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Tipping the Balance Toward Life + FamilyLeading Law Firm Fulbright & Jaworski Offers Family-Friendly Dependent Care Backup Benefit to its EmployeesStory by Molly Davis
Every working parent has faced it: a deadline at the office, an important meeting with a client, when your child wakes up sick, unable to go to school and unwelcome at daycare. Or your elderly relative suffers a health crisis.
For employees of the international law firm Fulbright & Jaworski LLP, the solution is the firm’s new benefit program that affords 80 hours a year of in-home or center-based care to relatives of its U.S.-based employees.
So, if your stay-at-home spouse has special needs or is sick and requires help caring for the children, someone will be provided in-home. If your mother in Manhattan needs post-surgery care, a caregiver can be with her in New York. The idea is, if unavoidable work demands keep you from caring for your relative or dependent, wherever they live, you can get help.
“It’s the psychological benefit that’s the real key to this, knowing that there’s someone to help you when you get in this position,” says Marcy Greer, a partner in Fulbright’s Austin office and chair of the six-member committee responsible for bringing the benefit to the firm’s approximately 2,000 U.S.-based employees.
Greer knows firsthand the stresses of having to work when your family requires special care or your primary care system breaks down. With two daughters, ages 14 and 9, she remembers working from home and struggling with maintaining professional credibility while being the attentive mom her girls needed. “You feel really caught between,” she says. “We wanted to provide something that would make people feel that the firm really supported them. We’ve always talked about work-life balance because it’s a part of our firm’s culture, but this is something we’re doing to facilitate it.”
The program was conceived a few years ago when Greer discovered that Mom’s Best Friend (MBF), her Texas based nanny service for years, also provided emergency in-home care for mildly sick children. Remembering her own frustrations, Greer thought everyone in the firm could benefit. She wasn’t surprised when lawyers and staff, both women and men, understood the problem and looked forward to a solution.
MBF put Greer in touch with Work Options Group in Superior, CO, when it realized the firm wanted to offer backup childcare nationwide. Work Options is the provider of the program for Fulbright, and with its expanded network of licensed and bonded service-providers throughout the United States and Canada, it introduced Greer and the committee to possibilities beyond emergency in-home care for sick children – possibilities including in-home and center-based elder and domestic partner care, non-emergency care, and around-the-clock care – all with geographic flexibility.
Heather Hope, PR manager for Work Options, says the program has been available for about five years, and Fulbright is now one of over 100 U.S. companies who have it. And Work Options is continuously expanding its network she says. With Fulbright’s new backup care benefit, it’s difficult to imagine a situation that’s not covered. Parents can schedule either in-home or center-based supervision of their children over spring break. A new parent can work from home while a caregiver provides help. Even a nursing mother can take her infant along on a business trip to Tucson where a caregiver would be provided while mom works.
At the same time, Greer emphasizes that employees aren’t to feel that they should work simply because backup is available. She explains, “If your loved one is really, really sick, of course, you want to be there. But if it’s the second day of an ear infection…or if chicken pox knocks them out for a week, you have the option.”
Rose Mary Garza, Fulbright’s accounting manager in Austin, has already put the program to use. Her five-year-old son, Joshua, woke up with a mild fever when Garza’s mom, her daycare backup, was vacationing abroad. Garza arranged for a nanny and avoided missing three days of work. Because of the program and the quality of care Joshua received, Garza was given “peace of mind,” she says. Garza is also happy with what she paid, just over $100 total.
That’s another reason the program’s so valuable: After receiving services, the employee pays Work Options a co-pay of $2 per hour for center-based care and $4 for in-home; astonishingly, the $4 in-home fee covers three dependents irrespective of age. Compared to the hourly rates and emergency or off-hour premiums of traditional backup care, these rates are a huge savings to employees.
As for the cost to the company, Hope says cost varies depending on a variety of factors, but a typical company with 1,000 employees scattered throughout the country pays $30,000 annually to receive 80 hours of backup care for each employee. She adds that the company actually saves money because of reduced absenteeism and increased productivity, not to mention enhanced recruitment and retention.
For Greer, who’s expecting her third child and whose mother in Houston may soon need help, Fulbright & Jaworski’s new dependent care backup program is a benefit she’s glad to have and expects to use this year. She understands the productivity argument but says, “The impetus was job satisfaction. It’s more about just people being happy and feeling like they’ve got support. You can’t put a price tag on that.”
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