Guide Points To Family Friendly Firms

Child care, flexible work hours and maternity and paternity leaves are family friendly benefits that gladden the hearts of working parents.

Particularly working mothers.

That’s why Working Mother magazine - which compiles Working Mother 100, a list of companies that try to create a level playing field for their female employees - always factors into its ranking the benefits that really make a difference in a woman’s ability to have a family and also to advance in her career.

Milton Moskowitz, a business journalist, has compiled Working Mother 100 for 11 years. He is co-author of “The 100 Best Companies to Work For” (Doubleday, $12.95) and is very clear about the role “family friendly benefits” play in his evaluation and selection of the best of the best.

I think he’s right on target with his emphasis on benefits, which is right up there with equal pay and opportunities to advance.

In addition to giving credit for two of the most important family benefits of child care and flexible hours (the latter, he says, is showing a sharp upswing and companies are training management and employees in how to use it to the benefit of both), he awards high points to companies that offer financial aid for adoption; paid paternity leave for new fathers; and extended and paid maternity leaves for new mothers.

Corporations are being held to a higher and expanding standard of exactly what it is they should be doing to acknowledge the presence and importance of employed parents on their staffs.

One way of looking at it is pragmatic: Their employees’ children are their companies’ future consumers and should be cherished, adored and indulged, according to the best standards of interpersonal customer relations.

As I survey the national scene and workplaces crowded with employed parents, I see more and more being asked of business owners. And I think that is the way to go. Parents are doing all they can to survive, and family friendly businesses, it has been shown, have stronger bottom lines because of decreased turnover and increased productivity.

Employers may soon find that the federal government is going to help them qualify for Working Mother’s prestigious list - regardless if they want to be on it.

President Clinton, who signed into law the precedent-setting Family and Medical Leave Act, made a campaign promise to urge Congress to pass legislation that grants qualified workers 24 unpaid hours a year to do routine but important family tasks - such things as attending your child’s dance recital or taking your elderly parent for gum surgery.

The awareness and activity of so many U.S. corporations and the pro-active proposals of the federal government in the area of work and family issues are all excellent signs that family friendly benefits are a national concern.

As it turns out, it probably takes not just a village but an entire nation to raise a child.

And that is why, in addition to current benefits and federal proposals now on the table, I would like to add my own work and family benefits, paid and unpaid, that will make a real difference in the lives of the nation’s 23,195,000 employed mothers - benefits no one else so far has mentioned:

One day of paid leave to spend with the company’s CEO and explain to him what it’s like to have a full-time family and a full-time job. It should include lunch at your child’s school cafeteria. Your treat.

Two days of unpaid leave to go to a health spa to get your body and mind in shape for the other 11 months, three weeks and five days of the year (six if it’s a leap year). Your company should pay all expenses involved, particularly anything involving a sensory deprivation tank, which is the exact opposite from what your daily life is like.

Three days of paid leave to think carefully and quietly about your professional future and to devise your five-year career plan. (Mine is to get through tomorrow.)

Four days of paid leave to work on organizing your local Parent Teachers Association or Parents Group (for communities that think the PTA is too radical) to make sure working parents are represented at all levels of the organization and that the next time a note goes out to bake brownies for a class party, it is addressed to both Dear Mothers and Dear Fathers.

Five days of unpaid leave to figure out what other benefits are needed to raise a family and at the same time level the playing field.

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