Though she enjoyed her job as a quality consultant for Hewlett-Packard, Shelley Comes, 47, was thinking seriously in 1995 about leaving it. Comes was concerned about her 74-year-old mother, who has a heart condition and diabetes and was living all alone on a remote farm five hours away. Then Comes learned that HP was offering telecommuting as an option to its employees. She told her boss she would like to give that elective a whirl. She struck a deal to work three weeks a month from the family farm in Garberville, Calif., and one week from her Mountain View office; then she relocated with her husband and daughter. It was, she confesses, the best idea she'd had in a long time.
"Working at home for me has been wonderful," says Comes, who has now been with the high-tech company for 18 years. "I know my mom is O.K., and this allows me to focus on doing my job better." Armed with a laptop PC, an all-in-one fax machine and printers, e-mail, conference-calling capacity and other gear, Comes is able to keep in touch with her colleagues and perform her job of developing and analyzing software from her home. It helps that she works for a computer company--her Hewlett-Packard equipment can be updated regularly with the latest features.
For Katherine Lechler, 35, a graphics designer for CMP Media's InformationWeek, a trade publication in Manhasset, N.Y., knowing that she can have lunch every day with her two children, Christopher, 3, and Beatrice, 13 months, makes all the difference to her job. The company's on-site, full-service day-care center allows Lechler to see her kids anytime during the workday if they aren't feeling well--or if they just need a hug from Mom. She pays the company about $165 a week for Christopher's care and $150 a week for Beatrice's, which, Lechler says, costs her about 20% less than some independent day-care centers located near her home. The company center cares for about 90 children; next year it will be expanded to accommodate 108. "It's a great comfort to me that I can see my kids in a split second if I want to," says Lechler, a 12-year CMP employee. "I don't have to worry about running out of here at the end of the day and racing to a day-care center somewhere else. My kids are right here in the building with me, and that just makes me feel very safe and secure about them, and very grateful that my company offers this great service."
For Comes, Lechler and many other professionals trying feverishly to juggle work, family and personal time for themselves, the normal fringe benefits of corporate employment--health insurance, a dental plan and maybe a subsidized gym-- simply aren't enough to make the grind worthwhile. So in a world where specialized skills and hands-on experience are still at a premium, corporations are adapting at the fringes. Rather than a fat expense account and a company car, firms are offering things like flexible work plans (job sharing and part-time employment) or on-site day-care programs, parenting classes, referrals to elder care for aging parents, and tuition money for college-bound kids. The alternative, they know, is that they may lose "the best and most creative employees in their fields," says Peter Elinsky, partner in charge of compensation and benefits at KPMG Peat Marwick in Washington.