Top Companies For Working Moms

Managers at Texas Instruments will soon begin taking a class on making decisions based not only on business needs but on workers' needs.

The effort is part of a growing realization by corporate America that to be family-friendly, a company can't just set up programs on paper and wait for employees to sign up.

Reflecting this growing shift, Working Mother magazine has changed the way it compiles its annual list, published Tuesday in its October issue, of the best 100 companies for working moms.

For the first time, the magazine has considered whether companies give work-life training to managers and whether managers' pay is linked to their effectiveness in dealing with such issues. The magazine also gave closer scrutiny to whether work-family programs are well-used, in addition to considering usual criteria such as pay, child-care benefits and flexibility.

"We're digging a little more deeply to try and get at the culture, and how they're addressing these issues," said the magazine's deputy editor, Deborah Wilburn. "You have to look hard at whether this is a Band-Aid approach or a public relations effort."

Computer-chip maker Texas Instruments, which is also revising a seminar on flexible work arrangements to emphasize how to make them succeed, won a spot on the prestigious list.

The magazine does not rank the Top 100, but lists 10 companies as exceptionally progressive. They were Citicorp/Citibank; Glaxo Wellcome Inc.; IBM; Johnson & Johnson; Eli Lilly; MBNA America; Merck & Co.; NationsBank; SAS Institute and Xerox.

The changes in the magazine's annual list come as growing attention is being paid to the gaps between the widespread corporate rhetoric given to work-family concerns and the actual help offered to workers.

"A lot of companies are instituting programs," said Betty Purkey, work-life manager at Dallas-based Texas Instruments. "Just doing that doesn't make a whole lot of difference."

A landmark study published this summer by the non-profit Families and Work Institute found that nearly 40 percent of human resource representatives said their company didn't make a "real and ongoing" effort to tell employees of available work-family programs.

Further, only 44 percent of companies hold supervisors accountable for sensitivity to employees' work-family needs, the Institute found.

At the same time, research has revealed that a flexible work environment, allowing employees the autonomy to balance their home and work lives, leads to greater productivity and employee loyalty.

Yet building a truly flexible or family-friendly work environment usually means changing corporate culture, which has traditionally focused on rewarding face-time rather than productivity.

Even if programs for job-sharing exist, for example, workers are often reluctant to sign up because they worry that their boss will be mad or their career wll be hurt if they do so. Often, their worries are well-founded; even progressive companies have close-minded managers.

"You can have all these programs, but if employees don't feel safe, nobody will step forward and use them," said Joan Crockett, senior vice president of human resources at Northbrook, Ill.-based Allstate Insurance, also named to this year's list.

To tell managers that Allstate is serious about being family-friendly, the company gives all new managers three days of training on how to foster a supportive work environment.

Allstate managers' merit raises are also partly based on employee surveys that since last year have included a question on whether managers promote a family-friendly atmosphere.

At DuPont Co., the chemical giant based in Wilmington, Del., managers are evaluated on whether they support work-life goals, and some departmental managers must take a mandatory course on using flexibility as a business tool.

Drugmaker Hoffmann-La Roche, based in Nutley, N.J., holds decision-makers accountable for helping women advance by identifying talent. It then goes one step further, holding the executives accountable for ensuring that the women progress. Executives must report quarterly on their efforts.

"Programs are interesting but what works is holding people accountable," said Stephen Grossman, vice president of human resources. "You get what you measure."

Written by Maggie Jackson