Work/life balance is more important than compensation in employee satisfaction, according to a study by the AICPA’s Work/Life and Women’s Initiatives Executive Committee in 2004. Today, the main reasons CPAs leave their firms are time spent at work and work/life balance problems.

Young staff are not as likely to make sacrifices for their careers as were the baby boomers. They may reject promotions that require longer hours.

Where CPA firms have failed to succeed in implementing work/life programs is in the failure of management to support them in spirit.

Here are the basic types of work/life programs:

• Flextime. Staff must spend a designated core period in the office, but can otherwise determine their own hours and workplace.
• Flexible Week. Under this program, staff works a full schedule, but compresses hours into fewer days.
• Telecommuting. Satellite offices are set up near areas where several employees live. All work is performed at home, or at a combination of home and the satellite office.
• Part-time work.
• Job Sharing. Two staff members divide one job.

More information on types of programs can be found at www.catalyst.org.

Some firms are calculating return on their investments in work/life programs. To do this, start by identifying your goals. If the goal is staff retention, you may want to set up a child care center in the firm.

Six-person Deborah Bailey Browne and Associates, in Wappingers Falls, New York, provides emergency child care. Boston firm, Vitale, Caturano & Company, began its now popular program of work/life incentives in 1996. At a cost of $200,000 a year to hire a caregiver to provide child care for 20 employees on Saturdays during tax season, a firm would have to retain only four $75,000 staff members to achieve an adequate return.

Deloitte & Touche determines which workers would have left if there were not a work/life balance program. It multiplied the average annual salary of those workers by 150 percent and calculated a savings of $41.5 million annually. A survey is used to determine the number of staff that would have left.

Goals of a work/life program might include:

• Less absenteeism. The Washington, D.C., law firm of Arnold & Porter has a backup child-care program that saves more than $800,000 a year.
• Less turnover. Aetna reduced turnover by half by allowing employees to work part time after taking time off for childbirth or adoption. The retention rate after five years was 90 percent.
• Higher productivity. Hewlett-Packard compressed its workweek to four 10-hour days and nearly doubled productivity in one department.
• Less overtime cost and less stress.
• Higher rate of client retention because staff provides better service.

From Journal of Accountancy, August 2006. For the complete article, click on the following link: http://www.aicpa.org/pubs/jofa/aug2006/lewison.htm.