Law Firm Offers Back-Up Care
Anytime, Anywhere, Any Family Member
BNA Human Resources Report - January 22, 2007
Family emergencies are inevitable--a spouse breaks a leg, an elderly parent has pneumonia, a child's school closes because of broken pipes--and employees are often faced with very difficult choices, miss work or let the family member suffer. The family members are usually going to win.
Beginning this month, employees at Fulbright & Jaworski, an international law firm, is joining the ranks of other multinational employers in offering emergency family care. Not only will the firm provide deeply discounted backup care, the benefit is available for any family member and anywhere in the country.
Even nursing mothers will be able to take their infants on business trips and know a nanny will be waiting in the destination city to take care of the baby while the mother works.
Beginning Jan. 2, all Fulbright & Jaworski employees will receive 80 hours annually of in-home or out-of-town backup care for children, spouses/partners, or parents. Fulbright is among the first law firms in the nation to offer such a benefit, according to Jane Williams, the firm's chief human resources officer.
Fulbright's 2,150 U.S. employees in 10 offices from coast to coast will have access to a network of 5,000 licensed in-home and center-based care providers, with about 25,000 individual caregivers, in all 50 states and Canada coordinated by Work Options Group in Denver, Cindy Carrillo, founder and president of Work Options Group, said.
The program offers benefits ranging from short-term in-home care for healthy children to care for an elderly parent living in another city. All employees participate in the program, from the mailroom to the boardroom, Williams, who is based at the firm's Houston office, told BNA. Every employee pays a $4 co-pay for in-home care of all kinds, and $2 for center-based care, Williams said. The benefit does not roll over from one year to the next and the hours must be used in minimum four-hour increments.
The program allows Fulbright's employees to take a break from the stress associated with long-term care for an ailing relative in the face of normal work demands. Additionally, the program fills the gap when a child is sick and a traditional daycare center will not accept them.
Fulbright partner Marcy Greer, who has two children, served on the internal committee that spent two years designing and implementing the program. "It's very important for lawyers, who work non-traditional hours, to know they can cover babysitting at a moment's notice," said Greer, who is based in the firm's Austin, Texas office. "If you have someone who depends on you, [this program] is there to help you accomplish that."
The backup care benefit is in addition to a number of other Fulbright family-friendly initiatives, including modified and flexible work schedules and mobile technology, including Blackberries and laptops. Since 2001, Fulbright has offered a more limited form of backup child care in a majority of its domestic offices.
"I think it will have a very big impact" on recruiting and retention, Williams said. She said a group of new attorneys who joined the firm early this year "were pretty much blown away" when they were told of the benefits package.
Despite the competitive advantage the benefits package may offer, Williams and Greer agreed the firm had instituted the program for philosophic rather than competitive reasons. "We all need help in juggling our lives and it's great when your employer can help you do this," Williams said.
Building the Business Case
Carrillo told BNA Jan. 16 that by providing such backup family care the employer can build loyalty, lower absenteeism, enhance retention and recruitment, and avoid the concrete costs of missed work. Work Options Group provides detailed reports that can, for example, track that an attorney was able to attend a deposition he or she would otherwise have had to cancel.
"For a reasonable investment, it can impact a huge percentage of the workforce," Carrillo said.
"Some people are calling this the hottest new benefit out there," Carrillo said. "A few years ago the hot button was sick-child care. Now it's any age, healthy or sick, anytime, anywhere."
Work Options Group is only one of such national networks. Carrillo said the industry is growing rapidly. Her company is currently at 50-55 employees and expects to double its staff this year. As for coverage, they already have providers in all 50 states, including Puerto Rico, and are expanding into Canada. "We have coverage in 85 percent of the ZIP codes," she said.
Utilization is also growing. Work Options Group provided a total of 120,000 hours of care in 2005 and that doubled to 240,000 hours in 2006 for approximately 500,000 covered lives, Carrillo said.
http://www.bna.com: Reproduced with permission from Human Resources Report, Vol. 25, No. 3, p. 81 (Jan. 22, 2007). Copyright 2007 by the Bureau of National Affairs, Inc. Free trials and subscription info: (800)-372-1033 or http://www.bna.com/products/hr