Leaving, But Not Left Behind

Many companies are creating new programs to help retain employees who temporarily drop out of the workforce—namely new moms.

By Teri Cettina

It used to be just the “enlightened” company that offered on-site child care or telecommuting options. Nowadays, however, the stakes are much higher. Companies that want to be competitive offer workers a wide range of work/life benefits.

Your child is sick during a work deadline? One quick call and a company-sponsored nanny will show up at your home. Working late and too tired to cook? Pick up a quick takeout dinner from the company cafeteria. Worried about finding a new stable for your purebred horses when your company asks you to relocate (oh, to have such problems!)? That’s not a problem if your firm offers pet-relocation services.

All of these benefits were designed with the best of intentions: to support employees as they attempt to balance their personal lives with demanding careers. But as useful as benefits like these have been—both for companies and their employees—sometimes they’re not enough.

For one thing, some employees aren’t interested in benefits that help them split their lives in two equally demanding pieces. In addition, some careers don’t easily lend themselves to anything other than laser-focused intensity. In those jobs, work/life balance can be extremely challenging.

The result: A good number of highly skilled workers—particularly mothers with young children—are apparently saying “no thanks” to telecommuting, flextime and company-sponsored childcare. Instead, they’re leaving the workforce entirely.

While U.S. Census statistics indicate that 59 percent of new moms were returning to work in 1999, just 55 percent were doing so in 2000. Although it might not sound like a big difference, this is the most significant decline in the percentage of working mothers since the census began tracking this statistic in 1976. In addition, 22 percent of women with professional degrees (MBAs, MDs, JDs) were not participating in the labor force in 2000.

Are these workers leaving for good, or just for awhile? No one is entirely sure. However, a number of corporations—concerned about losing these highly skilled workers—are now attempting to reach out to the “leavers.” By developing programs that might eventually bring these employees back into the job-fold, companies hope to slow the brain drain of talented working moms and plug critical holes in their retention programs.

Reasons to Stay
Earlier this year, a group of private-sector companies launched a special, two-year task-force study to deal with this growing issue, entitled The Hidden Brain Drain: Women and Minorities as Unrealized Assets. The team of representatives from 16 companies and law firms is chaired by Carolyn Buck Luce, a partner in the Global Accounts Group at the professional services firm of Ernst & Young; Cornel West, University Professor of Religion at Princeton University; and Sylvia Ann Hewlett, founding president of the nonprofit Center for Work-Life Policy.

Task force members will spend the next two years brainstorming long-term strategies for retaining and promoting female and minority employees. “We intend moving beyond the ‘one-size-fits all’ model and explore the nuances that require more fine-tuned approaches across industries and sectors,” says Luce, the task force’s co-chair. Specifically, the group intends to share best practices from a variety of industries and develop new policies and practices to stem the so-called brain drain. These senior executives have also committed to taking new ideas back to their own companies.

The task force spent a full day at its inaugural meeting in February talking about retention and “on-ramps”: methods of encouraging workers to re-enter the work force after long absences. “What we know already is that we have created this career highway with all kinds of off-ramps, or exits. It’s easy for employees to leave their jobs,” says Hewlett. “However, we haven’t created very many on-ramps—ways for professionals to get back into the workforce when they’re ready. We definitely need to work on that.”

Full article text available upon request.

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