The American Feminist

The American Feminist, Summer 1996

A New Frontier: Family-Friendly Employee Benefits

Jane puts Sean down for his afternoon nap. She checks to make sure that two-year-old Lizzy is not toddling into trouble. Then she heads downstairs to her computer, where a stack of address changes and membership renewals need to be entered into the database.

Elizabeth works only in the evenings after her two little ones have retired for the night. Before she can use her publishing program to lay out The American Feminist, she must restore the start-up software she turned off to accommodate the children's computer games.

Welcome to FFLA's "virtual office." Much of FFLA's work on behalf of women and their unborn children is done by working parents who are fine-tuning the art of balancing paid and volunteer work with the needs of young children.

Fortunately for FFLA and parents like Jane and Elizabeth, technology has provided us with electronic mail and fax machines that enable parents to work from their homes as they "telecommute." Telecommuting is one of many family-friendly policies that are emerging in firms all over the country. Once unheard of in the corporate world, work-family programs such as telecommuting, flexible scheduling options, day-care subsidies, and referral services are gaining greater recognition. Yet such changes are coming slowly and many workplaces remain unresponsive to the needs of working parents.

Half of all mothers and two-thirds of all fathers in the United States are employed, which translates into more than twelve million children under the age of six. As any parent can tell you, there is no easy way to schedule life around the needs of a newborn or a toddler who is living up to the reputation of the terrible twos.

While women are most often the primary caretakers, recent studies show that men are also taking advantage of available work-family benefits. Health insurance giant Cigna Corporation reported that 41 percent of its male employees (compared with 52 percent of female employees) took advantage of at least one of the company's work-family benefits. One survey examining the effects of the Family and Medical Leave Act found that 42 percent of employees on leave from January 1994 through June 1995 were men.

Management is often unaware of the many benefits work-family initiatives provide to both employees and employers. Parents who are given more flexibility in their work scheduling are able to accommodate personal needs without disrupting work. Creating a day-care facility or subsidizing day care alleviates the anxiety of finding high-quality child care. Telecommuting allows parents to take care of their children while continuing to meet their work responsibilities. Many of these benefits cost little to implement, yet pay off in increased productivity, loyalty and higher morale.

At Merck & Company, a large pharmaceutical firm, the cost of replacing an employee is $50,000. To deter parents from leaving, Merck provides a generous six-month child-care leave with partial pay and benefits. For each employee who takes the full leave available, the cost to Merck is $38,000 - so this investment yields a net savings of $12,000. Merck also offers an on- site child-care center, child-care referral services, and a flex-time option that has yielded a 20 percent increase in productivity. Similarly, AT&T reported that the cost of providing new parents one year of leave was 32 percent of the employee's salary, compared with the 150 percent needed to replace the employee altogether.

The study most often cited as proof that on-site child-care facilities reduce employee absences was conducted in 1976 by social scientists Milkovich and Gomez. They compared the absentee rates of mothers with children in day care to the absentee rates of a matched sample. Comparisons were also made to a sample of employees who were not parents or whose children were not of day-care age. Milkovich and Gomez found significantly fewer absences among mothers with children in the facility.

Another study carried out in 1990 by Dalton and Mesch concluded that flex-time led to a significant decrease in employee absences.

More recently, Kossek and Wichol examined the impact of work-family programs on employee attitudes. In a 1992 study Kossek and Wichol compared employees with children in a company child-care facility and those on the waiting list. The study demonstrated that the employees using the center had more positive attitudes toward managing work and family. These positive attitudes created an environment conducive to good performance "by alleviating problems and allowing employees to focus on their jobs."