
Household International (Prospect Heights)
Kraft Foods (Northfield)
LaSalle Bank (Chicago)
Northern Trust (Chicago)
Northwestern Memorial Healthcare (Chicago)
Zurich North America (Schaumburg)
–Elizabeth Blackwell
