Accenture to Allow New Parents to Travel Less
26 August 2015 - 2:30PM
Dow Jones News
By Rachel Emma Silverman
Consultants who are new parents may be able to spend less time
on the road.
Accenture, the large professional-services firm, is announcing
today that it is allowing mothers and primary caregivers to work
locally during the year after they return from parental leave,
instead of traveling for out-of-town engagements.
The benefit is only available for Accenture's North American
staffers, who number more than 51,000 employees; last fiscal year,
about 750 North American employees took parental leave as primary
caregivers.
Ellyn Shook, Accenture's chief human-resources officer, said the
move was suggested by employees in a parenting group. Ms. Shook
said some new-parent employees opted to leave their jobs altogether
because they were anxious that their professional-services jobs
might entail too much time on the road. Other employees worked out
one-off deals with their managers to reduce travel, but there was
no companywide policy, she said.
"We hope to get out of it that our people understand how much we
care about them as human beings," said Ms. Shook. "Do I think there
will be tangible benefits of lowering attrition and raising
productivity? Absolutely."
Ms. Shook said she's not aware of other professional-services
firms publicly announcing similar reduced-travel policies for new
parents. Likewise, Anne Weisberg, senior vice president at the
Families and Work Institute, which researches workplace policies,
said she hasn't heard of other firms with similar programs.
Accenture's move comes as many firms have introduced enhanced
benefits for new parents, in part to attract and retain women, who
are still most often primary caregivers during a baby's first year.
International Business Machines Corp. will pay for employees to
ship home breast milk pumped during business travel in
temperature-controlled packages. Private-equity firm KKR & Co.
recently said it would pay for employees to bring new babies and
their nannies on business travel during a baby's first year. Other
firms, including Adobe Systems Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Netflix
Inc., have recently announced significant extensions to their
parental leave programs.
In March, Accenture also doubled its parental leave benefits to
16 weeks for birth mothers, and extended its parental leave
programs for other primary and secondary caregivers. The company
also is planning to allow new mothers to ship breast milk home for
free if they choose to travel for business, among other benefits
for new parents.
Write to Rachel Emma Silverman at rachel.silverman@wsj.com
Subscribe to WSJ: http://online.wsj.com?mod=djnwires
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
August 26, 2015 00:15 ET (04:15 GMT)
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